The Pathway to Success (1 of 3)

How we can encourage youth from low-income families to experience Upward Mobility

A key focus of my book series and this Substack column is:

• Promoting an awareness and understanding of human material progress

• Propose policies to:

  • Keep progress going in wealthy nations

  • Spread progress to developing nations

  • Ensure that the maximum number of people benefit from that progress (or what I call “Upward Mobility”).

To promote Upward Mobility in the future, we need to:

1. Promote long-term economic growth (this is what I call “Promoting Progress”, the topic of my second book)

2. Create a prosperous working class

3. Promote a clear pathway that enables youths from low-income families to enter the prosperous working class.

In a previous article, I explained the importance of the Traditional Pathway to Success in promoting Upward Mobility for the American working class and poor before 1970. This encouraged youths to make wise Life Choices that enabled them to join in on the progress that surrounded them. Unfortunately, the widespread belief and willingness to teach our children the Traditional Pathway to Success has collapsed.

To promote Upward Mobility in the future, we must construct a modernized Pathway to Success.

---

See more articles on Upward Mobility:

1. Why achieving Equality is an Impossible Dream

2. Why Progress and Upward Mobility should be the goal, not Equality

3. Why Equality of Opportunity is not enough

4. Upward Mobility in the USA (1947-1965)

5. Why Life Choices are key to Upward Mobility

6. The Traditional Pathway to Success

7. Constructing a modernized Pathway to Success

8. The Pathway to Success (this article)

9. The case for Upward Bound accounts

10. The case for a Working Family Tax Credit

11. more

I also will be writing a significant number of excerpts from my forthcoming book: Upward Mobility: A Radical New Agenda to Uplift the Poor and Working Class. Most of these excerpts will only be available to paid subscribers.

Other books in my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:

---

As a reminder, the inclusion of individual steps in this modernized Pathway to Success should be based on the following criteria:

1. At least 90% of youths can realistically take the step.

2. The step must have a great deal of social science data documenting that it is associated with higher incomes in the long term.

3. There is an intuitive and plausible link that most people can immediately grasp that links the step to long-term success and happiness.

Steps in the Pathway

I believe that a modernized Pathway to Success should consist of the following steps:

1. Graduate High School.

2. Complete post-secondary education/job training to learn practical skills that enhance your long-term earning power.

3. (if you live in an area with few opportunities) Move to a metro area with much greater opportunities.

4. Work full-time.

5. (If you have children) Get married and stay married.

6. Save and invest at least 10% of your income.

For youths in professional families and neighborhoods, most of these choices are obvious because everyone around them has already made those choices or is planning on doing so. Peer pressure and parenting work to reinforce success.

For youths in lower-class families and neighborhoods, most of these choices are not so obvious. Worse few of the people around them have made these choices in the past. Some even reject that these choices are desirable. Peer pressure and parenting often work to reinforce failure. Some youths heroically make short-term sacrifices, ignore peer pressure or dysfunctional parenting, and make the right choices. They are awarded entry into the professional or working class. But far too many copy the dysfunctional choices made by people around them and remain in the lower class.

Graduate High School

I guess that few people will object to the inclusion of this step into the Pathway to Success. Graduating from high school has long been a widely accepted goal for our children. It is widely supported among liberals, conservatives, and moderates. It is so widely accepted that American taxpayers have spent huge amounts of money funding a public K-12 school system.

To be clear, a high school degree is nowhere near enough in isolation, but it is a critical first step. It is also clear that much of the academic content of K-12 education is not relevant to most adults and is quickly forgotten. K-12 education does, however, teach some critical skills that are necessary in most occupations:

• Reading

• Writing

• Basic arithmetic

• Ability to follow a consistent schedule

• Ability to work cooperatively with others toward a common goal.

When done well, these critical skills give a solid foundation for more specialized skills that are important to a youth’s chosen occupation.

The positive long-term impact on income is very clear from the data. Those who graduate from high school have significantly higher incomes than those who drop out of high school. Since I think most people will consider that obvious, I will only give a few statistics.