Poor New Yorkers getting paid for good behavior

The city's experimental anti-poverty program that pays poor New Yorkers for good behavior like seeing the doctor and attending parent-teacher conferences handed out an average of $3,000 per family in its first year.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration said it is too early to know whether it is a useful tool to fight poverty. Officials say it will take five years for a full evaluation of the program, which is the first of its kind in the nation.

But a report released Tuesday by the mayor's Center for Economic Opportunity did contain some preliminary data. It said 80 percent of the 2,400 participating families are described as "fully engaged" in the program, while 16 percent are "less engaged" and four percent have not completed any of the activities.

The program pays poor families rewards, known as conditional cash transfers, for completing tasks like seeing a doctor ($200), attending parent-teacher conferences ($25) or getting health insurance ($40).

The concept was modeled after similar efforts in other countries, including Mexico, Turkey and Brazil.

"We're trying conditional cash transfers in a very different setting, to find out if they work in urban America," Bloomberg said. "Will they succeed? We'll find out -- that will take time. Has it been controversial? Sure, but so is every policy that breaks new ground."

In New York City, the experiment is privately funded; the city handed out a total of $6.6 million in the program's first year, from September 2007 to August 2008. A control group of 2,400 families are also being monitored for five years but are not receiving payments.

[T]he participating families in New York have household incomes at or below 130 percent of the federal poverty level; in 2007, when families began receiving rewards, that was equal to $22,301 for a family of three.

As long as this is privately funded,,I have no complaint, but in reality is the charity receiving money from the Govt to perform charity?

Don't know. The article only said private money was being used for the program. For all I know, Mayor Bloomberg may be fronting his personal money for the program. Seven million would be pocket change for him.

The demographics are killing us. More kids born to single parents..fewer parents with education and skills raising kids. More people with the knowledge and motivation to get money for nothing.

Same problem in the US. We have no more than 10 years to do something substantive about it.

The only cure may be a generation of real poverty...a real depression. Looks like that is coming again in the UK.

If we're lucky.

I am working with a committee to look at jail recidivism in our county. In a poll taken over a 24 hour period of time, 98 prisoners represented more than 500 past stints in jail. Many were substance abusers and almost all had histories of relatives who also served time in jail or prison.

Many of these are also in the same families that social service and welfare serves. A large number when tested, have a functional equivalent of a fifth grade education, even though they may have graduated from high school.

Increasingly, our county money is going to provide legally required mental health treatment in the jail.

How is government going to turn this around? How is government and the community going to keep another generation from following this path? We have learned from the past that ignoring the problem only makes it grow in size and severity. The resources these families take to deal with bad behaviors and the violence that slops over into criminal activity has become a serious problem impacting our ability to serve the general public with services such as libraries.

We are trying to cobble together an in-jail individual needs assessment and school to provide classes in parenting, anger management, managing money, life skills etc. (These will be through mini contracts with non-profits or local schools that already do this.) Then have each inmate have a plan to continue with non-profit or faith based programs in literacy, GED or college tech., sober living, etc. upon release. We will also have former inmates who have successfully re-entered act as mentors.

We will track to see if this intervention has an impact. The punative approach is not working. We have a six month waiting list to get into our jail to serve sentences and a lot of early releases. We also have a violence level for cases such as assault, which are greater than L.A. (We are a small rural county.)

yeah my helping hand is one that says get a job you slob and no more free food and housing, that is incentive for most people to work, when they have an empty feeling in their stomach, they will work. the old and disabled eccepted.

maybe all welfare should be like this. privately funded, and dependant on behavoir.

That's fine in a environment where a person at least spent formative years exposed to principles of responsible living.

In can also work well in an environment where such behavior is the exception rather than the norm.

For those who didn't grow up with such examples or, who are in environments surrounded by lousy examples, the bootstraps approach doesn't work well as such have paths of crime and delinquency that seem far easier and more natural to them.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.