North Carolina Program Pays Girls a Dollar a Day Not to Get Pregnant
A dollar a day keeps the babies away.
That's the incentive behind College Bound Sisters, a program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro that aims to keep 12- to 18-year-old girls in school and baby-free.
Girls in the program attend 90-minute meetings every week at which they receive lessons in abstinence and the use of contraceptives — and they receive $7 every week they do not get pregnant. The money is deposited into a fund that's collectible when they enroll in college.
But not everyone thinks paying kids to stay childless is the right way to lower the teen pregnancy rate. They say the program sends mixed messages, specifically to parents, that incentivizing good behavior is the way to go.
"It makes me a bit uneasy," said Bill Albert, chief program officer at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "I do have mixed feelings. It's hard to pay people to do something that we think they should be doing regardless. It would be like if you didn't want young people to experiment with marijuana, you'd pay them not to do
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