1970s' Manitoba poverty experiment called a success

A controversial government experiment in the 1970s in which some households in a Manitoba town were given a minimum level of income improved the community's overall health, a professor at the University of Manitoba says.

From 1974 through 1978, about 30 per cent of the population of Dauphin was provided with a "mincome," as the guaranteed level of income came to be called.

"We found that, overall, hospitalizations in Dauphin declined relative to the control group," said Evelyn Forget, professor of community health science at the University of Manitoba. "We also looked at accidents and injuries, and they also declined. You can argue that accident and injury hospitalizations are strongly related to poverty."

The goal of the program, which cost $17 million, was to find out whether a guaranteed income would improve health and community life. If a household's income dropped below a certain amount, the program would top it up to an income equivalent to the welfare rates at the time.

'Hospitalizations for mental health issues were down significantly,'— Evelyn Forget, researcher

The participants who worked had their supplement reduced 50 cents for every dollar they earned in an attempt to encourage people in the program to look for work.

Forget has spent three years comparing the administrative health care records of Dauphin's citizens between 1974 and 1978 with those of a control group of people living in similar Manitoba communities at that time.

She said her research suggests that people appear to live healthier lives when they don't have to worry about poverty.

"Hospitalizations for mental health issues were down significantly," she said, adding that teenagers stayed in school longer as a result of the initiative.

The initiative, which started in 1974, was terminated in 1978 as political support for the experiment faded.

"Politically, there was a concern that if you began a guaranteed annual income, people would stop working and start having large families," Forget said.

Ron Hikel, the executive director of the Mincome project, is delighted Forget is taking a fresh look at the project's impact.

'Politically, there was a concern that if you began a guaranteed annual income, people would stop working and start having large families.'— Evelyn Forget, researcher

"As somebody who devoted three or four years of his life to making this happen, I was disappointed that the data were warehoused," Hikel said.

Forget has not yet been given access to the 2,000 boxes of data collected by the original Mincome researchers, which contain copies of questionnaires participants filled out and, she believes, transcripts of interviews with the families who took part.

Hikel, who is now legislative director for U.S. Rep. Eric Massa, said Forget's research is immensely relevant in Canada and the United States. He said he intends to use her analysis as part of the current health-care debate.

"It has to do with the impact that larger social conditions have on one's health condition and the need for health care," Hikel said.

References: 

A GUARANTEED ANNUAL INCOME? FROM MINCOME TO THE MILLENNIUM 

Goar: Anti-poverty success airbrushed out 

Dolly Parton sends books to Rotherham

A reading scheme developed by the US country singer Dolly Parton is a proving a big hit in the UK

Elizabeth Smith was in hospital having had her first child when she learned about the free books. The nurses gave her the form as part of an information pack and six weeks later a book – a Peter Rabbit story – addressed to her son, Aaron, slipped through the letterbox of her Rotherham home. The following month, another book arrived for Aaron and another the next month, until the little boy became used to the sight of the postman delivering a fresh title every month.

"He calls it 'Aaron post' and he knows the books are for him," says his mother. "When the postman comes Aaron runs to check, and if there is a book he wants me to open it straight away. The books have been a wonderful way to bond, and reading the stories before bedtime has become part of his routine." Aaron is now 22 months and he will go on receiving a new book a month until his fifth birthday. He is one of 13,000 children in Rotherham, aged under five, who are sent a book every month because of a woman the children refer to as 'The Book Lady', but who is better known as Dolly Parton.

Parton is one of the all-time great country singer–songwriters, but for the past 15 years she has also been spearheading a campaign to get children reading. Her Imagination Library started in her home town of Sevier County in Tennessee where she had grown up in a two-room wooden shack with her 11 siblings. When I met Parton in Dollywood, the theme park she co-owns in eastern Tennessee, she explained why she started the library. "Many of my own relatives didn't get a chance to go to school or get an education," she told me, "and my dad didn't learn to read and write because he was born into a very large family and they had to go out and work in the fields to make money. My dad felt crippled by that – so I thought this book scheme would be a wonderful tribute to him."

