Quote Originally Posted by MikeyinBrooklyn View Post
Anyone who graduates high school, doesn't become a parent before age 20 [[and is married when they do), and avoids drugs and alcohol has statistically almost no chance of spending much time, let alone a lifetime, in poverty.
First of all, that statistic is from a 2009 Brookings Institution study that doesn't say quite that. It says that they have a small chance of ending up in poverty, but not that they will only be in poverty for a short time.

But more importantly, this tells us less than you appear to think it does. In particular, poor men have a hard time finding women to marry, and because of the shortage of eligible poor men, so do poor women. So by looking at how married people do, you are already excluding the poor people with the worst prospects.

Anyone who says that the poor have no ability to improve their lives is wrong, at least in general. But anybody who thinks there is a three-step process to get out of poverty is also wrong. We know that moving up the economic ladder in the US is difficult. Not impossible. In the Detroit area [[not Detroit proper), according to the national study out last week by Raj Chetty et al, there is about a 5% chance that a child born into a household in lowest 20% of the population will reach the highest 20% [[by income). That is a lot more than zero, but a lot less than it should be. Incidentally, in New York City, it is over 10%, fortunately for your successful immigrant friend.