Glenn Loury on Black America, Social Mobility, and Welfare

Read The Forum's interview with Glenn Loury—economist and professor emeritus at Brown University.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Image Credit: Brown University

Deborah Aguirre: Today we're interviewing economist and public intellectual Dr. Glenn Loury. Dr. Loury is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor Emeritus of Social Sciences and Professor Emeritus of Economics at Brown University, as well as a fellow at the Hoover Institution. For decades, his work has bridged the gap between complex econometric theory and the immediate realities of public policy. But beyond the data, he is also a model of philosophical exploration. He is the author of numerous influential works, including his highly acclaimed 2024 memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative, where he opens up about his most personal milestones and mistakes through life, as well as his newly released 2025 book, Self-Censorship, which dissects the social pressures that stifle free expression. Dr. Loury, thank you for joining us.

Glenn Loury: You're welcome. 

Caleb Rasor: For starters, much of your academic work over the years has blurred the line between fields such as economics, history, sociology. What are the limits to using economic reasoning itself to solve some of the most pressing issues facing America today?

Glenn Loury: Well, I think the most important thing to recognize is that the economic dimension of the problem is important, but it's not the only thing going on. Allocating scarce resources amongst competing ends is what economics is about—it tells us how to make use of the resources, but it doesn't tell us what to value. And the value part of the social decision problem is important, but it's also philosophy and ethics, the humanistic aspect of scholarly inquiry. So I see economics as essential, but it’s also essential to keep economics in its place.

Deborah Aguirre: In your 2019 piece for the Manhattan Institute, you argued that [racial] disparities in [economic] performance could be in part because of social networks and racial stigma. You specifically noted that a lack of intimate social relations with the broader population can hinder economic development. Given your more recent calls for Black Americans to stand together, develop internal agency, and embrace a distinct communal identity, how do you reconcile the need for solidarity with the economic necessity of interracial integration and the social capital that comes from those outside networks.

Glenn Loury: That's a good question. My main point is that if we want to understand disparities, we need to understand human development. People acquire the skills and the value traits that get rewarded in the marketplace through socialization. Race figures into this because racial identity influences how people interact with each other. It's only by the selective decisions that people make about how to bond with each other that the phenotypic substratum, which is race—color of skin, hair, texture, shape of bones in the face—get produced and reproduced in society. So if we're talking about racial disparities, we're talking both about human development and disparities in its dynamics. 

I think the question you raised is important—on how I reconcile the need for integration with the need for African Americans to attend to their communal dynamic—because there really is no resolution of those two things. You could argue that the long term vision should be to transcend race altogether [so] superficial differences were not even relevant to how people interacted. We can imagine such a society, but I don't think we've ever encountered one. 

The fact of segregated social interactions leaves people like African Americans with the need to attend to the character of their own internal communal dynamic. That doesn't mean discouraging integration, but it does mean emphasizing the activities which encourage and reinforce positive developmental dynamics within the community. 

You want your kids to work hard, to love their country, to respect their elders, to not be discouraged by setbacks, to honor each other. You get these things in part through formal institutions, but you also get them through families, communities, churches and other non-governmental connections that are organized in part along racial lines, and are an essential part of the picture when you talk about perpetuating racial disparities. 

Caleb Rasor: You recently argued in First Things that the conservative movement, and America more broadly, must honor both the dignity of every person and the particular heritage of its people—a simultaneous universalism and nationalism. Black Americans have adopted this civic nationalism. They protected their particular identity by appealing to a universal promise of equality. How can immigrants to America do the same? At what point is there enough assimilation without cultural deindividuation?

Glenn Loury: That's related to the previous question, I think. And there is a tension there. What do we want from newcomers? We want them to affirm the civic project that we're all engaged in. We want them to speak English. We want them to get America. But we don't necessarily ask them to become homogenized [and] without their own traditions and cultures. We don't want them, necessarily, to worship in the same way that we worship. We don't begrudge them keeping their linguistic heritage and cultural inheritance alive, but we want them to do that within a framework that is collaborative.

I think there's a balance that has to be maintained. It's incumbent upon newcomers to get America, but it also behooves us incumbent Americans to be magnanimous—not strict in our requirement that people live, in every respect, as we are used to seeing.

Deborah Aguirre: My next question was related to something you said earlier about the importance of church. You've been candid about your own regeneration through faith and sobriety in the ‘80s, and how that was your practical lever that allowed you to escape the illicit activities of your youth. Black Americans remain one of the most religious demographics in the country. Yet the social pathologies that you critique, like family instability and violence, still persist despite that high level of faith. 

Since you've personally moved towards agnosticism, I'm curious if you think that the practicality of faith that worked for you can still be used as a tool for communal prosperity in Black communities, or has the modern religiosity become form without substance? Should the Black community be looking for a new secular form of solidarity, or should they return to these traditional forms of faith?

