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February 6, 2008USA Today Op-Ed Praises Opportunity NYC |
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MDRC: USA Today published a column by Joyce King, "Bloomberg Incentive Chases King's Dream," on the Opportunity NYC demonstration, an initiative of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Center for Economic Opportunity that involves new forms of temporary cash payments to poor families to boost their income in the short-term while building their capacity to avoid longer-term and second-generation poverty. MDRC helped design and is evaluating the demonstration. Here is an excerpt from King's column: "I have a dream" will forever be linked with the man whose life we celebrated this month. But let's not forget that Martin Luther King Jr. also said, "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity." One, called the Family Rewards program, is a comprehensive, two-generation strategy that focuses on children's education, family preventative health care, and parents' workforce efforts. A second, called Work Rewards, targets the workforce efforts of low-income adults living in subsidized housing. MDRC is studying the first two of these demonstrations. Joyce King's column also emphasizes the importance of MDRC's evaluation of the Opportunity NYC demonstration: Not everyone is a fan. At the non-profit Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, critics argue that the incentives reward poor people for doing things they should already be doing. Paying students for good grades or for passing state exams drew particular ire. We must be willing to try unorthodox ways to attack generational poverty. About 5,000 families will be affected; half will be in a control group to study the program's effectiveness.
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