Three Simple Steps to Avoid Poverty

While cleaning my office this week, I found an article that I wrote for the Kernersville News more than twenty years ago. I decided to do some research and, lo and behold, it’s still applicable today. It’s worth discussing again.

 

Three simple rules can prevent poverty. Who knew? 

 

This study from 20+ years ago, has been restudied and updated and still leads to the anti poverty route. According to Brookings Institute, American Enterprise Institute and others, these simple rules still apply. If young people graduate high school, get a job (any job, even minimum wage) and avoid having children until marriage, poverty is likely to pass by. Real Rocket science, don’t you think?

 

I think most people realize that finishing high school and getting a job is a must along the anti poverty road. I’m not sure that we’ve paid enough attention to the marriage part. Ninety five percent (95%) of young people who marry before having children avoid poverty. 

 

Certainly children growing up in neighborhoods where there are few intact families, may not recognize the value of this solution. I think few would argue that welfare has played a large part in illegitimacy, particularly the trap of generational welfare.

 

When my own two daughters were in their teens, they might have made different choices if they had been aware of the alternatives available. When they didn’t want to abide by curfews and other rules of our home and thought they knew more than their parents, some bad choices might have been made. If they had known that if they had a child, they could have their own place and a check every month, I fear what choices they would have made. 

 

The National Center for Health Statistics reveals that 77.3% of black births  and 30% of white births are out of wedlock births. In 1965, those figures were 24% and 3.1% respectively. That’s staggering. It’s also especially sad when we examine further. 

 

Statistics from the US Census Bureau and DHHS are telling. Children in fatherless homes are 4 times more likely to be poor and are at higher risk for drug/alcohol abuse, higher drop out rates, twice as likely to commit suicide, etc. The list could go on. 

 

These seem like easy answers to a serious problem. This simple discovery was revealed more than twenty years ago and we’ve made no progress. Illegitimacy rates continue to rise. As a society we must somehow get back to the notion that having children out of wedlock is not in anyone’s best interest. We must reach these young people and help them make better choices in order to lead more prosperous and fulfilling lives.