Glenn Loury: The character of belief in the transcendent is under the pressures of modernity—and not just in African American society. There is a role for religion as an effective response to the challenges of modern life. But I don't think there's a panacea here. I don't look to religion as "the answer." But I think mobilizing people in whatever form that you can get them around the table, supporting each other and affirming the values of decent living and productive social intercourse—I think that's a good thing. 

I know I'm dodging the question. I'm aware of the fact that I'm not being responsive, because I think it's just too easy to say "the church" is a solution to the problems of Black America. The Civil Rights Movement was nested within the cultural embrace of African American Christian practice—it was a historical inheritance of the 19th- and 20th-century. The country has changed. African American society has changed. And while I see a role for the church, I don't see anything like a recapitulation of the kind of formative influence that religious institutions had in the early- and mid-20th century. 

Deborah Aguirre: What do you think about movements like MAGA that have roots in these Christian values and present themselves as [working] alongside faith?

Glenn Loury: What do I think about the Christian right and their influence within the Republican Party and the Trump-led Make America Great Again movement? I think it's the chickens coming home to roost. [The] secular progressive left ignored this dimension of American social life and offended the values that were embraced by tens of millions of Americans. Whether we talk about some of the cultural conflict issues like gay rights, transgender rights, [and] abortion, [these are] deep differences that people have based on their religious faith. 

I think it goes way back, at least to the 1970s [with] the Moral Majority. The Tea Party Movement, which we see in the early 21st-Century, is partly a reflection of this alienation from modernistic progressive political leadership. And I think it's ironic, because the leader of the MAGA movement is not an especially inspiring figure in terms of his ethical, religious example. On the other hand, he does, to some degree, speak for that corner of society and they have his back. I think the progressives have some part of the blame for that. [As] President Obama famously said, "They cling to their guns, their religion and so forth, because the economy has failed them and they're feeling that they're losing in life"—that kind of [talk] wasn't especially helpful.

Caleb Rasor: For the most part, Professor Loury, you comment on domestic policy, but at times you have also spoken on American foreign policy and even gotten yourself into a bit of trouble. But nonetheless, I'd like to ask you about your take on the current situation in Iran. The past month or so since has been characterized by a rocky ceasefire with the US and Iran constantly vacillating between opening up ports and then reneging on their agreements. What is your current take on the state of the conflict and do you believe it will come to an end soon as President Trump claims?

Glenn Loury: I certainly hope so, and I think there's a good chance of it. No, I'm not an expert on these matters. [I’ve been known] to say in the months and years prior to the onset of this conflict, we must not—we cannot—go to war with Iran, because I thought the stakes are enormously high. What happens if Turkey gets involved. What happens if the Saudis decide that they need to arm themselves? What happens to the world economy if the Strait of Hormuz is indeed disrupted for an extended period of time? 

And we can already see that's not a consummation devoutly to be wished, I think is the way Shakespeare put it. Keeping this under wraps is the most important thing that we can do. I appreciate that the United States and the Iranian government are in negotiation with one another. I think it has been demonstrated that the ability to dominate Iran was overestimated. A decapitation of the leadership, a destruction of their air force and their naval resources—that's been pretty well advanced. But nevertheless, we're talking about traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Now the Gulf states are deeply concerned about their own future, given the spillover consequences of the conflict. We want to get out as soon as we possibly can, and I'm hopeful about that, but I don't have any real wisdom about how to accomplish that.

Caleb Rasor: A few months back, you interviewed Mark Dunkelman, the author of Why Nothing Works, and a prominent intellectual within the Abundance movement, which is a relatively new movement on the political left emphasizing the need for effective government and positive sum thinking in our culture, rather than artificial scarcity. I'm interested in if you found any appeal in this so-called supply side progressivism, and whether you believe it could bring any benefits to marginalized communities?

Glenn Loury: I think you've got to build stuff. I think you need a robust public sector that invests in the future [with] highways, bridges, tunnels, electric, [and] internet. I think Dunkelman gets it largely right in his diagnosis of the conflict between Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian views about government. Jefferson worried about government excess. Hamilton wanted to have a robust public sector that could actually take on the challenges of producing public goods and financing their production. 

The reaction to the Great Depression, the foundation of the modern welfare state, the mobilization that allowed us to emerge victorious in The Second World War, the long period of prosperity and relative equal shared economic growth that we saw in the decades after the Second World War rested upon the ability to get things done. I think Not-In-My-Backyard is a real phenomenon. I think it's easier in our system to block something than it is to actually build something. And the diagnosis that Dunkleman puts forward, I think, has a great deal of merit to it. 

Deborah Aguirre: On the subject of the welfare state and welfare networks: In years past, you've made clear that you're supportive of a welfare state, but believe that our current systems are inadequate replacements for civil society safety nets such as churches, extended families and [institutions] based in community. In your view, could there be a better way to design America's welfare system, such that local institutions are complemented rather than overshadowed by federal programs?

