Conditional Cash Transfer = Welfare that works

Conditional Cash Transfer is a proven global success when it comes to the alleviation of poverty. With this kind of welfare, you get paid according to conduct. You get paid for what you really need for your survival and dignity (food, shelter, clothing), not for what you don't need. It`s similar to raising children by award-and-punishment.

Few development initiatives have been evaluated as rigorously as CCT programs.[22] The implementation of conditional cash transfer programs has been accompanied by systematic efforts to measure their effectiveness and understand their broader impact on households’ behavior,[23]...

Evaluation results are available for PROGRESA in Mexico,[24] PETI in Brazil and the Atencion a Crisis in Nicaragua.[25]...

CCTs have affected not only the overall level of consumption, but also the composition of consumption. There is a good deal of evidence that households that receive CCTs spend more on food and, within the food basket, on higher-quality sources of nutrients than do households that do not receive the transfer but have comparable overall income or consumption levels.[26] In Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Turkey, where school enrollment rates among girls were lower than among boys, CCTs have helped reduce this gender gap.[27] CCTs have resulted in sizeable reductions in poverty among recipients—especially when the transfer has been sufficient, well targeted, and structured in a way that does not discourage recipients from taking other actions to escape poverty. Because CCTs provide a steady income, they have helped protect poor households from the worst effects of unemployment, catastrophic illness, and other sudden income shocks. And making cash transfers to women, as virtually all CCTs do, may have increased the bargaining power of women.[27]

The reason that its not widely implemented is due to political ideology...resistance from the far-left. According to them, CCT is "libertarian paternalism" that contradicts socialist dogma that poverty is primarily "structural" and owed to "bad circumstances" rather than primarily due to personal responsibility, personal choices and lifestyle (I believe its a mix of both)

Thoughts?

And if you don't like CCT...what are proven alternatives?

reply to post by Skyfloating


Seems like the ultimate behavior modification experiment. There are a lot of people who need help and assistance and I suppose while the reward part of this for good action (children's school attendance) is a worthwhile goal you've got to wonder how long it would be until someone in power decides to use it for other purposes.

Example, if the two parties in the US got a hold of this idea conservatives may end up rewarding children going to religious indoctrination while progressives may want to reward gun free homes.

Poverty is a complex issue, and anything is better than the current Hammer of social welfare we use, A scalpel is needed.


Education, Health, are key issues to lifting people out of poverty, something our current system does extremely poorly at promoting .

I am not "left" or "right", Im fiscally conservative libertarian if I had to label myself, But I believe in a social safety net as Real success and prosperity is one that allows for all to prosper, not just those at the top.

SO Im all for "welfare" Just not in its current models used in the West, and anything that looks at it different is welcomed.

Bassago
reply to post by Skyfloating

 

Seems like the ultimate behavior modification experiment. There are a lot of people who need help and assistance and I suppose while the reward part of this for good action (children's school attendance) is a worthwhile goal you've got to wonder how long it would be until someone in power decides to use it for other purposes.

Example, if the two parties in the US got a hold of this idea conservative may end up rewarding children going to religious indoctrination while progressives may want to reward gun free homes.

edit on 800pm3737pm12014 by Bassago because: (no reason given)

Well it could be argued we already have Experienced a behavior modification experiment by default.

We have allowed the poor to reap the benefits of population growth by subsidizing the expanded births.

The end result is a system that rewards "breeding" behavior, and from a strictly external view (not taking into account these are people) Have allowed the least of the capable (the poor) to be encouraged to breed at an accelerated rate.

NOT a popular view I know, but looking at it from numbers only it certainly seems to be the case.

Worth a try. Exactly the kind of real alternative to try would be instead of reacting in the ways we're reacting to a system that is clearly broken.

The other one, which I mentioned in the other thread, and which is mostly in my head maybe, is to give people a "breathing year."

A year free from the continual stresses of where they are going to sleep or what they are going to eat or what happens if they get cancer. Give them that and let them breathe for a minute and find a job or go to school or simply recover for decades of stressors. This is sort of what happened to me in an informal way when I lost my job and someone gave me this no strings attached. i was able to save and regroup, re-educate, and find a new place in the world again because I wasn't worried about all the millions of things the truly poor have to worry about daily. This kind of stress in itself is counter-productive.

In the long run, I bet you both these solutions would work better than what we have now. And whatever solutions we do try, we know some will fail.

But know that they all fail when respect is not part of the equation, as in the other thread about tattoos and manicures or the other about drug testing.

Like most legal wordings it is kind of hard to understand. I do like the part that says if you find a job, you won't be cut off right away.

I dont know how welfare works. But if somebody has been on welfare and takes a job, maybe they shouldnt be cut off right away. We should encourage that.

It mentions pay in line with conduct though... so if you are the star in a midnight fight at Mcdonalds posted on that world hip star website you get cut off? im ok with that.

reply to post by Skyfloating


Or just fix the economy so we can actually afford what we need with the money we already have. Oh, and:

Seems like the ultimate behavior modification experiment.

This. Your suggested method blurs the line between dependence and independence. More importantly, it degrades the importance of that line. We don't want to eat out of the government's hand, do we?

reply to post by benrl


I agree with your assessment that poverty is a complex social issue. As soon as the right-wingers realize some people are in poverty due to "bad circumstances" and the left-wingers admit some people are impoverished due to "poor choices" then and only then will a true solution to the problem emerge. There are few, if any, problems in this world that can honestly and legitimately be boiled down to one cause.

