What I Like About KidSave Accounts

["Steven H. Johnson" <info@sscommonsense.org>]

KidSave accounts, if properly designed, could be of great help
to this nation in an area completely unrelated to Social Security.

Imagine the impact on the high school dropout rates if the final
ownership of a KidSave account were to be made contingent on 
graduating from high school by the age of 21.

At retirement, a KidSave account could easily be worth an extra
hundred thousand dollars.  Tell kids who are at risk of dropping
out that they have a hundred thousand dollars on the line, and
I think it might get their attention.  And their parents attention.

The average per-cohort yield loss in our high schools now is about
twenty to twenty-five percent.  Dropout rates are much lower
than that in prosperous neighborhoods, much higher than that
in poor neighborhoods.  The current dropout rate is a national
tragedy, especially for the children of poverty.

[Readers should be warned that high schools with a 25% yield 
loss per cohort typically report a high school dropout rate 
of only 5%.  Why?  That's a good topic for a different forum.]

If we create KidSave accounts, they may not be of much help to 
Social Security until about 2065 or 2070.  But they could be
of great help in raising our nation's high school graduation rates
within the next twenty years.

-Steve Johnson