Parents at the Coleridge children’s centre in Rotherham said the Imagination Library scheme had inspired them to read more, as well as enthusing their children. Photograph:

From those modest beginnings the Imagination Library has grown. "In 1999, the library was mailing books to 2,300 children every month", says David Dotson, president of the Dollywood Foundation, which looks after the administration of the scheme. "Today, it is mailing to just under 700,000 children every month in the US, Canada and, since 2008, Britain. The scheme was launched with a visit by Parton to Rotherham in December 2007."

I met some of those children, along with their mothers, at the Coleridge children's centre, which offers family learning programmes that look at the benefit of sharing books and the importance of reading out loud to children. One woman told me that reading to her baby had inspired her to start reading more herself, to set a good example; while an Asian woman said that the books were helping illiterate parents to learn to read English – the children were reading to their parents."Rotherham borough council was the first to sign up and we started registering children at the start of 2008", explains Alison Lilburn, project manager for the scheme in the town, "and since then we have registered over 18,000 children and we are sending out books to just over 13,000 children each month – which is 85% of the population under five years old."

Rotherham's council leader, Roger Stone, heard about the Imagination Library while on a visit to the US. Convinced the book scheme could raise literacy standards in Rotherham, he set about trying to bring it to the UK. Following Rotherham's lead, Sheffield, Luton, Sheerness, Nottingham, Wigan and two communities in London have joined in, and recently the Scottish Book Trust announced that it would be adopting the scheme for "looked after" children across the whole of Scotland, funded by the Scottish government.

There are, of course, other book schemes operating in Britain – Bookstart, for example, offers free books to children before they start school and the NationalLiteracy Trust has many reading schemes. "The Imagination Library complements other book-gifting programmes", says Natalie Turnbull, the UK director of the scheme, "simply by the volume of the books we send – one a month – and also the fact that the books are being delivered by post to the home, so there is a guarantee that the book is going to reach that child."

The fact that the scheme carries Parton's name has led some to think that Parton herself funds the library; in fact, while her Dollywood Foundation pays for all the administration costs in maintaining the database, it does not pay for the actual books. It is, however, able to ensure that the books are bought at a hugely discounted rate: Penguin, which supplies all the books, sells them to the scheme for an average price of £2, which is up to a quarter of their usual cost.

In Rotherham the cost of the scheme is met through donations from the Chamber of Commerce, the NHS and, this year, the local authority. In Luton, the scheme is being paid for by the Wates group and it is anticipated that around 24,000 books will be sent out each year.

While the scheme is undoubtedly laudable, is there any need to spend money giving families free books when they can easily visit their local library? "Not everybody is that way inclined", says Lilburn. "The difference with this scheme is that the book is addressed to the child and, based on all the parental feedback we get, the children are really excited when that book comes through the door."

Rotherham is now trying to measure the impact of the Imagination Library. "Because we have other initiatives to assist reading, it isn't easy to measure how much the Imagination Library has helped," says Lilburn. "But we do know that year on year Rotherham has improved in terms of its education, language and literacy development and we are now the same level nationally, when in previous years we have been way below the national average."

By the time children start school they are coming to the end of their eligibility for the Imagination Library, but schools in Rotherham are, Lilburn says, increasingly recognising the part that the book-gifting scheme can play in developing reading. "What we are getting back from teachers is that where they use Imagination Library books, the response from children is really positive," she says. "There is a commonality among kids because they know each other has had the book, and they are familiar with the books."

Aaron has not yet started school, but he has already started putting sentences together from books he has read with his mother. She believes the Imagination Library should be expanded so that every child has the opportunity that her son has. "I don't think it is just schools' job to encourage reading," she says. "What is so great about the Imagination Library is that it is not means-tested. When things are means-tested it means that there can be a stigma to being part of the scheme, but with the Imagination Library every child has the opportunity to allow their imagination to grow."

Sources:

Dolly foundation : from wikipedia

Country Music Legend Dolly Parton’s New Role: ‘Book Lady’