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One could more accurately and simply say "to avoid poverty, don't be born poor."

Of course the steps Will suggests are good, but he acts like it's so easy. You tell someone who is growing up not sure where their next meal is coming from and is trying not to get shot in their neighborhood and tell them how important it is to think long-term. It's pretty easy and convenient to blame the poor for poverty. I'm glad Will can feel superior because he was born to better circumstances.

I appreciate your point but disagree that Will is blaming the poor. He's pointing out some life choices that are associated with poverty.

Some will decide to remain victims and others will decide to be victors. The road out of victimization is not easy, but the rewards of the victor are sweet.
George Will is "spot on".

Andrew,

"to avoid poverty, don't be born poor."

You obviously haven't experienced much of life sufficiently as yet to understand that just because someone is born poor, they must live their whole life in poverty, especially in this country. Sometimes, it's a matter of choice. There are many stories of people who were born dirt poor and decided that they weren't going to live their lives that way. As a matter of fact, some of the greatest success stories in American life are about those very people. You know, rags to riches; people reaching for the stars.

I don't view that George Will is blaming poor people for poverty. I think that what he was saying is that there are ways to get out of poverty if you are born there. Sometimes, you just have to make a choice to do the things you have to do and have the courage to overcome the barriers that may exist. If you chose not to do those things, then a life of poverty is probably your future.

One of George Will's best quotes probably explains his view the best "Americans are overreachers; overreaching is the most admirable of the many American excesses."

It's true that many people born poor do find ways out of poverty, but the vast majority do not. In fact, the economic conditions one is born into is a better indicator of how one ends up than Will's criteria. There will always be stories to the contrary, but economic mobility is actually extremely rare in this country. The main point of that statement though was to mock Will's simplistic assessment of a complex problem.

Well...admittedly I dunno about being really poor, but I do tend to agree that if you finish high school (the bare minimum for employment these days), and don't have a child out of wedlock (cause then you're feeding two people on one income and certainly likely limiting your career growth and other options) you prolly could escape being poor.

An Urban Institute overview of many studies on income distribution and economic mobility states:

"Given the increase in inequality in the United States in recent years, the questions of how much mobility is present and whether the degree of mobility has increased become even more important. A number of recent studies, discussed below, have examined this question. Those studies that have measured relative mobility are generally quite consistent with one another (see Table 1), finding that mobility is significant and has remained stable over time."

As it says, mobility is "significant," according to these studies, even to the point that, over time, more people move from the bottom quintile to the top quintile than stay in the bottom quintile.

This report is at http://www.urban.org/Template.cfm?Section=Home&NavMenuID=554&PublicationID=6170&Template=/TaggedContent/ViewPublication.cfm

The study does show a certain amount of mobility, but the following statement:

"As it says, mobility is "significant," according to these studies, even to the point that, over time, more people move from the bottom quintile to the top quintile than stay in the bottom quintile."

is not what it says. The chart in the appendix shows that from 1968 to 1991, only 2.7% from the bottom quintile made it to the top, while 46.7% were still in the bottom.

Again, I dunno. My black southern grandparents born in the early 1900s to former slaves and sharecroppers weren't rich or professional or educated. Still aren't (the two that are still living, that is). But they believed in working hard and sacrificing in the shortterm for the longterm. Consequently, my parents weren't born rich and did without a lot of stuff as children, things I take for granted now. But my parents learned about working hard and sacrificing in the shortterm for the longterm from their parents. So, my father worked and slept in a funeral home to pay his way through college in the 1960s. He then married my mother and helped her get her degrees. My parents aren't rich now, though pretty solidly middle class, but they taught me and my brother to work hard and sacrifice in the shortterm for the longterm. My point being, I don't believe that being born poor necessarily dooms you to a life of poverty. SOME of it is choices. Finish high school. Don't have babies you can't feed. Those are things people CAN do that would undoubtedly put them on better footing. I had friends that had babies when I was in high school. My mama did too. But just because they did it, didn't mean me or my mother had to follow suit.