Glenn Loury: I have a friend named Lawrence Kotlikoff. He's an economist, and he tells me that the marginal tax rate is highest on income for people who are at the bottom of the income distribution. The reason that's so is that if they earn another dollar, they reduce their eligibility for transfer programs, which means that the net gain is 32 cents or, [I’m making] the number up, but you get the idea; another dollar of gross income, but another 70 cents lost on eligibility for housing, medical care, aid to families, or income supplements. We should be thinking about the extent to which our transfer programs discourage the kind of behavior that we want people to engage in, whether it's marriage and family, work and self-reliance. There's no free lunch, we economists like to say. You want to help somebody? Well, that's going to come at a cost at the margin to raising the funds that you're distributing or the disincentives that you might give to beneficiaries through your programmatic endeavors. 

I don't think that it's practical or desirable to anticipate that voluntary mutual aid could take the place of the role that the burgeoning welfare state has come to play in sustaining decent lives for part of the population. I think it's a theoretical argument. You could say this about Social Security, for example: "Well, children should help to take care of their aging parents if they don't have income." And of course, in an ideal world, that would be the case. But to envision that income support for seniors could be managed by voluntary transfers is pie in the sky. The amount of suffering that would ensue were you to withdraw public support at this late date would be quite substantial. 

The same kind of thing could be said about health care. I'm not an expert in this field, but I can see the big role in our socioeconomic life that medical service provision and drug service provision is playing. Medicare and Medicaid are playing an indispensable role, allowing people to respond to their needs for healthcare in a manner that's consistent with their economic means. So no, I don't think privatization is the answer, but I do think prudence in the program design—being aware of incentives—is what's called for.

Deborah Aguirre: On [the] note of incentives: Recently, Trump and the administration have started to place work requirements on [programs] like SNAP. Do you think that's a step in the right direction [regarding] prudence?

Glenn Loury: I'm in favor of work requirements, actually. For able-bodied people who are able to contribute to their own support, I think work is a good thing for people. It's not just that they should be paying their own way. It's that their own development is affirmed and advanced through the extent that they can be encouraged to find work. Now, the administration of this is important. People will, I assume—I don't know the details—be allowed if they have reasonable grounds to be exempted from requirements. Again, I'd have to look into it to be sure that I'm accurate in my characterization. But I think a humane administration, where the expectation is that if you get the benefit and you are able to contribute to your own support, you would be expected to do so as a qualification requirement for remaining eligible for the benefit. I think that pushes in the right direction.

Deborah Aguirre: A lot of opponents to work requirements refer to the outcomes of having these work requirements—it turns into an issue of income mobility. Even if you implement work requirements a lot of people find low-income jobs, so in your ideal welfare state how do you suppose that we help these people build their human capital so they actually move into decent paying jobs and not just be stuck working at fast food and [other] low-income jobs?

Glenn Loury: Okay, I’m going to sound like a mean-spirited economist.

Deborah Aguirre: It's okay. Go for it. 

Glenn Loury: Well, did you envision a world in which there were no low-income jobs? If they're going to be low-income jobs, someone's going to be doing them. I [can either] have a person sitting at home collecting a check or I have a person collecting a check who is getting up out of bed in the morning and going to a low-paying job without a future in that job, but they're still getting up and going. And these jobs are not lifetime sentences. They can be viewed as a stepping stone into broader society. And I answer the question, how do I expect someone to outgrow a low-income job by saying working until they are able to find something better. And I just don't think the answer to, “I hate to see so many people flipping burgers,” is to write them checks.

Caleb Rasor: To close up, Professor, you have gone through many transitions in your life, such as from being solely an academic economist to also a public intellectual, from a drug addict to sober, and from being more apathetic to religion to becoming a Christian and now being agnostic. I'm curious whether at this point in your life, you've reached a point of settling on your beliefs or if there is still more exploration to be done. 

Glenn Loury: The latter, more exploration, not yet settled. No, I don't intend to go back to using cocaine, which was a plague in my life decades ago. And I am, as you say, an agnostic—okay, I'll go with that. I think that's probably the most accurate explanation. But I'm still questing, trying to understand, trying to come to terms with my existential condition here in this world as a reflective, more or less thoughtful human being.

What are my responsibilities? What then must I do? What is the good life? What's the meaning of it? Why bother? These questions haunt me even now. On politics, I think keeping an open mind is the best way to go. I've moved from left to right to left—back to right. And as you heard in our discussion about the current administration, [I’m] not entirely happy on the right. That's okay. It ain't over until it's over. I think we have to keep asking questions and we have to keep trying. Being able to say “I think I got that one wrong,” is really important. Epistemic humility is a virtue. So that's how I'm looking at things and I don't feel in no ways tired. 

Caleb Rasor: Well, Professor Loury, thank you very much for your time. 

Glenn Loury: Caleb, Deborah, good to be with you.