Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program (2015) [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program (2015) [pdf]

#41

Post by zootar » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 6:26 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #23

killjoywashere wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some real cognitive dissonance with the mixed desires for women to have complete equality in the workplace, and children who are perfectly cared for as though they were in their mother's arms, yet the children can't come to work in many cases for very practical reasons (highly intellectually demanding work settings, high risk work settings, etc). And at the same time, it's all men's fault.

The evidence for advantages from being raised by a parent rather than other caregivers is extremely thin, and more important, unquantified. We invoke all those platitudes about the importance of mothering because we lack the data to make meaningful assertions. How much more will your child earn if you stay home and raise it, instead of going to work and leaving it in daycare? And does that offset the advantages we kn…

Do SAT scores correlate highly with parental income after controlling for parental SAT scores?

Re: Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program (2015) [pdf]

#42

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 6:41 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #23

killjoywashere wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some real cognitive dissonance with the mixed desires for women to have complete equality in the workplace, and children who are perfectly cared for as though they were in their mother's arms, yet the children can't come to work in many cases for very practical reasons (highly intellectually demanding work settings, high risk work settings, etc). And at the same time, it's all men's fault.

The evidence for advantages from being raised by a parent rather than other caregivers is extremely thin, and more important, unquantified. We invoke all those platitudes about the importance of mothering because we lack the data to make meaningful assertions. How much more will your child earn if you stay home and raise it, instead of going to work and leaving it in daycare? And does that offset the advantages we kn…

> We have quite a lot of evidence that, e.g., SAT scores correlate highly with parental income.

Correlation isn't causation; there's a big highly mutually correlated group of things (SAT scores, IQ, educational attainment, parental IQ, parental income, parental educational attainment, # of books in home during childhood,...) there is at best very weak evidence that parental income is a cause of SAT scores, such that a parent who foregoes income to spend more time with the child would be, even before considering any effect from greater parental contact time, harming their child's likely SAT scores.

Re: Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program (2015) [pdf]

#43

Post by jelliclesfarm » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 6:59 AM UTC

pay_more_money wrote: post #20

xupybd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Pay more money for all the desirable jobs, never mind the undesirable jobs But how? We've found that market economies tend to work the best. These pay based on supply and demand. The other option is a planned economy where you might be able to attempt something like this but all examples of planned economies have resulted in so much suffering I don't think we want to try that again. Who is going to drive the rubbish…

Here's a subtle clue: even under tightly controlled, planned social arrangements, for example, when you attempt to bring a criminal to justice, you might sometimes find incentives that create underground market economies. Spooky bribery at a distance, if you will. Surrogate motherhood is rare and problematic, but in some cases there is enough incentive to simply carry a child for a reward, and then exit the parental…

This begs the question: why get married?

Re: Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program (2015) [pdf]

#44

Post by didibus » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 8:36 AM UTC

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #31

I am sorry, but I don’t understand something. Why should it be inexpensive to have children? And I am not talking $$. Is Quebec trying to boost its population?

Not inexpensive, but a shared burden across all of society. Quebec assumes that society needs children to sustain itself. That a child today is revenue tomorrow that goes back to society and helps pay for other's retirements, etc. So it's only fair for those choosing not to actively have children, to still contribute slightly in helping those who choose to have them.

Re: Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program (2015) [pdf]

#45

Post by didibus » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 8:41 AM UTC

Had to search what are non-cognitive skills. They are: emotional maturity, empathy, interpersonal skills and verbal and non-verbal communication.

Re: Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program (2015) [pdf]

#46

Post by steve_taylor » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 9:47 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #30

steve_taylor wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some recent studies have found lack of breastfeeding and autism to be linked.

“Linked” is a weasel word for lack of a a quantifiable result. (Not breastfeeding increases autism risk by X%.) The better thing is to look to the massive medical experiment we happened to have conducted in the last 50 years. From 1970 to today, breastfeeding rates have inverted. Back then, 70% of babies were never breastfed, even in the hospital. Today, it is the opposite. But rates of autism are not much higher amo…

“Linked” is a synonym for “correlated”. No need to be a dick.

Re: Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program (2015) [pdf]

#47

Post by zimablue » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 1:43 PM UTC

didibus wrote: post #44

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #31

I am sorry, but I don’t understand something. Why should it be inexpensive to have children? And I am not talking $$. Is Quebec trying to boost its population?

Not inexpensive, but a shared burden across all of society. Quebec assumes that society needs children to sustain itself. That a child today is revenue tomorrow that goes back to society and helps pay for other's retirements, etc. So it's only fair for those choosing not to actively have children, to still contribute slightly in helping those who choose to have them.

Which flies in the face of population growth and is also sociologically injust in the long term since it's rich people who are trending towards having more children (and also the privileged in more subtle ways:

https://medium.com/makingofamillionaire/rich-families-are-ha...