Andrew wrote:
One could more accurately and simply say "to avoid poverty, don't be born poor."
Horsehockey.
To avoid poverty, you merely have to work not to be poor.
No one, and I mean NO ONE, lacks opportunity, only the motivation to get off of their dead butt and get a job.
Every entity of our government, from local to federal, has untold programs to help people go to work. Hell, they'll even come and pick you up in government vehicles just to get you to the workplace. They'll train you and place you, but first you have to GO there and make yourself available for work.
But for many it is simply much easier to continue to be government slaves, wards of the welfare system.
Travel around any city and see the "Help Wanted" signs...then drive through the projects and see the numbers of able bodied young people standing around with nothing to do. If you were able to see inside their financial portfolio, you'd find they are mostly living off of our tax dollars and whatever illegal income/merchandise/food they can finagle.
I worked in the projects for years, that's how it works.
When you take away a person's incentive to work for himself by giving him money and subsistence as a reward for NOT working, you will continue to have unemployment and poverty.
As long as Rev.'s Jackson and Sharpton and Minister Farrakhan continue to exhort their people to exploit being "victims" we will have a continuation of the cycle.
Do not delude yourself into thinking it's from lack of opportunity or jobs. It's from the lack of personal motivation our society has bred through the welfare system.

You are what you are told you are if you are told often enough and you believe it. That works both ways. If you are told you are poor and will always be poor and have that same word preached at you by teachers, leaders and parents then you are probably gonna stay poor. Others who are told, no matter the odds, you can work hard and climb to the top, nothing is impossible for you to do, usually wind up doing so. Unfortunately a large segment of the population has had this told to them for generation upon generation by leaders who wished to keep them down for economic purposes and by leaders who only seek to keep them in bondage to suit the agenda they preach and that being, "the poor suffer because they are never given a chance". When those leaders shut up and start leading and telling the people they claim to want to see rise up, that they can make it and start showing them that hard work, education, some healthy thinking, (like not getting knocked up in the 8th grade and depending on the government to do for you) then you will see a change in this country.

I see your point mrproduce but, based on your theory, those same leaders were talking to my parents, brother and me. And my uncles and aunts and cousins and friends and neighbors and sorority sisters. I guess I'm saying, there's a whole bunch of black folks doing it "right" and we heard those same "messages" you point to as the root cause of pervasive poverty and underachievement amongst black people. I don't claim to know what the cause is, but I don't think the one you cite is it or if there's even ONE thing anyone can point to as the "cause." Also, I said this in another post/blog and I'll repeat it here: Jesse and Farrakhan don't speak for me and I dunno any black people who would claim either of them spoke for them.

Poverty has both an individual component and an institutional component.

We each make choices in life which affect our economic status. Certainly, those choices include education, marriage, and the birth of children.

But we are also each affected by institutional or external forces, such as the socioeconomic class to which are born, the amount of generational wealth and resources (not just financial) that we have available to us, the area in which we live and the jobs and educational opportunities available to us, the era in which we live and the opportunities and economic conditions associated with the generation of which we're a part. Opportunities may be limited or denied based on skin color, language spoken, and cultural or religious heritage.

Poverty is not an easy equation of work + determination = success. It's much more complicated than that. The answers lie in efforts targeted toward individual effort and accountability as well as societal and structural efforts toward leveling the playing field so that all people at least have the opportunity to move ahead.

I often hear the argument that not everyone who is given an opportunity to move out of poverty would choose to do so. True, but most would, and rarely are they given a real opportunity. We use band-aids when what we need is shovels.

An eye-opening book on the subject: "The Working Poor: Invisible In America," by David Shipley.

I submit these thoughts to you respectfully. Whether you agree or disagree, I pray that you will think, and feel, and reflect. Our response to poverty and to the poor says much about who we are as individuals. We may disagree on causes or solutions, but I pray that we can be unified in caring for the "least of these."

Peace, Missy

Andrew,

We disagree. I contend that the thing that will determine how well you do in life is not the conditions that you are born into, but your desire to choose a different life and your courage to overcome the barriers. That is how those of whom I spoke did rise to riches. I would agree that it is not easy, and everyone may not be able to do it, but I would submit to you that many don't want to make the trip to success badly enough to endure the pain and hardship to make it happen.

