An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
The Brookings Institute had the following that they learned from exhaustive statistical analysis:
This was also buttressed by earlier research from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an assistant secretary of labor in the LBJ administration, in a detailed report titled (not my words) "The Negro Family" published in 1965.
- If you want to avoid poverty and join the middle class in the United States, you need to do three things: 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.
- Brookings defines middle class as having an income of at least $50,000 a year for a family of three.
Moynihan was prophetic in seeing the aggravating and causative factors for poverty, and those factors apply to all people, even though the focus of this particular report was self-explanatory.
Sadly, while thoughtful people praised Moynihan's work and intentions, demagogues accused Moynihan himself of racism, in a most despicable and craven attack to discredit the report and Moynihan to maintain a reliable voting bloc permanently at the lower tiers of society.
Fast forward over fifty years, with illegitimacy skyrocketing, while high school graduation, and full-time work rates have plummeted, and we act surprised when the predictable results eventuate?
In light of this, it makes you wonder why those steps haven't been seriously looked at.