Public colleges in America have gotten testing grounds for a tenuous idea: that poverty will be prevented by making three selections in the fitting order.
Tennessee lawmakers handed a invoice this month requiring colleges to show college students this so-called success sequence: that if you happen to graduate from highschool, get a full-time job, and wait till marriage to have youngsters, you’ll possible be “profitable” in avoiding poverty. Utah lawmakers handed their very own success sequence decision in 2024, and states together with Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Texas thought of related laws this 12 months.
This wave of training coverage largely originates from mannequin laws supplied by the Heritage Basis, the conservative assume tank that revealed the influential Venture 2025 agenda. It represents a rising effort to codify a selected view of mobility into public college curricula, one that means private selections primarily drive financial prosperity. Whereas the sequence enjoys actual reputation throughout social gathering strains — and to many informal observers sounds pretty innocuous as life recommendation — coverage specialists say the precise proof underpinning its anti-poverty message is skinny and vastly overstated.
The success sequence, defined
The time period “success sequence” first appeared in 2006 when historian Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and sociologist Marline Pearson co-authored a report for the Nationwide Marketing campaign to Forestall Teen Being pregnant. They wrote that fashionable youngsters “lack what earlier generations took with no consideration: a normative sequence for the timing of intercourse, marriage and parenthood.” Their resolution was to advertise the “success sequence.”
The idea was later popularized by Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill on the Brookings Establishment, a liberal-centrist assume tank, and championed by researchers on the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Institute for Household Research (IFS), significantly Brad Wilcox, who directs the Nationwide Marriage Venture on the College of Virginia.
Advocates declare the outcomes are spectacular: Based on analysis from IFS, 97 % of millennials who comply with all three steps keep away from poverty as adults. Even amongst those that grew up in poverty, the bulk who full the sequence attain middle-class standing or increased.
“We do have, in sure elements of our state, issues with fatherlessness, and we do have pockets in our state like in metro Nashville with poverty and many children not having the kind of financial alternative that all of us need them to have,” Tennessee Rep. Gino Bulso, the Home sponsor of the invoice, advised Vox. “Once I noticed [the success sequence] minimize throughout all demographics, that even Black adults have been 96 % prone to keep away from poverty, I believed it was one thing we should always go forward and introduce.”
However the thought has been largely debunked, because the proof confuses correlation with causation. As Michael Tanner of the libertarian Cato Institute identified in 2018, “Possession of a personal jet is much more strongly related to monetary success, but that doesn’t imply jet possession is what allowed these people to flee poverty.”
There’s little to again up the declare that the precise sequence issues. A 2021 examine funded by the federal Division of Well being and Human Companies discovered that younger adults who end highschool, work full time, and get married are much less prone to expertise poverty, however the particular order doesn’t appear to matter a lot. These steps — apart from marriage — don’t strongly predict household stability both, and researchers say extra knowledge is required to grasp what actually helps younger individuals thrive.
”Even with delaying parenthood, the significance of that for poverty is swamped by the significance of getting and protecting a job, so it’s price asking whether or not policymakers are additionally making it simpler for individuals to entry contraception and abortion providers and to have an revenue once they have children,” mentioned Paul Bruno, an training coverage professor. “If not, I’m unsure that having lessons about these issues quantities to far more than scolding college students about issues a very long time sooner or later that they both already know or have restricted management over.”
Regardless of the success sequence’s weak mental foundation, it stays highly regarded throughout political and demographic strains. In accordance to a 2021 American Enterprise Institute survey, 77 % of Individuals help educating the idea, together with 85 % of Republicans, 72 % of Democrats, and 78 % of independents. Assist spans racial teams as properly, with 68 % of Black respondents, 80 % of white respondents, and 74 % of Hispanic respondents favoring its inclusion at school curricula.
“Educating the success sequence has overwhelming help on the left and proper, with increased, and extra intense help amongst conservatives, so it’s not shocking that purple states are main on these payments,” Nat Malkus, the deputy director of training coverage at AEI, advised Vox. “The broad help amongst liberals is there, however the minority of liberal opponents can be extra vocal of their opposition, so the identical payments might be extra bother than blue state legislators are prepared to bear.”
