Teach A Man To Fish And He’ll Earn $30 In A Conditional Cash Transfer

The plan to pay off poverty is moving forward:

Poor kids and their parents will pocket cash rewards — from $25 for good school attendance to $200 for visiting the doctor to $3,000 for passing five Regents exams — under an innovative anti-poverty program unveiled by city officials yesterday.

The “conditional cash transfer” program, modeled on plans in places like Mexico and Brazil, is privately funded but administered by the city.

. . .

About 14,000 participants will take part in the two-year $53 million pilot program beginning this fall.

As many as 5,100 families of three living below the poverty line in six low-earning neighborhoods, with at least one kid in fourth, seventh or ninth grade in a public school, would participate in the educational part of the program.

Half of the families (the rest will serve as a control group to measure results) will get paid as much as $5,000 a year for meeting various clean-living goals.

Among those families, teenagers will get paid directly $50 for taking the PSAT (a warm-up for the SAT, the most widely used college entrance exam), $300 for getting 11 high school credits a year and $50 for getting a library card — and a whopping $600 for every Regents exam passed, up to a maximum of five.

That means some teens could be directly paid as much as $3,000 by the city. Five Regents are needed to graduate high school.

. . .

Recipients, being selected this summer before the program begins in the fall, can have the money deposited directly into their bank accounts.

Also, 4,100 adults who get Section 8 federal housing vouchers — with half serving as the control group — will get $150 monthly for working 30 hours a week, and $600 for every block of 140 hours in job training.

And about 18,000 fourth- and seventh-graders from 80 pre-selected schools will get paid between $5 and $10 a test for 10 exams overall throughout the year that they finish. There are incentive bonuses thrown in for perfect scores.