Penna Dexter

Columnist George Will writes frequently about how young adults can avoid winding up poor. He says, “First, get at least a high school diploma, then get a job, then get married, and only then have children.” In a recent column, he addresses the “success sequence,” which he says is “insurance against poverty.”

A report published this summer, by the Institute for Family Studies and cosponsored by the American Enterprise Institute provides fresh evidence of the wisdom of George Will’s advice. The authors, IFS’s Wendy Wang and Bradford Wilcox, focused their research on the oldest members of the millennial generation, young adults aged 28 to 34. Drs. Wang and Wilcox found that only three percent of those studied who followed this “success sequence” are poor. Eighty-six percent of them have family incomes that put them in the middle class or above.

It’s no secret out-of-wedlock births have risen dramatically in the past 50 years. A disturbing 55 percent of millennial parents, when interviewed for this study, reported they weren’t married when their first child was born.

Society’s efforts to reduce poverty rates will bear fruit only when certain basic values and social arrangements prevail. George Will writes that these assumed values “are ‘of course’ matters expressing what sociologists call a society’s ‘world-taken-for-granted.’”

That world is gone.

Baby-boomers still occupied that world as we formed our families. But somehow, we who followed and benefited from the “success sequence” failed to fully pass it along. Perhaps some of us feared we’d appear judgmental if we advised our children against co-habitation. Perhaps it seemed uncompassionate, or racist, to oppose welfare programs that penalize marriage.

Consequently, we can no longer assume certain norms, like marriage before childbirth. Now, we barely bat an eyelash when we meet a single mom who is still hoping she’ll someday marry her kids’ father. She will likely remain poor.

But this report, The Millennial Success Sequence tells us that ninety-seven percent of leading-edge millennials who follow principles we once knew to be true are not poor.