Charles Alan Murray (/ˈmɜːri/; born January 8, 1943) is an American political scientist. He is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
Murray’s work is highly controversial. His book Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (1984) discussed the American welfare system. In the book The Bell Curve (1994), he and co-author Richard Herrnstein argue that in 20th-century American society, intelligence became a better predictor than parental socioeconomic status or education level of many individual outcomes, including income, job performance, pregnancy out of wedlock, and crime, and that social welfare programs and education efforts to improve social outcomes for the disadvantaged are largely counterproductive.
The Bell Curve also argues that average intelligence quotient (IQ) differences between racial and ethnic groups are at least partly genetic in origin, a view that is now considered discredited by mainstream science.
Books in order of publication:
A Behavioral Study of Rural Modernization: Social and Economic Change in Thai Villages, Praeger Publishers, 1977.
Beyond Probation: Juvenile Corrections and the Chronic Delinquent (with Louis A. Cox Jr.), Sage Publishing, 1979.
Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980, Basic Books, 1984
In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government, Simon & Schuster, 1989.
Apollo: The Race to the Moon (with Catherine Bly Cox), Simon & Schuster, 1989.
The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (with Richard J. Herrnstein), Free Press, 1994.
What It Means to Be a Libertarian, Broadway Books, 1997.
Income Inequality and IQ, AEI Press, 1998.
The Underclass Revisited, AEI Press, 1999.
Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950, HarperCollins, 2003.
In Our Hands: A Plan To Replace The Welfare State, AEI Press, March 2006.
Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing American Schools Back to Reality, Crown Forum, August 2008.
Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010, Crown Forum, 2012.
The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead: Dos and Don’ts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life, Crown Business, 2014.
By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission, Crown Forum, 2015.
Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class, Twelve, 2020.
Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America, Encounter Books, 2021.
Taking Religion Seriously, Encounter Books, 2025.
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