The source in that article doesn't show a complete reversal of the old trend yet but bear in mind that I think the level of privilege of parents compared to non-parents will be systematically underestimated because we're looking at income (which will both be reduced by having children, and I'm guessing being income-oriented correlates negatively with /wanting/ children so they've probably converted their privilege into other forms). They will also on average have all the forms of privilege which makes you an attractive partner with the time to have kids: looks, background of wealth, easy job.

I think we should very clearly distinguish things that benefit primarily children=everyone, and parents=the privileged.

For example, education directly benefits children and society but time off and tax breaks for parents is more of a benefit to them, the already privileged.

Someone will probably post a reply that we "need" children for pensions but that's kind of a misconception. You can run a pension system where each generation puts money into a pot and gets it back later, the truth is just that we've chosen not to. Basically if there's ever a pot of money government will find a way to spend it, so now we have this weird system where instead of each generation's pensions being self-contained they're offset by one generation. It's a political problem and bad choices rather than some rule of nature.

Re: Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program (2015) [pdf]

#48

Post by arandr0x » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 1:51 PM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #11

tejohnso wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [these findings] provide strong support for the argument that non-cognitive development is a crucial determinant of the long-term success of child care programs. Okay so non-cognitive development is important and clearly lacking in government supported child-care. I think the more interesting question is: Why is there such a difference between government supported child-care and parental care? Not all stay-at-home…

"non-cognitive development is important and clearly lacking in government supported child-care." I really doubt this. FYI I live in Quebec, and on my Highstreet there are a handful of daycares where normal businesses/stores/restaurants would be. Because they are small and common, it seems everyone is only a few hundred meters from their childcare around here. There are so, so many correlating factors that I'm going t…

I also live in Quebec and I've been told by people that the education system (meaning primary and secondary education) has changed quite a bit, not for the best, since 1997. In addition, one of the measures in the study is hyperactivity and anxiety in school age children, and what I've heard relative to that is there are more diagnoses because before children were not being detected that young.

I would have liked the study to try harder at controlling the effect, for example by comparing cohorts in regions where use of the government funded childcare is more/less common. Quebec has plenty of remote regions where people are more likely to rely on extended family for care.

The comparison group for the crime rate effect is the rest of Canada -- what the data essentially says is, at the time of data collection, you were more likely to be a criminal as a Quebec teen vs a teen in the rest of Canada if you were born in 1998-2000, instead of 1993. The authors interpret this as "exposure to child care", but the more appropriate meaning is probably that younger teens are more likely to commit crimes in Quebec. It would be difficult to see why -- except there are also more high school dropouts in Quebec and the school system means 17 year olds are a lot more likely to have the kind of freedom that lets one commit crimes in Quebec. IDK, on this one, I buy the correlation but not the causation. (They break up crime by type and they're not overwhelmingly drug crimes though. So whichever is the cause for this effect, it's not solely drug related.)

Re: Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program (2015) [pdf]

#49

Post by kaybe » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

zimablue wrote: post #47

didibus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not inexpensive, but a shared burden across all of society. Quebec assumes that society needs children to sustain itself. That a child today is revenue tomorrow that goes back to society and helps pay for other's retirements, etc. So it's only fair for those choosing not to actively have children, to still contribute slightly in helping those who choose to have them.

Which flies in the face of population growth and is also sociologically injust in the long term since it's rich people who are trending towards having more children (and also the privileged in more subtle ways: https://medium.com/makingofamillionaire/rich-families-are-ha... The source in that article doesn't show a complete reversal of the old trend yet but bear in mind that I think the level of privilege of parents…

I think the problem with the pension system you propose is that money is not actually real.

The money will have to be exchanged for goods (which usually don't store that long, so need to be produced fresh) and services (which don't store at all). If each generation wants to stop working the next generation needs to produces these things.

Re: Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program (2015) [pdf]

#50

Post by arandr0x » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #31

I am sorry, but I don’t understand something. Why should it be inexpensive to have children? And I am not talking $$. Is Quebec trying to boost its population?

Quebec does have a huge problem with birth rate, so yes, they are. (They do take on immigrants but not at anything near the rate similar socialist economies with similar demographic factors do.)

There's a cultural aspect. IMO Quebecers are more feminist than people from other places I've lived or visited. This probably gives better political support to the program, although it is not the economic reason for its existence.

But it's not inexpensive, we do have taxes to pay for it! As a working age person, I not only contribute a significant share of my salary to taxes that fund this program and others for parents, I also have to save up funds for when I am myself a parent. Yes the program and others in this vein make life generally easier for the more at-risk share of the population, but single moms in Quebec still have it pretty hard and if you're middle class you still have quite a bit to lose by having children (especially more than one).