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Investing in mothers? The long-run impact of a universal child care
- parasxos 7d ago[dead]
- Tycho 7d agoSo from a fiscal perspective, it more or less pays for itself through greater career taxable earnings of the women, according to the study. (EDIT: unless of course these extra earnings were mostly transfers so-to-speak from non-mothers to mothers) From a societal and human perspective, unclear that it’s worth it.
- dfilppi 7d ago[dead]
- black6 7d agoThis assumes that mothers in the workforce earning (taxable) income is a benefit in and of itself. It doesn't consider the familial impacts of outsourcing the raising of ones own offspring to another party.
- add-sub-mul-div 7d agoThe rich were so successful in manipulating people with culture wars like "women shouldn't work" that the people who fell for it still don't realize the real war was them losing the economic standing in which it was viable for the typical family to have one working parent.
- estearum 7d agoThis is just rent. Land Value Tax fixes this.
- bigbuppo 7d agoThat is correct. While I too would like to see what it looks like if one parent staying home is subsidized, this still shows that subsidizing child care is a net benefit for everyone, and as such it's a good idea to keep the program going.
- ndriscoll 7d agoIt doesn't show that. Subsidies will shift the margin of who can afford to have a stay at home parent, so if being raised by a parent is better than childcare, you expect people on the margin to lose out. This is in contrast to something like a child subsidy that could be used for childcare or to support a parent raising the child (e.g. in the US, increasing the refundable child tax credit).
- LeBit 7d agoYou are taking things to the extreme. I live in Québec. I have children that both went in a province subsidized kindergarten. By the way, there are different types of such kindergarten. «Milieu familial» which is literally sending your children to a private house of someone to have them babysit your children during the day. They can have a maximum of 6 children with them. And there are the CPE or «Centre de la petite enfance». There you have highly qualified personnel, way more resources than a "family environment" can provide. They have many more children. The children can socialize much more. But, being able to have a place for your child in a CPE is akin to winning the lottery. I wouldn’t be surprised some families have paid bribes to get a place.
- SoftTalker 7d agoYes, this was the same thought I had. What about investing in children by making it easier for their own mother to actually care for them, instead of working outside the home and dumping the kid in an institution.
- nkrisc 7d agoYour phrasing betrays your bias. Having kids in childcare is not the downfall of society, and in some ways is similar to The Way Things Used To Be. My youngest goes to pre-school childcare where he gets to interact with kids and parents from his local community whom we see outside of childcare as well. He sees his “teacher” when he walks with me and his older brother to his school because her daughter goes to the same school as his brother. The people who work there are part of the community as well. Childcare can be the modern form of the village collectively caring for the children so that not every parent is busy with child-rearing all the time. It’s also good for kids to spend time interacting with people who aren’t part of their immediate family. Not every childcare program is created equal, but there is a place and need for good ones. Not once has it ever felt like “dumping him in an institution”. Your kids do not need you 100% of the time, and usually it’s better they’re not with you 100% of the time.
- SoftTalker 7d agoSure, and epecially when the child is a bit older then introducing a "preschool" situation for a few hours a day is probably valuable. But having an infant in a daycare for 8-10 hours a day is probably not.
- estearum 7d agoI would bet that approximately 100% of people advocating for funded childcare programs++ would want to avoid the "putting infants in daycare for 8-10hrs/day" scenario.
- moduspol 7d agoIn what way? I've seen many people advocate for universal childcare as a way to get mom back to working full time as quickly as possible. I've also seen it framed as a way of leveling the playing field, so women are less disadvantaged from men as a result of childbirth / care. I find that, if anything, there is little to no stigma to getting your child in daycare ASAP after maternity leave ends and going back to working full time. That's "infants in daycare for 8-10hrs/day".
- cortesoft 7d agoYou have to pick what you want to measure. I think that is a different study; measuring the mental and emotional impact of two working parents. Both are interesting and useful, but I think they need to be separate studies.
- zmgsabst 7d agoThis doesn’t even show the family is better off economically — they only measure their earnings, but not lost labor while at home.
- deleted 7d ago[deleted]
- thinkingtoilet 7d agoIt also assumes having fathers in the work force earning taxable income is a benefit, but you seem totally fine with that assumption.
- jimbokun 7d agoAgreed the argument should be about single income or dual income families, regardless of gender.
- erxam 7d agoIt's always the same thing with these people. The women have to take care of the kids, and stay at home, never go kind and never complain. They should do all the work then the fathers should get to stumble in drunk, entertain their kids for 10 minutes and then force their wives into sex. It's always wives, mothers, grandmothers.
- graemep 7d agoI made the same point in a less snarky way in my previous comment in this thread. It is a very deeply embedded assumption that women are primary parents. Any man who has been an equal or primary carer for their kids will tell you that.
- carlosjobim 7d agoMen cannot breast feed. In the first years, the mother is the primary parent, by biological instinct of the child alone. After that, both are parents and it depends if the mother or the father is the better parent. But you have to really hate your child (which many parents of course do) to try to force them to live against their biological instincts when they are infants.
- thinkingtoilet 7d agoMany women can not either. And some children simply will not. I have two boys. One would only breastfeed and never take the bottle. The other would only take a bottle and never breastfeed.
- deleted 7d ago[deleted]
- colechristensen 7d agoWomen entering the workforce eroded the ability to maintain a household on one income because of depressed wages and housing competition. There's no absolute cost to housing, people will pay what they afford and making more money means the housing cost rises, it doesn't make people "richer" just everything else more expensive. This isn't an argument that women shouldn't be allowed to work or anything ridiculous like that. We ALL should work less. Unfortunately just about everything ends up being an unintentional subsidy to the ever growing real estate price. You want to invest in mothers and do a million other societal benefit things? Do everything you can to damage the ability of people to profit from owning residential real estate.
- jimbokun 7d agoAnd the simplest way to do that is build more housing.
- colechristensen 7d agoUsually what people mean by this is "build smaller living spaces closer together"
- LanceH 7d ago> This assumes that mothers in the workforce earning (taxable) income is a benefit in and of itself. I think it's more about whether the investment pays back and defrays the costs.
- binary0010 7d agoAgreed, the mother and father should take off from the work force for 18 years to raise their kids and not have to earn a taxable income.
- purpleflame1257 7d agoThe same authors saw some evidence of development problems among the children in the same cohort. https://www.nber.org/papers/w21571 https://www.nber.org/papers/w21571
- CincinnatiMan 7d agoSo is the takeaway that universal child care has a positive impact on GDP of the parents, but a negative impact on the overall life of the child?
- zmgsabst 7d agoOf course it has positive GDP on the parents: if two women each care for each others children rather than their own, GDP goes up even though the impact on both families is negative (due to lost travel time, as the mothers swap roles).
- bluGill 7d agoThe more likely case is one person (most often women, but men do childcare as well) is taking care of the kids of at least 3 couples (6 people), and could be up over 10 couples (which happens though often isn't legal or a good idea). That is per year, the kids grow out of daycare in 12-15 years, but a person typically works for 40 years.