Philadelphia paying women to get pregnant have babies

[mike]

$18,000 to be precise

Philly gets closer to launching $1,000-a-month cash assistance program for pregnant residents to improve health outcomes

[RZehr]

$18,000 to be precise

Philly gets closer to launching $1,000-a-month cash assistance program for pregnant residents to improve health outcomes

I think it is terrible that the country has come to this - meaning in terms of morals that single mothers have become so common place that the government is stepping in. And that families are so broken that extended families cannot/will not take care of the single mother. And that people do not go to churches, and churches do not step in and help these single mothers meet their needs. And that the economy is such that a man cannot even meet his wife and families needs by working and his wife staying at home.

But given that this is the case, if this meets a critical need, I'm for it.

[Ken]

$18,000 to be precise

Philly gets closer to launching $1,000-a-month cash assistance program for pregnant residents to improve health outcomes

I think it is terrible that the country has come to this - meaning in terms of morals that single mothers have become so common place that the government is stepping in. And that families are so broken that extended families cannot/will not take care of the single mother. And that people do not go to churches, and churches do not step in and help these single mothers meet their needs. And that the economy is such that a man cannot even meet his wife and families needs by working and his wife staying at home.

But given that this is the case, if this meets a critical need, I'm for it.

Well, it's not a new government program. It is a one-time experimental trial to see if it actually accomplishes anything. Presumably the results will be public and peer reviewed and then we will have a better idea if this sort of program is worth the cost or not. It is probably the kind of thing we should do with more government programs.

[steve-in-kville]

"The goal is to help alleviate financial stressors and better support everyday needs. Program leaders hope this will ultimately reduce health disparities in a city where Black infants are nearly three times more likely than white babies to die in their first year of life."

I would question the parameters of that statement. Is this in Philadelphia alone, or worldwide?

As former president Bush would say, "that's fuzzy math."

[mike]

"The goal is to help alleviate financial stressors and better support everyday needs. Program leaders hope this will ultimately reduce health disparities in a city where Black infants are nearly three times more likely than white babies to die in their first year of life."

I would question the parameters of that statement. Is this in Philadelphia alone, or worldwide?

As former president Bush would say, "that's fuzzy math."

According to the Daily Mail article on the topic:

In 2021, one in 10 babies were born prematurely in Pennsylvania, and one in 12 were born with a low birthweight.

A premature birth is determined as a baby born before 37 weeks, while a low birth weight is one below five pounds.

It comes as fertility rates in Pennsylvania are at their lowest in ten years.

In the past 20 years, the decline was most pronounced in non-Hispanic Blacks, Hispanics, and non-Hispanic Asian/Pacific Islanders, but the birth rate among non-Hispanic white women was more stable.

The Philadelphia Department of Public Health said that disparities in birth outcomes by race and ethnicity are 'large and alarming'.

More than 15 percent of babies born to non-Hispanic Black mothers were low birthweight — 40 percent higher than the city's average.

Almost 15 percent of babies born to non-Hispanic Black women were premature, roughly 30 percent more than the citywide average.

Some 93 percent of Cobbs Creek's population is made up of Black people, as is 94 percent of Strawberry Mansion's.

As of 2021, 76 percent of Nicetown-Tioga was Black, 9 percent was Hispanic and three percent was Asian.

One of the most damning statistics for America is its poor record of infant and maternal mortality.

Often considered to be a measure of a nation's overall development, America has a famously poor record when it comes to childbirth.

The US suffers 5.4 infant deaths per every 1,000 births each year - the most of any of the 13 countries in the study by a large margin.

It also experienced 23.8 maternal deaths per 100,000 births - a staggeringly high figure of ten more than any comparable countries.

Essentially, the proposal is to do what a similar program in San Francisco is doing: providing a guaranteed income for pregnant black women.

[Josh]

The idea that money improves health is an odd one.

[mike]

The idea that money improves health is an odd one.

At least, with no controls on how the money is spent, which is what this seems to be.

[Josh]

Even stranger is the idea government cash payments should be assigned based on race. What’s next?

[mike]

Even stranger is the idea government cash payments should be assigned based on race. What’s next?

The Philadelphia program is designed to target areas with the highest rates of infant mortality and low birth weights, and this just happens to be majority black areas of the city. But effectively, yes, these sorts of programs are effectively government payments based on race, as the San Francisco program's website explicitly says.

[Biblical Anabaptist]

This is certainly not only for the "poor" given the income limit is $100,000 for a family of 4