Bruno cautioned that polling help for academic ideas usually proves fragile upon implementation, pointing to the Frequent Core requirements for example. “It’s very straightforward to search out political help for proposals for colleges to show children stuff that sounds good,” he mentioned. “As a result of the proposals sound good and are fairly imprecise in regards to the particulars and don’t ask anyone to make any laborious selections, this usually means the true help just isn’t that sturdy.”
Matt Bruenig of the left-wing Individuals’s Coverage Venture assume tank has been declaring methodological issues with the sequence for the final decade. At its coronary heart, he argues, the formulation is about deflecting consideration from how coverage selections produce poverty. “It’s at all times been a technique to undermine efforts to enhance the welfare state,” he advised Vox. “That’s why the fitting likes it and why they need to train it to college students.”
For most individuals, the success sequence seems like innocent and sensible life recommendation. However its deeper enchantment, Bruenig argued, is that it provides lawmakers a palatable technique to body poverty as a matter of private failure somewhat than systemic design.
Educating private duty whereas ignoring structural obstacles
When Tennessee’s success sequence invoice was being debated, Democratic Rep. Aftyn Behn of Nashville tried so as to add language to show that financial obstacles can forestall college students from finishing the sequence. Her modification — which framed delayed marriage and childbearing amongst millennials as the results of challenges like wage stagnation, scholar debt, and unaffordable baby care and housing — in the end failed.
In an interview with Vox, Behn pointed to her personal expertise: “I make $26,000 a 12 months as a Tennessee legislator. I’ve scholar debt from graduate college, I lease, and I characterize a big swath of millennials who’ve determined to forego youngsters due to the adverse financial affect. My modification would have made the curriculum tackle the truth dealing with many younger individuals. With out it, we threat educating younger individuals a story that blames them for systemic failures.”
She continued: “Now we have foster children sleeping on the flooring of our [child services] workplaces. Now we have homosexual children sleeping of their vehicles due to the insurance policies forcing colleges to out them to their dad and mom. No younger particular person working three jobs can afford the down fee on a home in Nashville, the place I characterize. The Tennessee legislature has performed nothing to handle the affordability of residing, and but anticipate us to purchase right into a false narrative that if you happen to comply with one individualized path, you’ll be able to claw your means out of systemic poverty. Give me a break.”
Rep. Bulso, who sponsored the invoice in Tennessee, mentioned it’s “very uncommon” for the legislature to amend any payments on the ground of the Home, including that “it didn’t appear to me that the substance of the modification added something to what we have been doing.” He mentioned, “the very last thing we need to do” is current details to college students that might “trigger emotional misery,” however he believes the success sequence in the end presents a “very compelling and uplifting message.”
Training researchers have lengthy questioned whether or not school-based instruction on life selections actually influences college students’ future choices. Teen being pregnant has declined dramatically over current a long time, for instance, not primarily due to abstinence training, however because of elevated entry to high-quality contraception.
How these broad success sequence ideas will translate into precise classroom instruction stays an open query. “Considerate implementation is vital to make sure the success sequence is used to tell, somewhat than browbeat college students,” mentioned Malkus, of AEI. “However I’m assured educators can handle this, significantly given the way more charged subjects ‘household life’ lecturers must routinely cowl.”
Malkus believes lecturers ought to have flexibility in presentation. “The requirement to show the success sequence doesn’t imply it can’t be taught in context,” he added. “I belief most lecturers have the widespread sense to do that properly, and I believe relating to their native colleges, most Individuals do too.”
However Bruno, the professor, worries about alternative prices. “Educating the success sequence most likely gained’t have a lot affect for anyone, however will take up time and power that might be used to show children expertise that may really assist them get jobs or to arrange social security nets that make sure that they don’t fall into poverty in the event that they get hit with unhealthy luck,” he mentioned. “These prices are going to be particularly necessary for youths from lower-income households.”
Some critics supply different frameworks for addressing poverty in academic settings. Bruenig suggests college students might “find out about international locations which have low ranges of poverty and inequality” and examine “notable successes in poverty discount in America, corresponding to the large drop in aged poverty following Social Safety enlargement and the halving of kid poverty that occurred in 2021 following a rise in baby advantages.”
Bulso, in the meantime, is optimistic. “I’d hope that one hundred pc of scholars in center and highschool shall be uncovered to details that truly present them that in the event that they comply with the sequence the place they end highschool and go to school and get a job and have full-time employment after which get married after which have youngsters, their chances are high higher than in another circumstances,” he mentioned. “A very powerful milestone is ending highschool.”
