Poor Children Is to Fund

¶ … poor children is to fund bank accounts of modest value for every child whose birth is officially recorded in public records. The proposal is to use public funds to establish a bank account for every newborn infant at the time of birth and to protect it from being accessed by anybody until at least the child's sixteenth birthday. The idea was advanced by a Finance professor of Indian descent at the University of California, Los Angeles. The concept is already in practice in several wealthier nations but not in India where at least 100 million poor children could benefit from it tremendously, according to its chief proponent. The suggestion is not necessarily limited to India but that is the main focus of the program.

Primary and Secondary Policy Goals

The primary policy goal of the idea is to help give those who make up the poorest half of the world's population an opportunity to have access to mainstream financial services. Currently, those individuals are at much greater risk of many threats to their health, safety, and welfare than are people with some financial savings and awareness. As a result, they are especially vulnerable to illegal money lending operations that exploit their poverty.

The secondary policy goal of the idea is particular to Indian society, but equally applicable to those with the same problem of unregistered births that is apparently a social and public administration problem in India. Specifically, the author hopes that the same idea could be used to incentivize the legal registration of births among the poor because that registration would be an administrative prerequisite to program eligibility.

Opinion

In principle, the idea is very useful. Poverty is, unfortunately, multi-generational because those born into poverty are at a tremendous social disadvantage from infancy. To the extent the program provides a means of access to mainstream financial services (as intended), it is likely to be extremely beneficial. The article does not provide sufficient information for readers to form an opinion as to whether the more detailed elements described are necessarily the best way to implement the program. One alternative mentioned by the author is to establish the accounts later rather than necessarily at birth. Likewise, there is insufficient information to allow an appraisal of other elements of practicality such as the exact amount of each account. In general, however, any means of assisting children born into poverty by increasing their access to mainstream financial services would seem to be a beneficial and worthwhile goal.

Personal Fiscal Practices and Management after Completing BUS 1000