Teens Get $1 A Day Not To Get Pregnant

What teens won’t do for a little spending money! No, not THAT. In fact, the very opposite of THAT. A program from the U.S state of North Carolina is paying teen girls to NOT get pregnant.

In addition to attending weekly meetings, the girls ages twelve to eighteen in the College-Bound Sisters are given a stipend of $US1 a day to keep their legs closed.

The girls can’t blow their cash at the mall, however. True to its name, the program is designed to get these kids into college, and that means their money is put straight into an interest-bearing account. They can collect when they’re eighteen (provided there are no buns in the oven) to spend the money on tuition.

The success rate so far is close to one hundred percent – meaning almost one hundred percent of the girls stayed baby free AND graduated from college. Not bad considering North Carolina has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation, and the state’s board of education considers its graduation rates a serious problem.

Although paying kids to keep their noses clean harkens awfully close to bribery and does not exactly instill a lot of confidence in their abilities to do it alone, drastic times (or statistics – like those above) call for drastic measures. And the emphasis toward putting this money into a college education – something families need help with anyway – makes this idea infinitely more palatable.

What do you think Babble readers?

Image: KERO