KEY POINTS:
We had a naturopath come and talk to our Plunket mothers group. (Bear with me; this isn't going to be a yummy mummy column.)
I got so cross at what she was saying - everything that is wrong with you is because you ate the wrong thing, babies
who are born by Caesarean are always going to be at a disadvantage in life, try some flaky homeopathy if your baby cries.
She said: "Every generation we're getting sicker and sicker with all the toxins we are ingesting." Oh, really? So how come we all live so much longer then? By the time she was getting to "it's your fault if you get cancer" I was so grumpy I walked out.
But before I left, she did say one thing which made sense: that our immune systems grow through challenge. That is why it is wrong-headed to try and disinfect all the germs out of your house. It is only by being challenged by germs that babies develop antibodies and a functioning immune system. This is true in many areas of life. We grow by challenge. Being given something may make life easier but doesn't help us grow.
That is why I like the idea of Conditional Cash Transfer, a controversial anti-poverty programme which originated in the developing world but is now being trialled in New York City. The concept was invented by an economist called Santiago Levy, who was working in Mexico in 1994 when the peso collapsed.
He removed subsidies on basic foods and, instead, instituted a system where the poor would receive cash in exchange for investing in their own health and education. Mexican families gave up their allotments of tortillas and milk and instead received cash - so long as family members turned up at the health clinic and attended school.
The idea of paying cash to the poor in exchange for better behaviour has spread rapidly through Latin America and other parts of the developing world. The Financial Times just did a big feature on it, where it noted the World Bank has just launched a programme in Tanzania that pays people almost $50 a year to stay HIV negative.
And in one of New York's toughest neighbourhoods, Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a pilot programme where children are paid for good school attendance and improving test scores; parents are paid bonuses for working at least 30 hours a week, taking job training courses or taking their children to see the doctor. Bloomberg has framed the trial as an experiment at applying market economics to social problems rather than "paying parents for what they should be doing anyway".
I like the thinking behind the cash transfer approach but doubt it would work here. Remember the furore when Prime Minister Jenny Shipley tried to institute a "social contract" for beneficiaries? There certainly is poverty in this country, but it is not of the purely economic kind seen in developing countries where parents may have to decide whether to send their children to work in the fields or in school.
That is not to say you can't come up with some kind of incentive system linked to benefits. The problem is, this Government has been so doctinaire it has a distaste for any kind of market mechanism, even if it might help the people at the bottom of the heap. Just look at its entrenched ideological position on private sector involvement in the health system. That's as blinkered as the naturopath thinking homeopathy will cure cancer. *
deborah@coneandco.com
