paid not to play

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/

I wasn't particularly surprised by this type of news. After all, with all the home schooled or abstinence schooled kids out there, most of them don't have a clue how to prevent pregnancy during their inevitable experiments with sex. Some of them probably don't even want to, as indicated.

What piqued my interest though was this one:
"....said we'll pay any woman between the ages of 13 and 18 who lives in some defined state, county or region $50 each month they can demonstrate that: (1) they are in school; (2) they meet income eligibility for school lunch programs, and (3) are not pregnant...." - This is perhaps the opposite effect of any attempts to punish teenage, or other "unfulfilling" single pregnancies. I've seen companies and their health insurance policies paying bounties for things like quitting smoking or going on a diet, joining a gym, etc. These have been surprisingly effective, even with minimal bounties (well below $50) for people of working age who earn real incomes (for whom an extra $10 or less shouldn't matter). This would be a similar scenario, a bounty not to get pregnant. Where people are poor enough, it's probable that $50 would go a long way as a consistent income stream. If nothing else it could go toward the cost of preventive pregnancy.

What troubles me is that it might take a government entity to enact it, but it's also probable that this would reap a number of positive externalities: lower crime rates from lower birth rates, more teens able to pursue college (not that this is necessarily a functional plan), possibly more of those potential teenage mothers finding fathers who are willing/able to be supportive. If that's so, it's something like an investment to lower the costs of crime prevention or scholarship funding in 15-20 years. Which makes it doubtful ever to happen.