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March 30, 2007 -- Some of the city's poorest families will soon have a powerful incentive to do the right thing - cold, hard cash as a reward for taking their kids to school, securing medical insurance and landing jobs.
Mayor Bloomberg announced yesterday that he has raised $42 million of the $50 million needed to launch a daring social-engineering experiment - the first of its kind in the United States - that would provide up to $5,000 a year to 2,500 poor families in six neighborhoods that engage in behavior aimed at breaking the cycle of poverty.
Students who get high grades on major exams could earn $200 to $300 a pop for their struggling households. Similar payoffs would be available for 20 to 25 other activities deemed beneficial to society and the family.
"It is paying people to do something that we think is in society's interests and in their children's interests," Bloomberg said at a family health center in Brooklyn.
Each would have to have a child in grades 4, 7 or 9. The families couldn't earn more than 130 percent of the poverty level, or about $20,000 a year for a single parent and two kids.
Starting in September, each family would be eligible to collect $25 to $300 every two months for meeting selected targets. Some would be as simple as keeping a dental appointment.
Other countries showed marked improvements. Gibbs said school attendance jumped from 75 to 93 percent in Nicaragua when parents were paid to send their kids to class.
Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, said Mexico spends $3.2 billion a year on conditional cash transfers and has enrolled 24 percent of its population in the program.
When he first disclosed the plan last year, Bloomberg said it made sense to use private funds at first and government funds afterward with a larger population if it succeeds.
But the mayor was more circumspect yesterday when asked if taxpayers would be willing to foot such a bill for the one in five New Yorkers living in poverty.
"If it doesn't work, we will stop it," Bloomberg said. "If it does work, then we will have to decide as a society whether we want to do that."
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