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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

#91

Post by saint_fiasco »

MechEStudent wrote: post #30

Welfare is engineered to fail, and it fails. You can't build a system by American political committee and expect it to actually work. There are known good solutions for poverty that work reliably and consistently well. That isn't what the US welfare system is engineered for. It is engineered to put money in the hands of political donors, not resolve poverty. The solution to resolving poverty, much like the Buffet rul…

> Buffet says a law that says no standing politician is eligible for re-election in a year when minimum true GDP year-over-year growth for the last 2 years has been below 3% would work. He is right.

There is no way Buffet isn't aware of Goodhart's Law. He is smart. Are you sure you didn't misunderstand him somehow?

Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA

#92

Post by ythn »

valar_m wrote: post #77
btilly wrote: post #4

I 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 t…

>I think that the problem is simple. No. Poverty is an extraordinarily complex problem. Its root cause isn't even fully agreed upon by those who have studied it. The example in your link is not even remotely comparable or analogous.

Everyone who thinks a long-term unsolved problem is simple:

https://xkcd.com/1831/

...except in this case, poverty has been around for 1000s of years unsolved.

Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA

#93

Post by btilly »

valar_m wrote: post #77
btilly wrote: post #4

I 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 t…

>I think that the problem is simple. No. Poverty is an extraordinarily complex problem. Its root cause isn't even fully agreed upon by those who have studied it. The example in your link is not even remotely comparable or analogous.

"The problem" I am discussing was the problem causing this program to not work as desired.

The problems that lead to poverty are another story. They are indeed complex. And any discussion of it is made harder by the fact that people superimpose their morality+politics on top of the discussion.

I don't even want to begin to tackle that...

Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA

#94

Post by r00fus »

setgree wrote: post #68
charlesdm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 48 percent of which was paid directly to families as cash rewards. So where did the other 52% go to? Working costs of the program?

compliance and monitoring, most likely. The cash was conditioned on various attendance metrics, and the data collection process with such things is never as smooth as you'd like (I did a stint at a non-profit that ran experiments like this on behalf of economists).

I wonder if it'd be more successful if that overhead were dropped to say 10-20% (via automation and simplification of qualifications)

Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA

#95

Post by saint_fiasco »

jellicle wrote: post #29

So if you actually read what the program is here: Provide families with a average of $179/month if and only if they jump through a whole bunch of hoops, from doctor visits (which they have to pay for) to school attendance to working more hours (each of which must be documented by the program participants), and then although the program did reduce poverty (give people money, they're less poor), it didn't make them int…

The doctor visits were probably necessary to measure the health outcomes. In a real-life version of the program, maybe they wouldn't be necessary.

It's still silly that the participants had to pay for them in the study.

Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA

#96

Post by btilly »

_rpd wrote: post #58
btilly wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of brain psychology, short-term needs to be seconds to minutes. For example try to train a dog with rewards that come an hour later. It won't work. In the example that I gave, you brush your teeth, your mouth feels better right away. That works. By contrast if you start working on your project now, next week you won't have a miserable all-nighter. That doesn't work. Just ask anyone in college if you do…

Gamify anti-poverty programs? I wonder though, isn't forgoing small short-term rewards for greater long-term rewards a key aspect of escaping poverty? How can you condition that behavior with short-term rewards?

That's a good question, and I don't have a good answer.

But well-off people that I know manage to forgo short-term rewards by having an internal counteracting short-term reward in line with the desired long-term reward. Maybe this is a teachable skill..?

Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA

#97

Post by learc83 »

SilasX wrote: post #75
bryanlarsen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being poor is buying a 2 pack of toilet paper for $2 rather than an 8 pack for $4 because even though the 8 pack is a much better deal, the extra $2 will buy the loaf of bread you also need.

The problem with that theory is that it implies that you could have a self-funding charity that just makes loans that enable such long-term purchases: "Hey, don't buy the two pack. We'll buy you the 8 pack if you pay us $1/month for the next 5 months." Client saves $3. Charity gets >50% annualized ROR. Perpetual virtuous cycle that ends all poverty. Why do you think no one's been able to pull off such a charity? Prob…

>Why do you think no one's been able to pull off such a charity?

It turns out there are numerous charities designed to provide liquidity to poor people through microloans. Many of them are very effective.

Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA

#98

Post by kevmo »

setgree wrote: post #65
aantix wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that striking too. In this program they were provided "$13,459 per family, 48 percent of which was paid directly to families as cash rewards". While I'm sure it was nice to receive a _little_ extra money, that certainly isn't going to be life changing. It's more of a tease than anything.

Going with the previous calculation of $180/month ($2160/year), that's about a 9% annual increase for a family of 4 at the poverty line (I'm seeing stats of ~24/year). One of the main ways in which redistribution programs are justified is by pointing out that a marginal dollar goes further for a poor person than a rich one. So I would hardly call this a "little" money, relative to baseline. Having said that, one of t…

$2k/year isn't going to change anyone's life in America very much.

9% of a tiny amount is also a tiny amount.

Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA

#99

Post by Zungaron »

neveroffensive wrote: post #76
djtriptych wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a huge statement. The counterargument, that most poor people are there because they consciously and continuously choose to be poor is ridiculous on its face.

No, it's a massive statement, and I think you're being intellectually dishonest to assert it's not. The counterargument is also a huge statement, none of us are saying it's not. The only reason the counterargument is slightly more palatable is because it conforms to Occam's Razor. > because they consciously and continuously choose to be poor is ridiculous on its face This is a blatant straw man. We are saying they do…

You can make bad choices and still end up rich. That's the entire premise behind the lottery.

You can also make good choices and end up poor. A great example of this is anyone who got a law degree before the recession.

Re: Disappointing Findings on Anti-Poverty Cash Transfers in the USA

#100

Post by pavel_lishin »

jmull wrote: post #52
jf wrote: post #2

A 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 $4…

I think this is OK. As a test. A larger amount makes more sense in terms of being surer to have an impact. But it would make a widespread program based on those amounts so expensive that there’s probably no point in answering the question. Suppose it was found that giving poor families $20K annually did make a substantial difference? It probably wouldn’t matter because a large scale program based on that amount would…

If we're never going to fund an amount that would make a difference, why bother doing small scale tests?
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