Avoiding poverty

Jane Galt last week:

If poor people did just four things, the poverty rate would be a fraction of what it currently is. Those four things are:

1) Finish high school

2) Get married before having children

3) Have no more than two children

4) Work full time

George Will today:

...three not-at-all recondite rules for avoiding poverty: Graduate from high school, don't have a baby until you are married, don't marry while you are a teenager. Among people who obey those rules, poverty is minimal.

Yep. If you want to read a fantastic book that addresses poverty I would highly recommend this one. I think the truth about poverty is that more than any other factors it stems from bad decisions. How you legislate that away is beyond me.

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Update: Holy hell, also check out this part of Will's column:

Because it was released during the post-Katrina debacle, scant attention was paid to the National Center for Health Statistics' report that in 2003, 34.6 percent of all American births were to unmarried women. The percentage among African American women was 68.2.

Given that most African Americans are middle class and almost half live outside central cities, anadolescent males, and that translates into chaos in neighborhoods and schools, come rain or come shine.d that 76 percent of all births to Louisiana African Americans were to unmarried women, it is a safe surmise that more than 80 percent of African American births in inner-city New Orleans -- as in some other inner cities -- were to women without husbands.

Talk about bad decisions...