A persistent theme of his writing is the “squalor produced by the welfare state” and by the “widespread abdication of personal responsibility” that characterizes “Life at the Bottom” (2001), his first collection of City Journal essays. In his introduction to the book, Dr. Daniels wrote, “A specter is haunting the Western world: the underclass.” He observed that “the mental, cultural, emotional, and spiritual impoverishment of the Western underclass is the greatest of any large group of people I have encountered anywhere”—including the poorest countries of Africa, where he did volunteer work as a young doctor. Observing his patients in a Birmingham hospital, he wrote: “Each day my faith in the ability of human beings comprehensively to ruin their lives is renewed.”