Social Mobility

Do you want a 98% chance of not being poor? Do these three things:

$ Complete high school
$ Get a full-time job
$ Wait until you're married to have children

America's sterling record of social mobility had taken some dings over the past few decades. It hard to measure precisely, and country to country comparisons are not easy due to differences in measurements and methodologies from nation to nation.

Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins have done some excellent research on poverty in America on behalf of Brookings Institution.  Their work is the most often cited when climbing the ladder is discussed:

Recent research shows that in the Nordic countries and in the United Kingdom, children born into a lower-income family have a greater chance than those in the United States of forming a substantially higher-income family by the time they're adults. (Five Myths)

Some would try to convince us that “the system” in the United states stacks the deck against the poor, but there is absolutely no evidence of that. Immigrants who literally come here with nothing, for example, fare quite well…

The United States is exceptional, however, in the opportunity it offers to immigrants, who tend to do comparatively well here. Their wages are much higher than what they might have earned in their home countries. And even if their pay is initially low by American standards, their children advance quite rapidly. (Five Myths)

Social ills are to blame. We have more single parenthood, divorce and societal dysfunction than do the countries researchers compare us against:

A more important reason for our lack of progress against poverty and our growing inequality is a dramatic change in American family life.

Almost 30 percent of children now live in single-parent families, up from 12 percent in 1968. Since poverty rates in single-parent households are roughly five times as high as in two-parent households, this shift has helped keep the poverty rate up; it climbed to 13.2 percent last year.

If we had the same fraction of single-parent families today as we had in 1970, the child poverty rate would probably be about 30 percent lower than it is today.

Among women under age 30, more than half of all births now occur outside marriage, driving up poverty and leading to more intellectual, emotional and social problems among children.

In addition, we have seen a growing tendency among well-educated men and women to marry each other, exacerbating income disparities. (Five Myths)

How does a poor person climb the ladder?

Our research shows that if you want to avoid poverty and join the middle class in the United States, you need to complete high school (at a minimum), work full time and marry before you have children. If you do all three, your chances of being poor fall from 12 percent to 2 percent, and your chances of joining the middle class or above rise from 56 to 74 percent. (Five Myths)

Liberals got all hissy last time I raised this issue, accusing me of blaming and shaming single parents.  That's not the point.  We should be teaching our kids based upon this data.  Sex is not to be taken lightly, nor is marriage.  School is important.  Keep things in their proper place and in the right order, and you can grow up to be a self-sufficient adult in control of your own life.

See also:  Western Hero - Child Poverty and Single Parenthood