Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA
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Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA
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Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA
#2A Conditional Cash Transfer program called "Opportunity NYC" is mentioned in this article. Given what I read in the article, I expected the amount of money in question to be on the order of hundreds or thousands a month, but according to Wikipedia, the only gave parents "$40 to $100 a month"
The cash payments go to the family, almost
always the mother or other female head of
the household. Parents can receive from
$40 to $100 a month if they keep up with
responsibilities such as taking their children
to the doctor or keeping them in school.
Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA
#3Man, this type of program sounds patronizing. "Here, let us rich people tell you poor people what you need to do so you can be successful like me"
Making this conditional is basically saying, "You don't know what you need, and we can't trust you to do what is best for yourself"
People know what they need. If we have money to give them, just give them the money.
Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA
#4I think that the problem is simple. People respond poorly to long-term rewards. You need to set up a short-term reward payoff cycle.
https://buildingpharmabrands.com/2013/05/27/the-ad-that-crea... is inspiring that way. It shows how people who could not be motivated to solve a well-known long-term problem, tooth decay, were successfully motivated to solve a short-term problem that they previously ignored - the fact that you wake up with film over your mouth that doesn't feel very good.
Long-term problems without good short-term feedback loops rewarding the proper behavior are hard, and will probably always be hard for humans. So rather than increasing the reward for the long-term issue, we need to find good short-term reinforcements for good behavior.
(Yeah, easier said than done...)
Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA
#5Man, this type of program sounds patronizing. "Here, let us rich people tell you poor people what you need to do so you can be successful like me" Making this conditional is basically saying, "You don't know what you need, and we can't trust you to do what is best for yourself" People know what they need. If we have money to give them, just give them the money.
Huh? Let me get this straight: you expect people to accept patronage. But you then don’t want the patrons to be patronizing? How does that work?
Generally speaking, aren’t poor people poor because either they don’t know how to be not poor or can’t execute being not poor? Yes, sometimes it’s impossible to execute being rich, like if there is a systematic bias against a certain cohort. But cases like that aside, isn’t it pretty obvious that poor people either cannot or do not know how to not be poor?
Your perspective seems to suggest being poor just happens randomly to random people. But that’s not true. Being poor happens to people who fail to get and keep money from other people. Any time someone talks about patronizing poor people it’s like: yeah either we’re not going to talk about them being poor like that’s a bad thing, or we’re going to talk about it like it’s a bad thing and so maybe then we should figure out what they’re doing wrong when there are other people who are not poor.
Pretending like everyone’s economic actions are equal is insensitive to people who get and keep money and patronizing to people who don’t. Not all economic actions are equally good. Setting money on fire is not a good economic action. It is offensive to the person whose labor created that value. Yet I see poor people doing all kinds of offensive economic actions with money given to them by the state. I see people using benefits cards to buy groceries that I would never buy because they are so expensive or unnecessary. If you don’t want to be judged, don’t take money from other people, because that is literally patronage, which is patronizing.
Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA
#6Man, this type of program sounds patronizing. "Here, let us rich people tell you poor people what you need to do so you can be successful like me" Making this conditional is basically saying, "You don't know what you need, and we can't trust you to do what is best for yourself" People know what they need. If we have money to give them, just give them the money.
I need crack. Please send the requisite funds post-haste.
Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA
#7I'd say that giving money to people is good if it makes them happy at the time. If it improves outcomes even after it's taken away then that's even better, but it's not necessary for the success of the program.
Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA
#8Seems kind of intuitive that this type of program works well in countries with weaker social safety nets than countries with stronger ones. The risk-reward calculus is just very different. Not to mention that the $ amounts don't seem to have been adequately scaled to match cost of goods.
Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA
#9Man, this type of program sounds patronizing. "Here, let us rich people tell you poor people what you need to do so you can be successful like me" Making this conditional is basically saying, "You don't know what you need, and we can't trust you to do what is best for yourself" People know what they need. If we have money to give them, just give them the money.
> People know what they need.
There is another way to view this. We might think of these programs as encouraging people to do things that society needs, instead of what they need. Then the payment is there to offset the personal cost.
Note. I've thought about this for all of 10 seconds. I might be 'way off.
Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA
#10Man, this type of program sounds patronizing. "Here, let us rich people tell you poor people what you need to do so you can be successful like me" Making this conditional is basically saying, "You don't know what you need, and we can't trust you to do what is best for yourself" People know what they need. If we have money to give them, just give them the money.
I think the insulting part is the subtle insinuation that the money is more likely to be used to buy drugs/alcohol than for the purpose of feeding the recipient or otherwise helping them out of poverty.
Even if 50% of recipients go buy drugs with the money, does it really matter? It probably costs more to enforce these conditions than the percent of funding that would go to drugs. It also creates bureaucratic overhead at the point of distribution.
Further, it’s unlikely enforcing criteria even filters out more drug users than non-restricted payouts do. These criteria are unlikey to be mutually exclusive with drug use. Someone can take drugs and also check all the boxes to meet the “criteria.” Given this consideration, it is clear that attaching conditions to a payout contributes little to no marginal gain in savings or efficency of individual outcomes.
But as other comments note, the conditions themselves are beneficial to both the recipient and those around them. If one person gets preventive healthcare who would not have otherwise, isn’t that a good outcome? Is it a better outcome than if one drug user does not seek or get access to disbursements?
Perhaps a better solution would create tiered payouts that get higher the more conditions you meet. The lowest payout would have no strings attached, but higher payouts would be available to those who fulfill certain criteria.