This Mathematica report is the third in a series on the success sequence conducted for the Department of Health and Human Services that investigates the factors associated with following the success sequence and economic self-sufficiency. The success sequence is discussed in the context of policy approaches for reducing poverty and improving economic opportunity for adolescents and young adults. (

Whatever we may wish, we are all born into a social position, a position deter-mined by the nature of the society within which we are born and generally by the social positions of our parents within that society -rich or poor, educated or not, professional or working class, and so on. We thus take on various roles in our birth -the child of middle-class parents, say, a sibling, a member of a large family, or a small one, a citizen, and so on. The number of roles we occupy expands as we grow up. We become a friend -or not -to the neighborhood kids, a student, perhaps an athlete, perhaps an employee as we take on odd jobs, and on and on. Eventually, some will become professionals, and it is the role morality of professionals and especially of engineers that is of concern to us here.