Utah, which spends less than any other state on education per-pupil, may have the highest rate of upward mobility in the United States. Investigating why this might be so, Megan McArdle notes the important effects of stable family life, limited but well-executed government social programs, and the activities of the Mormon church and its “unrivaled system of highly organized community volunteer work,” which fills many of the roles that elsewhere belong to the welfare state:
Utah [has] an immense parallel structure that can be counted on to bolster anything the government does on poverty. Its front door is Welfare Square [in Salt Lake City]. The complex itself, incorporating public spaces where help is offered, and private spaces where the church manufactures many of the goods it gives away, is built of modest materials and is kept scrupulously clean. And it is vast. . . . The food pantry itself looks like a well-run grocery store, except that it runs not on money, but on “Bishop’s Orders” spelling out an individualized list of food items authorized by the bishop handling each case. . . .
The volunteering starts in the church wards, where bishops keep a close eye on what’s going on in the congregation, and tap members as needed to help each other. If you’re out of work, they may reach out to small-business people to find out who’s hiring. If your marriage is in trouble, they’ll find a couple who went through a hard time themselves to offer advice. . . .
But the church is quite clear that the help [it provides] is a temporary waypoint on the road to self-sufficiency, not a way of life. People are asked to work in exchange for the help they get. . . . It’s a utilitarian stopgap, not a substitute for an income, and not meant to be; the help comes with a healthy push to get yourself back on your feet as quickly as possible. The two phrases I heard over and over were “individual” and “self-reliant.” . . .
The Mormon church [also] forbids drinking, and alcohol sales are far lower here than in other states. The incidence of problems associated with alcohol — like poverty, unemployment and crime — is also lower than in most other states. [Similarly], the Mormon Church strongly encourages marriage, and the state is number-one in both married adults and in the percentage of children being raised by married parents. . . . By encouraging members to marry, the Mormon Church is encouraging them to reduce their own likelihood of ending up poor. But it may also be creating spillover effects even for non-Mormons, because [economists] didn’t just find that married parents helped their own children to rise; they also influenced the lives of the children around them.
Read more on Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-28/how-utah-keeps-the-american-dream-alive