According to a Brookings Institution study, there are three rules you should follow to be successful in life, at least if “successful” is staying out of poverty. The study found that if you follow all three, you have only a 3% chance of living in poverty. If you don’t, the percentages are very high, approaching 50%.
Here are the rules:
1. graduate from high school. It will be even better if you attend community college or college, but the important thing is to get a high school diploma.
2. get a job. It doesn’t have to be much of a job to begin with, but people who have jobs (and do them) will find it much easier to get better jobs and even better jobs after that.
3. get married before you have children. Do not do it the other way around. It won’t work. If you had only one variable to predict poverty, it wouldn’t be religion, or parents, or educational level, or race, or ethnicity. It would be single parent family.
There you have it. I learned about this study in a book entitled Them by Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican Senator from Nebraska. I’m about half way through, but I recommend it highly.
No comments:
Post a Comment