What Does the Success Sequence Mean?

If you live in the First World, there is a simple and highly effective formula for avoiding poverty:

1. Finish high school.

2. Get a full-time job once you finish school.

3. Get married before you have children.

Researchers call this formula the “success sequence.”  Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill got the ball rolling with their book Creating an  Opportunity Society, calling for a change in social norms to “bring back the success sequence as the expected path for young Americans.”  The highest-qu...