Last month, an Indiana state senator made a bold promise: Require public schools to teach the importance of getting married before having children, and nearly all students will prosper later in life.
“The chance of them being poor is almost zero,” Sen. Spencer Deery, a Republican, told legislators.
“I think from an anti-poverty standpoint,” he added, his voice rising with excitement, “this might be the single most important thing we could be teaching.”
The concept Deery was referring to is known as the “success sequence,” a three-step formula touted by conservatives for boosting young people’s chances of financial stability: First, obtain a high school diploma or higher; then, find a full-time job; finally, get married before having children.
Research from the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies says that by completing these milestones in the prescribed order, 97% of millennials have avoided being poor by the time they reach their early 30s. Have a child before marriage, the researchers warn, and chances of ending up in a lower income bracket grow significantly.
“Some of the things that we throw at trying to fix poverty are well-intended, but not always effective,” Deery, a co-author of Indiana’s success sequence bill, said in a phone interview. “I think this is worth a try. It really costs us very little, if anything at all.”
But not everyone shares excitement over the success sequence — which may come across as innocuous advice, but detractors say is built upon dubious data, overlooks racial disparities and shames students who are raised in single-parent households.
Skeptics such as Matt Bruenig, founder of the left-wing People’s Policy Project think tank, also argue that the success sequence puts the blame for poverty on individuals rather than forcing the government to examine systemic solutions, such as broadening public benefits.
“If you’re conservative, you don’t want to see these benefits expanded,” he said. “So you need some other narrative, and the other narrative is, ‘The only reason we have poverty is because people won’t follow these simple steps.’”
After appearing nearly two decades ago in a report for the nonprofit National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, the success sequence gained traction in 2009 after it was promoted by the centrist think tank the Brookings Institution. In recent years, the success sequence has enjoyed a wave of interest thanks to model legislation from the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind the Republican policy road map Project 2025.
In Utah, where state law already requires that sex education in public schools stress abstinence, lawmakers passed a resolution in 2024 to encourage schools to incorporate the success sequence into their curricula. In Alabama and Tennessee, lawmakers passed success sequence laws in 2025 that will require educators to incorporate it into their lessons starting in the 2026-27 school year. Other states, including Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi and Texas, have introduced similar bills.
Indiana’s success sequence proposal, Senate Bill 88, passed the state Senate last week 39-9, with all nine “no” votes from Democrats. It is expected to go before the state House as soon as next week.
Republican state Sen. Gary Byrne, who proposed the bill, told NBC News that the success sequence is common sense.
“It’s just something simple that you want to put in the back of the children’s minds,” Byrne said. “Wait till you have that full-time job and get married — that way, you’re working as a family unit. And instead of just being a single mom or single dad, the team is going to be far more able to be successful.”
State Sen. Shelli Yoder, one of the bill’s Democratic opponents, called it inappropriate for a public school education.
She worried that it would make students born out of wedlock or who only have one parent feel like they were inherently bad — especially because the bill would add the success sequence to Indiana’s “good citizenship” instruction. That curriculum encourages public school children to embrace 13 principles, including being honest, respecting authority and resolving conflicts without violence.
“The student sitting there is going, ‘Huh, my parents aren’t good citizens.’ Questioning good citizenship because I was a surprise, or my mom got pregnant and had me before getting married or never got married,” Yoder said.
Jonathan Butcher, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said teachers are experienced in addressing sensitive topics and know how to teach information in an age-appropriate way.
“Presenting these as a fact should not be done as an insult to anyone,” he said. “It can be done successfully. This is important information that we shouldn’t withhold from young people.”
Research tracking the true success of the success sequence has been mixed. A 2021 study funded by the Department of Health and Human Services found that young adults who graduate from high school, have full-time work and get married are less likely to be impoverished — but achieving those life milestones, regardless of order, was what was associated with this economic outcome.
And a 2015 study from the Brookings Institution found that Black adults who follow the three steps in order are “significantly” less likely to reach the middle class than white Americans who do the same.
Brad Wilcox, a co-author of the 2017 study and a 2022 success sequence study, conceded the Brookings Institution’s finding. But, he added, “there’s no question that African Americans who have gotten at least a high school degree, are working full-time and are married are doing markedly better than their peers who haven’t followed or aren’t following those three steps.”
Despite the concerns raised by some of his colleagues, Byrne, the Indiana senator, sees the framework as a simple solution to a complex problem.
“This just gives those kids a tool,” he said. “Here’s the way out of that poverty.”
