Healthy, wealthy, and wise

An interesting juxtaposition over the past couple of days of old heuristic decision making processes. Healthy Lifestyles On Decline in United States from FuturePundit identifies five simple behaviors for good health (physical activity, eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables, maintaining a healthy weight, moderate alcohol use and not smoking) but observes that only 8% of the population follows those basic guidelines.

Family Matters by Ron Haskins points out that you only have a 2% chance of being poor if you simply 1) graduate from highschool, 2) get married and stay married, and 3) get a job, any job. Other figures I have seen put it at less than 1%. I can't find a figure that provides the percentage of the population that meets all three criteria, but estimating from percentages, I am guessing that only about 25% of the population have graduated highschool and are married without divorce and have been continuously employed. It might be closer to 10%.

Then of course there is Through the Magic Door's research on reading which indicates that if you simply talk a lot to your child, read to them, have plenty of books available, let them choose what to read, and and be seen reading yourself, then they have a 70% chance or better of being among the 10% of the population that are habitual and enthusiastic readers. Less than 5% of the population routinely do most of these things.

So supposedly, early to bed and early to rise, makes you healthy, wealthy and wise.

More reliably you can:

Undertake physical activity
Eat a diet high in fruits and vegetables
Maintain a healthy weight
Moderate alcohol use
Not smoke
Graduate from highschool
Get married and stay married
Get a job, any job
Talk a lot to your child
Read to them
Have plenty of books available
Let them choose what to read
And be seen reading yourself

Do these thirteen seemingly innocuous and simple things and you are almost guaranteed to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.