get married, get a degree, hold on to a job

The Bloody Crossroads
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times
Published September 7, 2009
http://www.foramericankids.org/documents/9-909.RESPONSE.pdf

Can the state do anything to effectively promote virtuous behavior? Because when you get into the core problems, whether in Washington, California or on Wall Street, you keep seeing the same moral deficiencies: self-indulgence, irresponsibility and imprudence.

Two of my favorite essays in the first issue go right at this problem. Ron Haskins delivers a careful reading of the data on inequality and social mobility and cuts through a lot of the sloppy reporting on this issue. He points out that the surest way to achieve mobility is still the same: get married, get a degree, hold on to a job. Poverty in America is a function of culture and behavior at least as much as of entrenched injustice, he writes.