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When adolescents are baptized at the church where I worship, the recognized ritual is for the pastor to bellow out for all the congregation to hear and for the teenager to repeat: College. Job. Marriage. Family. In that order.
The words conflate virtue with escaping poverty and are known as the success sequence. In principle, the success sequence is anchored in math. A full-time job will ensure a family can be sustained before children are born. That keeps the government at a distance. However, Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond points to the flaws in the formula. For one, it blames the poor for their own poverty and what they cannot control: changes in economic trends.
In his book Poverty, by America, Desmond illustrates that income volatility, referring to the fluctuation of paychecks over short periods, has doubled since 1970, meaning that even a full-time job is not necessarily an antidote to poverty.
Poverty is beset with issues more complex than if you work full-...
