Message to Clark County students: You can do this

With hundreds of thousands of Clark County children returning to school this week, it's an appropriate time for both parents and students to ask: What does it take to succeed?

It's a daunting question, and there are all sorts of reasonable answers. But let's boil it down to a common standard of success in America: attaining a middle-class standard of living. What does it take to achieve that?

The answers might come as a surprise, not because they represent extraordinary challenges, but rather because they're simple and rooted in good decision-making. And even for students who are stuck in poverty or in poor-performing schools or who come from broken homes, that standard of success is entirely attainable.

For those Clark County students grinding their way through high school, know that you are on the right path right now. Here's what you need to do over the next few years of your life:

First, get your high school diploma. Second, gain full-time employment. (Of course, for many high school graduates, that comes after obtaining at least some post-secondary education.) And third, wait until at least age 21 before getting married, and get married before you have a child.

That's it. Many of you might say, "It can't possibly be that simple." To which Brookings Institution senior fellows Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill would reply, "Yes, it is."

Over several years, the two have done a great deal of work in this area to reach the aforementioned steps, which they deem the three elementary rules for success. The results are astounding, to say the least, as Haskins noted in 2012 testimony to Congress for Brookings.

"[We] have spent years emphasizing the importance of individual responsibility in reducing poverty and increasing opportunity. One of our arguments, based in part on a Brookings analysis of Census Bureau data, is that young people can virtually assure that they and their families will avoid poverty if they follow three elementary rules for success. …

"Based on an analysis of Census data, people who followed all three of these rules had only a 2 percent chance of being in poverty and a 72 percent chance of joining the middle class (defined as earning more than $55,000 in 2010). These numbers were almost precisely reversed for people who violated all three rules, elevating their chance of being poor to 77 percent and reducing their chance of making the middle class to 4 percent."

In other words, it's going to take what it's always taken in this country: working hard, making smart choices and having a strong sense of personal accountability. But these are not insurmountable obstacles. You don't have to get into MIT. In fact, you don't even necessarily have to go to college, though again, some post-secondary training certainly helps.

And here's the real beauty of adhering to these three modest rules: there's a trickle-down effect on future generations. If you can get your diploma, gain full-time work and put off getting married and having children, there's an excellent chance that the stability you provide your children will lead them down the same successful path you took. Your kids will probably even surpass what you did, which is what any good parent would want, right?

The War on Poverty's own woeful statistics back up the value of a stable, two-parent home. When President Lyndon Johnson launched the so-called war more than 50 years ago — with poverty already in rapid decline — 93 percent of children in the United States were born to married parents. Now, just 60 percent of children are born to married parents, and the poverty level has been relatively static for decades, with today's number — 14.5 percent — mirroring 1967 levels. Imagine what that number would be if 93 percent of today's children were born to married parents.

These three rules are by no means an absolute. Indeed, 23 percent of people who violate all three don't end up poor. But if your goal is to succeed, these rules — if not the finish line — are at least a very good starting point.

Patrick Everson (peverson@reviewjournal.com) is an editorial writer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Follow him on Twitter: @PatrickCEverson