The problem with your logic is that you forget one other ingredient for success or for getting out of poverty. That ingredient is circumstance.

Say your down south in a poor community. You never had an education because you had to help the family scrounge out a living just to survive. Now you never had time to go and get a better job because you didn't have any training. You have kids and now they have to help you survive. Its like a never ending cycle.

So unless we can help change circumstances we can't blame someone for being poor or whatever because they lack motivation. They may have no way out. They have to choose to either continue in poverty and help out their family so they can survive or abandon their family and let them try to survive with out them.

I don't know any solution to this. And I'm sure its not a universal fix. I think the only way to help is at the local level assessing the local needs of the poor in your community.

A federal program is not the way to go. Unless maybe they maybe subsidize local groups with money to be spent the way the local groups feel is correct.