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Perry then drills down into the data and looks at household income and household demographics to see how they correlate.

His conclusions: “Specifically, highincome U.S. households have more income-earners on average than lowerincome households, and individuals in high-income households are far more likely on average than individuals in low-income households to be welleducated, married, working full-time, and in their prime earning years. In contrast, individuals in lower-income U.S. households are far more likely than Americans in higher-income households to be less-educated, working part-time, either very young (under 35 years) or very old (over 65 years), and living in singleparent or single-member households.”

We get a much different picture here than the message that politically correct woke culture, which has attained such influence over recent years, has transmitted.

Any individual’s fate in America is very much in their own hands and the result of how much personal responsibility they want to take in their own life.

Major factors that correlate with earning power — education, work, family — start with personal decisions and personal responsibility.

Readers might recall the incident I reported last year when my organization, CURE, posted billboards in various low-income communities saying that if you want to get out of poverty — finish school, go to work and get married. Black Lives Matter protested and got the billboard company to remove our message.

That’s not to say that there is not public policy work that needs to be done. But it’s not what we hear from the left. The work to relieve poverty and improve upward mobility is work that removes obstacles for individuals to take personal responsibility for their lives.

Obstacles like our union-controlled, government-controlled public school systems. Parents should control their child’s education, not government and union bureaucrats.

This week, my organization, CURE, is releasing its first State of Black America report, published in partnership with the Claremont Institute.

The report points to the strength of American principles and points to cultural and institutional obstacles that contribute to the perpetuation of poverty — too much government and too much politics — as factors that pull us away from those principles and truths.

The Census Bureau’s “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020” report shows that America is still working.

It can work even better if we strengthen, not weaken, as the left wants, the great principles of a free nation under God that defined our founding.

Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and host of the weekly television show “Cure America with Star Parker.” To find out more about Star Parker and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www. creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2021 CREATORS. COM