Public colleges in America have gotten testing grounds for a tenuous concept: that poverty may be prevented by making three selections in the proper order.
Tennessee lawmakers handed a invoice this month requiring colleges to show college students this so-called success sequence: that for those who graduate from highschool, get a full-time job, and wait till marriage to have youngsters, you’ll doubtless 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-about related laws this yr.
This wave of schooling coverage largely originates from mannequin laws offered by the Heritage Basis, the conservative assume tank that revealed the influential Challenge 2025 agenda. It represents a rising effort to codify a specific view of mobility into public faculty curricula, one that implies private selections primarily drive financial prosperity. Whereas the sequence enjoys actual reputation throughout get together strains — and to many informal observers sounds pretty innocuous as life recommendation — coverage consultants 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 Stop Teen Being pregnant. They wrote that trendy youngsters “lack what earlier generations took as a right: 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 Challenge on the College of Virginia.
Advocates declare the outcomes are spectacular: In response to analysis from IFS, 97 p.c of millennials who observe 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 larger.
“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 plenty of youngsters 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, instructed Vox. “After I noticed [the success sequence] minimize throughout all demographics, that even Black adults have been 96 p.c prone to keep away from poverty, I assumed 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 non-public 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 research 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 know what actually helps younger folks thrive.
”Even with delaying parenthood, the significance of that for poverty is swamped by the significance of getting and conserving a job, so it’s price asking whether or not policymakers are additionally making it simpler for folks to entry contraception and abortion providers and to have an revenue after they have youngsters,” stated Paul Bruno, an schooling coverage professor. “If not, I’m undecided that having lessons about these issues quantities to way 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 very talked-about throughout political and demographic strains. In accordance to a 2021 American Enterprise Institute survey, 77 p.c of Individuals help instructing the idea, together with 85 p.c of Republicans, 72 p.c of Democrats, and 78 p.c of independents. Assist spans racial teams as properly, with 68 p.c of Black respondents, 80 p.c of white respondents, and 74 p.c of Hispanic respondents favoring its inclusion at school curricula.
“Instructing the success sequence has overwhelming help on the left and proper, with larger, and extra intense help amongst conservatives, so it’s not shocking that crimson states are main on these payments,” Nat Malkus, the deputy director of schooling coverage at AEI, instructed Vox. “The broad help amongst liberals is there, however the minority of liberal opponents could be extra vocal of their opposition, so the identical payments might be extra bother than blue state legislators are keen to bear.”
Bruno cautioned that polling help for academic ideas usually proves fragile upon implementation, pointing to the Frequent Core requirements for instance. “It’s very simple to seek out political help for proposals for colleges to show youngsters stuff that sounds good,” he stated. “As a result of the proposals sound good and are fairly obscure concerning the particulars and don’t ask anyone to make any laborious selections, this usually means the true help is just not that sturdy.”
Matt Bruenig of the left-wing Individuals’s Coverage Challenge assume tank has been stating 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 all the time been a approach to undermine efforts to enhance the welfare state,” he instructed Vox. “That’s why the proper 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 affords lawmakers a palatable approach to body poverty as a matter of private failure slightly than systemic design.
Instructing private duty whereas ignoring structural limitations
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 limitations 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 youngster care and housing — in the end failed.
In an interview with Vox, Behn pointed to her personal expertise: “I make $26,000 a yr as a Tennessee legislator. I’ve scholar debt from graduate faculty, I hire, and I symbolize a big swath of millennials who’ve determined to forego youngsters due to the adverse financial influence. My modification would have made the curriculum deal with the truth going through many younger folks. With out it, we threat instructing younger folks a story that blames them for systemic failures.”
She continued: “We’ve got foster youngsters sleeping on the flooring of our [child services] workplaces. We’ve got homosexual youngsters sleeping of their vehicles due to the insurance policies forcing colleges to out them to their dad and mom. No younger individual working three jobs can afford the down cost on a home in Nashville, the place I symbolize. The Tennessee legislature has completed nothing to deal with the affordability of residing, and but anticipate us to purchase right into a false narrative that for those who observe one individualized path, you may claw your manner out of systemic poverty. Give me a break.”
Rep. Bulso, who sponsored the invoice in Tennessee, stated 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 stated, “the very last thing we need to do” is current details to college students that would “trigger emotional misery,” however he believes the success sequence in the end presents a “very compelling and uplifting message.”
Schooling 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 latest many years, for instance, not primarily due to abstinence schooling, however as a consequence 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, slightly than browbeat college students,” stated Malkus, of AEI. “However I’m assured educators can handle this, significantly given the way more charged subjects ‘household life’ academics need to routinely cowl.”
Malkus believes academics 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 academics have the frequent sense to do that properly, and I feel relating to their native colleges, most Individuals do too.”
However Bruno, the professor, worries about alternative prices. “Instructing the success sequence most likely received’t have a lot influence for anyone, however will take up time and vitality that might be used to show youngsters expertise that may really assist them get jobs or to arrange social security nets that ensure that they don’t fall into poverty in the event that they get hit with unhealthy luck,” he stated. “These prices are going to be particularly necessary for teenagers from lower-income households.”
Some critics supply various frameworks for addressing poverty in academic settings. Bruenig suggests college students may “study international locations which have low ranges of poverty and inequality” and research “notable successes in poverty discount in America, comparable to the large drop in aged poverty following Social Safety growth and the halving of kid poverty that occurred in 2021 following a rise in youngster advantages.”
Bulso, in the meantime, is optimistic. “I’d hope that 100% of scholars in center and highschool will probably be uncovered to details that really present them that in the event that they observe 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 likelihood is higher than in another circumstances,” he stated. “Crucial milestone is ending highschool.”
