The Responsibility Project^®. Exploring what it means to do the right thing

A Check for Doing Good

5 Comments

May 7, 2010 by Kathy McManus

New York Times reporter Julie Bosman writes that a New York City program paying cash to poor families “to encourage good behavior and self-sufficiency” will be shut down because two years of the handouts have had “only modest effects” on the lives of the recipients.

Privately-funded but government- run, “Opportunity NYC Family Rewards” has been paying parents “for things like going to the dentist ($100) or holding down a full-time job ($150 per month),” Bosman says. Children were also paid $25 to $50 a month for regular school attendance and $600 for passing a high school exam. Participants earned an average of $6,000 a year.

Critics say the program was “condescending” and questioned whether it was “wise to pay people for simple behavior like going to parent-teacher conferences or doctor’s appointments.” But Brooklyn participant Janice Dudley — who earned $7,610 along with her 16-year-old daughter — told The Times the payments give children “the motivation to want to go to school because they know they’re going to get something back.” Now that it’s over, Ms. Dudley said “We might have a little problem next year when we don’t have any money on the card.”

Should people be paid for good behavior? Does doing so undermine personal responsibility?

5 Comments

What do you think? Leave a comment

• May 11, 2010 by Dr. Clifton F Guthrie

  Of course we pay for good behavior all the time. Parents give cash incentives for good grades, bosses give performance bonuses, soldiers get hazard duty pay or bonuses for reenlisting, and insurance companies give discounts for safe driving. In the UK, doctors get cash incentives for getting their patients to engage in preventative care routines. None of these are considered condescending. The difficulty is that we also get substantial payments for poor behavior -- outrageous financial bonuses for bankers who play the system, doctors for prescribing unnecessary treatments, and insurers for dropping people with preexisting conditions.

  Human beings do respond to positive incentives -- whether those incentives point them toward pro-social or anti-social actions. But people are also very complicated, and cash incentives do not reliably predict our responses. For example, not everyone would consent to a sex-for-money transaction; not everyone seeks the most lucrative careers but often opt for work that seems meaningful. Social rewards are often more powerful than cash. Further, in an overall situation of hopelessness, a little cash incentive in the short-term probably cannot compensate for a loss of confidence in the future.

  Great website, by the way. I use it extensively in my college ethics course.

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  • August 11, 2010 by jeanette

    i think incentive pay is great its helps alot of people foward there carreers and also there learning ablities to try something new its almost like having a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow i have to say i am all for it

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• May 15, 2010 by Sandy DeWitt

  Dr. Guthrie: Good comments; I couldn't have said it better myself. I loved my college "ethics class"; had a great teacher. I remember the discussion about how to encourage employees to be more productive; money wasn't found to be the best incentive for increased productivity. As you pointed out, not everyone seeks the "big bucks"; but rather a career that satisfies a personal need.

  Ms. Dudley points up my conviction that this kind of program offers temporary benefits. She states that if not paid, they probably can't go on doing necessary things like attending school because there's no money in it for them. You shouldn't go to school for money (or even to get a good job); you go to school to get an education. Of course, a well-educated person is usually rewarded for their hard work by having a successful career (and I don't mean just because he makes more money in his job).

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• May 20, 2010 by Kat

  I agree with Dr. Guthrie that we pay for good "behaviors" much of the time, although growing up, my parents never rewarded my siblings and I for getting good grades but for doing "unpleasant" chores. As for insurance companies, the only one I know that claims to give discounts for safe driving requires that you first buy more insurance.

  If you have driven safely and not been in an accident, which in many respects is due to mere luck or simply never driving, you receive your own money back! As far as I'm concerned, paying for insurance on your insurance is ludicrous.

  Growing up, I knew some of my classmates were given money for good grades, but that was rare. As for performance bonuses, I found that squeezing any kind of "bonus" out of a boss for whom I had worked myself to the bone was like trying to get into a concert today featuring the late Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimmi Hendrix.

  Thus, I don't believe that the "average person" in the U.S. today should be paid for good behavior. I was taught that the work itself is its own reward, and I do always enjoy the sense of accomplishment I get from completing a task and having done the task well.

  Obviously, my feeling that completing a task or project or anything work-related well is its own reward, and apparently this is a character trait no longer instilled in children today.

  A study conducted by an institute on ethics revealed that in 2008, 64 percent of American high school students cheated on an exam, 42 percent lied to save money, and 30 percent stole something from a store. The institute says the results of the study reveal a close connection between youthful attitudes and behavior and continuing patterns of dishonesty as young people enter the adult world.

  As if the study's findings weren't disheartening enough, the institute has found a significant erosion of values since 1992, and researchers believe that "the hole in the moral ozone seems to be getting bigger — each new generation is more likely to lie and cheat than the preceding one."

  I find it incomprehensible that not one preson involved in creating the New York City program believed that paying cash to poor families “to encourage good behavior and self-sufficiency” was preferrable to, for example, visiting the web site of an institute on ethics and teaching both the parents and the children how to develop character.

  I presume those who designed the program were also paid to attend school when they received their educations. Or were they more like me? Again, getting good grades and seeing those grades gave me a sense of accomplishment and a feeling that I wanted to keep getting good grades in school.

  The results of study after study continue to reveal that infants have a basic sense of morality, and the institute of ethics studies confirms that values and habits formed early in life and in school persist. Apparently, however, when it comes to continuing to teach infants and young children the difference between right and wrong, more often than not the parents prefer that the schools do so.

  More than 90 percent of the ethics institute's survey respondents said they believe schools should be more active in instilling core ethical values like honesty, responsibility, and respect and developing good character in children. Rather than throwing money at someone to do something the majority of their predecessors accomplished without pay, perhaps the city or state of New York could manage to go online and search for an ethics institute. The one I happened upon offers not cash but specific strategies to build good character based on six universal ethical values (trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship).

  However, since parents rarely have time for themselves, much less their own children, I don't see how parents can counteract the lax in societal standards between the time their children are infants and the time they start school.

  One key to instilling character in a child is for parents to set firm standards of right and wrong. However, for parents this may mean telling the truth about a time when the parent may have told a lie. If parents set firm standards, researchers say that even kids who do lie or cheat can learn not to, especially if they understand the consequences.

  In today's world, however, which Dr. Guthrie describes more accurately than I could, I can see how difficult it would be, as a parent, to be certain that one's child, after learning such lessons, would not be swayed upon seeing on the news that criminal/poor behavior is rewarded again and again.

  If we, as a society, want to continue to survive, I am convinced parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc., pass as many ethics lessons onto children as possible. Because throwing money at the problem does, I believe, undermine personal responsibility. And could create many more sociopaths than already exists in our world.

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  • July 21, 2010 by david

    it all starts at home where you live , before children find out about money and things . Family ethics begain.

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