The Success Sequence and Happiness

 There is an interesting series of posts by Bryan Caplan here about how the success sequence helps avoid poverty. This sequence is

1. Finish high school.

2. Get a full-time job once you finish school.

3. Get married before you have children.

Helps you avoid poverty. "97% of Millennials who follow what has been called the “success sequence”—that is, who get at least a high school degree, work, and then marry before having any children, in that order—are not poor by the time they reach their prime young adult years (ages 28-34)."

The posts argue if the sequence is cause or effect, really something that can be advised and other things. 
But what struck me about it was how these three also correlate with happiness. Telling people how to avoid poverty might seem like a conspiracy by the Capitialist Man. Telling people how to get happy seems less sinister. Though of course there are all sorts of cause and effect stuff here. And poverty and happiness are really closely related so it could be that it is just the same thing being measured and the only difference is the framing.

Would these three mean you were happier even apart from the poverty effect?

Full time job: "Many studies have tried to quantify the adverse effect of unemployment on well-being using survey data on life satisfaction. For example, the raw difference in average life satisfaction between unemployed and employed workers aged 20–60 years in the German Socio-Economic Panel for 1984–2011 amounts to 1.3 points on a 0–10 scale." 

Finish high school: People who finish secondary education are happier.

Too Educated to be Happy? An investigation into the relationship between education and subjective well-being by Erich Striessnig this paper goes into how married people are happier as well.

Get married before you have children:
'The difference in quality of life between the lowest and highest education group is as big as the difference between someone being married compared to being single.' from the paper above. 
A longitudinal observational study conducted in Germany between the years of 1984 and 2000 showed more conclusive results, where people who married eventually were generally happier and more satisfied than people who remained single.

The success sequence seems a pretty good way to be happy.