NYC’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg is in Mexico today checking out the 10 year old Oportunidades program, commonly known as Pay the Poor,that he wants to import into the big apple. The program offers families meeting specific income guidelines financial incentives for meeting certain goals like getting their kids to school on time and taking their children for doctors’ visits. Similar programs exist in other Latin American countries like Nicaragua. Under the proposed NYC plan families could earn an extra $5,000 a year under the program.

Parents would receive payments every two months for family members meeting any of a series of criteria. The payments could range from $25 for exemplary attendance in elementary school to $300 for a high score on an important exam, city officials said. The project, first announced in the fall. was scheduled to begin as a pilot program in September with 2,500 randomly selected families whose progress will be tracked against another 2,500 randomly selected families who will not get the rewards. Officials planned to draw the families from six of the poorest communities in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx.

Critics are concerned that such a program commodifies tasks that families should be doing anyhow and say that the program fails to attack the root causes of poverty including a scarcity of jobs and poor education. Others see the program as a way to break the cycle of hand to mouth survival and as a way to move towards long term thinking among the poor.

In Mexico nearly 1/4th of the population takes part in the program and while the program in Mexico has raised school attendance numbers and nutritional levels it has failed, for example, the lower the migration rates.

Via / Environmental and Urban Economics, NY Post, and NY1