TY - JOUR
T1 - Behavior analysts in the war on poverty
T2 - Developing an operant antipoverty program
AU - Silverman, Kenneth
AU - Holtyn, August F.
AU - Subramaniam, Shrinidhi
N1 - Funding Information:
This article was published Online First September 27, 2018. Kenneth Silverman, August F. Holtyn, and Shrinidhi Subramaniam, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Shrinidhi Subramaniam is now at the Department of Psychology and Child Development, California State University, Stanislaus. The National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health (NIH) supported the preparation of this publication under Grants R01DA037314, R01AA024101, R01AI117065, and T32DA07209. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent the official views of the NIH. All authors contributed in a significant way to the article and all authors have read and approved the final article.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 American Psychological Association.
PY - 2018/12
Y1 - 2018/12
N2 - Poverty is associated with poor health and affects many United States residents. The therapeutic workplace, an operant intervention designed to treat unemployed adults with histories of drug addiction, could form the basis for an effective antipoverty program. Under the therapeutic workplace, participants receive pay for work. To promote drug abstinence or medication adherence, participants must provide drug-free urine samples or take scheduled doses of medication, respectively, to maintain maximum pay. Therapeutic workplace participants receive job-skills training in Phase 1 and perform income-producing jobs in Phase 2. Many unemployed, drug-addicted adults lack skills they would need to obtain high-skilled and high-paying jobs. Many of these individuals attend therapeutic workplace training reliably, but only when offered stipends for attendance. They also work on training programs reliably, but only when they earn stipends for performance on training programs. A therapeutic workplace social business can promote employment, although special contingencies may be needed to ensure that participants are punctual and work entire work shifts, and social businesses do not reliably promote community employment. Therapeutic workplace participants work with an employment specialist to seek community employment, but primarily when they earn financial incentives. Reducing poverty is more challenging than promoting employment, because it requires promoting employment in higher paying, full-time and steady jobs. Although a daunting challenge, promoting the type of employment needed to reduce poverty is an important goal, both because of the obvious benefit in reducing poverty itself and in the potential secondary benefit of reducing poverty-related health disparities.
AB - Poverty is associated with poor health and affects many United States residents. The therapeutic workplace, an operant intervention designed to treat unemployed adults with histories of drug addiction, could form the basis for an effective antipoverty program. Under the therapeutic workplace, participants receive pay for work. To promote drug abstinence or medication adherence, participants must provide drug-free urine samples or take scheduled doses of medication, respectively, to maintain maximum pay. Therapeutic workplace participants receive job-skills training in Phase 1 and perform income-producing jobs in Phase 2. Many unemployed, drug-addicted adults lack skills they would need to obtain high-skilled and high-paying jobs. Many of these individuals attend therapeutic workplace training reliably, but only when offered stipends for attendance. They also work on training programs reliably, but only when they earn stipends for performance on training programs. A therapeutic workplace social business can promote employment, although special contingencies may be needed to ensure that participants are punctual and work entire work shifts, and social businesses do not reliably promote community employment. Therapeutic workplace participants work with an employment specialist to seek community employment, but primarily when they earn financial incentives. Reducing poverty is more challenging than promoting employment, because it requires promoting employment in higher paying, full-time and steady jobs. Although a daunting challenge, promoting the type of employment needed to reduce poverty is an important goal, both because of the obvious benefit in reducing poverty itself and in the potential secondary benefit of reducing poverty-related health disparities.
KW - Drug addiction
KW - Incentives
KW - Operant conditioning
KW - Poverty
KW - Unemployment
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U2 - 10.1037/pha0000230
DO - 10.1037/pha0000230
M3 - Review article
C2 - 30265062
AN - SCOPUS:85054031190
SN - 1064-1297
VL - 26
SP - 515
EP - 524
JO - Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology
JF - Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology
IS - 6
ER -