http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529037,00.html

Interesting. I'd be interested in debating the merits of such a plan, were debate not dead.

...I believe. If the immediate disincentives to teen pregnancy (shame, ostracization, removal from the marriage market, etc) are removed, and in large measure they have been, then providing some incentives to do the "right thing" may do the trick.

The incentive is really being paid for the girls to be active in a program that is providing them a lot of information on how and why to avoid pregnancy...not having a baby is probably more a result of that than the $1 a day.  It's a way to take girls who are at high risk (read the criteria for participation) and get them to commit to talk and think about the issues around teen parenthood.  If the price of a number one meal or two at McDonald's a week helps them stick it out, great.

Plus, we incentivize good grades, coming home before curfew, and other good behaviors with our kids all the time.  Just because it's not always money doesn't make it any less an incentive.

I don't have a problem with it.

I think we found something we agree on. My opinion is strikingly similar - that kids are motivated in a variety of ways. For some (including me when I was a mercenary little rug rat), money is an additional enticement that overcame my laziness and was the extra push to do well, at least until other motivations took the place of cold, hard cash.

The criteria are indeed important (more agreement) as these are students who otherwise not see a way out of what we might classify as a dismal and bleak future. I'm waiting, however, for someone to argue that we are paying the poor (and predominantly non-white) not to breed.

We all (um, "smart kids") worried about how unwanted teenage pregnancy would eff up our lives. Precautions were simple enough, really. Some girls who looked OK but really had no chance at all to be functional desired unprotected sex. Cash bull, no sir, no ma'am.