Those Who Receive The Cash Transfer Can’t Believe It, While Those Who Haven’t Taken It Can’t Believe It’s Real

In the mayor’s plan to outbid poverty, participants seem very pleased:

For Wayne Logan, a single father of two, being selected for the city’s experimental cash-rewards program for the poor was like hitting the lottery.

“I’m happy. I’m grateful,” he declared, sounding somewhat amazed at his good fortune.

“To get paid to do things I’m doing anyway is a welcome feeling.”

Logan, 49, was among the first enrollees in a daring $50 million pilot project launched by Mayor Bloomberg with private funds to pay poor families as much as $5,000 a year simply to do the right thing.

A child getting a library card is worth $50.

A student who passes a standardized math or English exam is eligible to get a $300 payoff for each.

Complete two dental visits a year? That’s $100 in your pocket.

Logan insisted that almost all the 28 activities prescribed by the city are already on his checklist.

He was recertified for Medicaid (worth $40), gets an annual checkup ($200), and recently took his son to the dentist.

. . .

Surprisingly, only 3,000 of the 5,100 families selected for the program signed up by Sept. 1, leading officials to extend the deadline by a month.

Half of the families will be in a control group that doesn’t receive benefits.

Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs said some families in the six neighborhoods picked for the program “found it hard to believe it’s real” and didn’t enroll.

But she said officials intend to track down the non-responders because “we want to see how incentives work in those hard-to-engage households and those who are the poorest of the poor.”