Comments for Three simple rules for getting out of poverty - but how easy are they?

Three simple rules for getting out of poverty - but how easy are they?

2009-11-09T17:56:53Z

Photo by PSD

We're a nation of bootstraps. Pull hard enough and you can pull yourself from rags to riches.

Or so we like to think. New research suggests we're not as strapping as we might think when it comes to economic mobility.

New research from the Brookings Institution shows that economic mobility - the chance a child born into a poor family has to escape poverty - isn't as robust as we might think.

If you're born into a middle-class family, there's a 76 percent chance you'll end up middle class or even wealthier. Born into a poor family? Only a 35 percent chance.

But Brookings has a solution. Three simple rules to end up middle class, no matter how low you started out. What are they?

Comment from Joe the Cop on 2009-11-09

2009-11-09T19:42:04Z

"Poverty is about personal responsibility, but we can help people make the right choices if we eliminate the larger structural barriers to it." Or if not eliminate, at least lessen. Excellent point Megan.

Comment from Megan Cottrell on 2009-11-09

2009-11-09T19:54:34Z

You're right, Joe. Eliminate is too strong of a word. Lessen is probably better, although we can always hope. Thanks for reading.

Comment from Message from Montie on 2009-11-10

2009-11-10T06:08:21Z

I don't know about that "poverty is about personal responsibility" line simply because if a child grows up in a home with one parent absent, the other parent never graduated, and not too many people who can either encourage him to go to school or help him with homework, he's going to grow restless. That's another reason people drop out, and it's one I see more often than not instead of lead poisoning. I went to an older school. Lead poisoning didn't stop me from leaving. My parents, both college graduates did. My father who trucked me along to libraries did. But I have relatives who I hung out with all the time who did not graduate. I have friends who went to the same school as I did. And they did not graduate. And it didn't have a thing to do with lead poisoning. A child needs OTHER adults to exercise personal responsibility.