Profitable Parenthood?

Have you heard about this? There’s a new program starting up in New York City that will pay parents for … well … parenting.

Targeting poor families, the program offers cash rewards for fulfilling parental responsibilities. Taking your kid to the dentist earns you 100 bucks; getting them a library card is worth 50 bucks; attending a parent-teacher conference puts 25 bucks in your pocket.

The pilot program is privately funded and is looking to enroll about 13,000 low income families. It is based on anti-poverty experiments that have been conducted in developing countries using a concept called “Conditional Cash Transfers” – the conditions usually tied to behaviors intended to reduce poverty. In the New York experiment, it is strongly focused on educational goals for children, paying parents for responsible behaviors that foster a child’s education.

I’m not 100% certain what I think of this program yet. Certainly, if the funds are private dollars, experiment away, I guess. Of course, the likelihood that this will evolve to a publicly funded program encourages me to look at it a bit more closely. And, when I do, a few warning flags go up.

No doubt the intention is good, but regular readers of this blog are aware that my advocacy for or against things is based not only on intention, but also on consequences – particularly unintended consequences. I think this project is fertile ground for the unintended.

In my Online Library is an article called Carrot Pro’s and Con’s. You can begin there to see some of my concerns with incentives in general. But beyond the pitfalls of incentives, think about the premise of this program. We are basically financially rewarding parents for neglectful parenting. We could end up seeing parents in one part of our nation criminally charged for being neglectful, while parents in New York qualify for cash transfers for the same behavior. It is even possible that being eligible for such transfers creates incentives for having children for parents who should not be having children – making the condition of children in poverty worse rather than better.

And how will this affect the dynamics between parent and child? Certainly I’d support anything that increases the likelihood that a parent will begin to take an active interest in their child’s education and provide the support, guidance, and attention necessary to encourage the child to become more engaged. But does putting a financial incentive accomplish that, or does it simply add more friction between parent and child? A parent who is being neglectful is unlikely to turn loving when cash is involved. A possibility is that the child will be seen now as a cash machine, and ‘encouragement’ from the parent will more closely resemble coercion.

A practical concern is how would such a program be monitored? 13,000 families receiving nickel and dime cash transfers for sporadic events are a logistics nightmare in terms of accountability. Unless an army of case workers is hired to monitor each family and verify the veracity of their activities, you can expect massive fraud resulting in cash transfers with no corresponding benefit to the children.

Granted, I have listed here only the possible pitfalls, but that last pitfall is a big one. I’m not sure we can even verify if the program is working. And if it doesn’t work, it won’t be a benign effort – it may actually make conditions worse.