~Lucidity

The other one, which I mentioned in the other thread, and which is mostly in my head maybe, is to give people a "breathing year."

A year free from the continual stresses of where they are going to sleep or what they are going to eat or what happens if they get cancer. Give them that and let them breathe for a minute and find a job or go to school or simply recover for decades of stressors. This is sort of what happened to me in an informal way when I lost my job and someone gave me this no strings attached. i was able to save and regroup, re-educate, and find a new place in the world again because I wasn't worried about all the millions of things the truly poor have to worry about daily. This kind of stress in itself is counter-productive.

I agree, the System is broken, but this is not the answer.

Its akin to the Forgive debt talk, lets not forget, a series of bad choices combined WITH societal ills equal poverty, NOT JUST ONE OR THE OTHER.

Giving people "room to breath" will do nothing unless you address the core problems that got them their in the first place.

I can give you examples as well where "room to breath" was all one needed, while there are certainly Productive people who have stumbled and "room to breath" would help. The larger majority of Poverty stricken need much more than a "free pass for a year" to climb out.

We are talking about a system rotten to its core (social welfare, education, health) and unless we address all three, NOTHING changes, a year off would just be that, a year off and back to the norm.

reply to post by FatherStacks


I am a Christian first and foremost, My heart is with the poor, I fully believe it is a Societal duty to help them.

It is not a Societal duty to help them Stupidly and to the determent of all.

The Right with its PEOPLE CONTROL THEIR OWN FATE.

And the left with PEOPLE ARE VICTIMS TO THE WORLD.

Neither is correct, both are half truths, and both just another example of the Death of Compromise that is destroying this Nation.

reply to post by benrl

I get what you're saying, but, no, I do not mean akin to forgive the debt. I mean room to breath in which you can have the time and the space needed to address the core problems and begin to dig out. As in with burnout. As in with situations beyond your control. As in humans taking care of humans for a minute. Trust me, that comes back tenfold.

And what I said in the other thread too: Don't punish people when they start to get ahead and knock them down again.

Scandinavian countries run a bit like this. Time to get educated or raise your kids worry free. And they're happy there.

reply to post by ~Lucidity


OIC.

That's Close to the S word.

Gotta be careful, ATS doesn't like that word...

But yea, Im all for socialism of Staple goods and Capitalism of Luxury all supported with a Flat tax, makes me kinda of a radical I guess.

reply to post by benrl


Yeah I know they don't like the S word. It's hard to like what you don't understand, I guess. So I just call it understanding and being human. Kind of like you do. I just don't always express it well, being just another rat in the race most days.

Bassago

Example, if the two parties in the US got a hold of this idea conservatives may end up rewarding children going to religious indoctrination while progressives may want to reward gun free homes.

edit on 801pm1313pm12014 by Bassago because: (no reason given)

Thats a pretty dark scenario there...worst case. Cant imagine either sides of the spectrum allowing that.

I´m looking into ways to alleviate poverty, not ways to tyrannize.

tinner07
Like most legal wordings it is kind of hard to understand. I do like the part that says if you find a job, you won't be cut off right away.

I dont know how welfare works. But if somebody has been on welfare and takes a job, maybe they shouldnt be cut off right away. We should encourage that.

This is very true. There are numbers that show that if you can work the system to your advantage, you can be very well off as compared to the working middle-class. The problem is that if you make just a tiny bit too much, you lose it all. That's a lot of pain to inflict, and it makes the idea of becoming independent more of a punishment than a reward or something to be sought after.

There are very few people who will go from welfare support to making enough to cover all their benefits right away, and when a single mother of three can gain enough in aid to have more disposable income than a middle class family of four making $64K/year ... it doesn't take much to see how welfare forever is the more attractive option. That's a lot to lose.

~Lucidity


In the long run, I bet you both these solutions would work better than what we have now. And whatever solutions we do try, we know some will fail.

Yeah, its about dignity and respect. And also self-respect among the poor. I wish we were rich enough to give everyone some "breathing room" such as free housing, but we`re not one of those oil-rich countries like the Arab ones or Norway where the Governments are really rich.

Like someone in that other thread said, the U.S. wealthy would feel better about being taxed highly if the welfare system were actually working.

reply to post by Skyfloating


The problem is that if you are trying to have a country that prizes liberty, using this kind of system where you reward behavior by giving out condition welfare will almost always become a social engineering exercise. Look at the squawking when people try to link drug testing to welfare, and I am generally in favor of that.

If people want to burn up their lives on drugs, that's their business, but my tax dollars should not subsidize their bad behavior.

However, there are plenty, including libertarians (liberaltarians really), who cry foul at that and tell me to stop pushing my morals on them. Oh, and think of the children.

Bassago
Example, if the two parties in the US got a hold of this idea conservatives may end up rewarding children going to religious indoctrination while progressives may want to reward gun free homes.

Skyfloating
Thats a pretty dark scenario there...worst case.

No, its the most LIKELY scenario!

~Lucidity
Scandinavian countries run a bit like this. Time to get educated or raise your kids worry free. And they're happy there.

edit on 3/23/2014 by ~Lucidity because: (no reason given)

Scandinavian countries are smaller. Norway has Billions in oil-money and only a couple of Million inhabitants. Denmark is smaller than Maine. The Swedes are incredibly hard workers.

reply to post by Skyfloating

It might cost less than you think if it actually works.

A basic project management and even life principle is that if something is failing, stop it dead in its tracks and start over. If you keep throwing good money at something that is failing, you will burn more money in the end than in starting over from scratch but this time taking the lessons and mitigating the risks.