If some can get out of poverty by following this formula, then others can as well. The conditions in which one is born do not have to be the best indicator of how high someone can fly. Unfortuately, your attitude reflects the level to which our society has fallen. We have to depend upon the government to rise above our present state. The nanny government that we now live with wants us to believe that we depend upon it for our survival. A few generations ago, the American people thought "if it's to be, it's up to me". Let's get off our duff and get going, if we want a better life. Andrew, this country was made of sterner stuff than it is today, but what did they know? they just thought that they were happy, didn't they?

I think "govtwriter" hinted at a relevant point. The cycle of going from poor to middle class doesn't necessarily occur from one generation to the next. It often requires several generations, each wealthier and better-off than the previous. A person who makes good decisions (Iike the one George Will suggests) gives himself certain advantages that he wouldn't have if he had done the opposite. Those decisions become ingrained in a family's mindset and expectations, and are often emulated and exceeded in the following generations. For example, the first person in a family who graduates from high school is often immensely proud of that accomplishment; the same goes for the first college graduate and the first who attains a graduate degree.

Thanks for the discussion.

I should clarify my post of yesterday afternoon. Two of the studies cited by the Urban Institute show more people moving from the lowest to highest income quintile over time than remaining in the lowest. Other studies don't confirm those findings. A lot depends on methodology.

I think what's most significant is the American experience of generational gains, which many of us can observe in our own families. My grandparents were immigrants and rose to lower middle class at best. My parents did better. My sister and I were the first to earn four-year college degrees. (I'm not doing better economically than my parents, but she is.) My children are better educated still (or will be) and at least one undoubtedly will be more successful financially.

The key elements in the success of many American families over time are education, homeownership and business ownership. Historically, minorities were denied equal opportunities in those areas, and discrimination persists in some ways but not to the extent that it impedes those who are strongly determined to succeed.

Efforts to increase opportunities on all fronts must continue, with government support. At the same time, people must avoid making the poor personal decisions that assuredly will cost them the chance to get ahead.

Stormy, I never said we have to depend on the government to rise above our state, but since you bring it up, of course we rely on government. It is ridiculously naive to think we don't all depend on government for survival. We depend on it for schools, for roads, for protection. The question is, do we want to continue this paranoid fantasy that government must be the enemy and use it to improve people's lives. Of course there is opportunity for people, but it is not equal opportunity. You say that if people are willing to endure the pain and hardship, they will advance. The problem is, it is a lot of pain and hardship, and not everyone can do it, and it only takes a little bad luck to prevent progress. The point is, some people will have to endure pain and hardship to have a comfortable life, while others will only have to be smart enough to not throw away too much of their parents' money. Is there something wrong with wanting to level the playing field a little?

I agree with you Govwriter. Not all listen to the so-called leaders and those move on. Unfortunately, and the point of my post is that many do listen and remain victims. As one who has worked in the field of psychology for a good many years and has seen this "theory" work in various ways related to "moving on" or being kept in "bondage" I will stand by my statements. The choice is, be a victim or be a victor, there is no middle ground.

Doug --

I must be slower than normal today, cause I keep re-reading George Will's column -- and I just don't get it. He seems to be arguing that liberals obsess about America's poor, further implying that any federal program to help the poor is doomed to failure and does nothing more than foster a "victim's mentality." Moreover, he seems to blame the poor for being poor. What am I missing here? If I'm correct, I am shocked that he would over-simplify such complex issues. A lot of these same over-simplifications appear in a lot of the blogs here. Are we just speaking in code about a racial issue? Help me understand this. thanks

Certainly Will is simplifying.

A racial thing? I assume from his formula that the three factors he mentions -- high school graduation, single parenthood and teen marriage -- are more strongly associated with poverty than is race.

Probably what Will is suggesting is that, if you have a single parent who dropped out of high school, it's much harder to lift that person out of poverty. Let's see if we can increase high school graduation rates and discourage people -- particularly young people -- from single parenthood and that will do more than anything else to end the cycle of poverty.