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]

#51

Post by dsfyu404ed » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 3:06 PM UTC

omegaworks wrote: post #22

mattnewport wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price of something being higher than you'd prefer does not mean there is a market failure. Child care is not a public good and there are not obvious externalities. Excessive regulation might be a factor but that is not market failure. The fact that the unsubsidized cost of child care is higher than some parents are willing to pay may just be evidence that there are no efficiencies to be gained for those parents.…

You're computing the value of a parent's career as a single point in time salary value, and not as a integration under the curve of salary earned over time. A parent may not have the cash reserves at that single point in time to pay for childcare out of pocket, that doesn't mean that the value they get from staying employed over time does not exceed that cost. Leaving the workforce starts you over at zero. Universal…

>Leaving the workforce starts you over at zero.

This is less and less true the further from tech you get. An accountant can take a couple years off without having to start near entry level.

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

#52

Post by dsfyu404ed » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 3:13 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 would say there is a defeatist, antagonist attitude (for the last 100 years), but in the most recent generation ... it's like they also have a kind of 'given up' attitude.

If you and pretty much everyone around you believed X and the rest of the country just did Y anyway every time you can't blame them. If you're not in control of your own destiny why bother since what you do won't matter?

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

#53

Post by PaulHoule » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 3:22 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #33

xupybd wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I think they are saying the lack of non-cognitive skills appears to be what is lacking. But there does seem to be some evidence that those who are in parental care better develop these skills and have better outcomes. I think the tricky part will be demonstrating how to provide these non-cognitive skills outside of parental care. Economically we are far better off with children in care and parents in the work for…

> Economically we are far better off with children in care and parents in the work force but this may not pay off in the long term if future generations fail to perform in life. Who is "we" in this statement? The parents? Society? I think whether it makes sense varies from family to family. When my daughter was born, my wife and I did the math and it made zero sense for her to go back to work and for us to pay for ch…

If you work outside the home and put your kids in child care you pay taxes and help billionaires get rich, two things you don't do if you take care of your own.

20 years ago there was a comic in Z magazine that showed two day care workers talking about how paradoxical it was that they couldn't afford to put their own kids in day care. Of course they blamed "capitalism" but in other industries "capitalism" works differently. What was revolutionary about the Ford motor car was that auto workers were productive enough that they could afford the cars that they made, not something that is true about childcare workers.

Some kids are in family situations that are worse than the average day care. For instance, I know a lady who raised a crop of five children, four of which were spectacularly unsuccessful, and then she took care of their children, most of whom turned out to be white people with black problems. Somebody might look at this situation and see "love", but that love is obviously toxic.

In the case of our family we had our son in day care part time, which gave my wife a break sometimes and let him get some socialization, but didn't have a huge cost. As he spent most of his time growing up with adults he wound up with great verbal skills.

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

#54

Post by graeme » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

arandr0x wrote: post #50

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 exist…

Quebec takes about 50,000 immigrants per year with a population of 8 million.

This is a lower rate than Canada, but a higher rate than in European contries. For example, france took 200,000 immigrants and has a population of 65 million.

I couldn't find stats on the percent of Quebec's population that are immigrants, but I expect it's higher than the european average.

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

#55

Post by graeme » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 3:42 PM UTC

kaybe wrote: post #49

zimablue wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good points. I'm astonished that people don't realize this.

(In a small country you could use the savings to import good from abroad of course)

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

#56

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

xupybd wrote: post #4

shoo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The authors don't appear to be directly arguing that (at least not in the conclusion, i didn't read the body of the paper) The authors seem to be arguing that development of non-cognitive skills is important for long-term health, life satisfaction, etc, and that childcare programs that do not measure and attempt to support development of non-cognitive skills may therefore be somewhat harmful. It is possible that some…

Yes I think they are saying the lack of non-cognitive skills appears to be what is lacking. But there does seem to be some evidence that those who are in parental care better develop these skills and have better outcomes. I think the tricky part will be demonstrating how to provide these non-cognitive skills outside of parental care. Economically we are far better off with children in care and parents in the work for…

[deleted]

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

#57

Post by learc83 » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

james_s_tayler wrote: post #24

learc83 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is it the parent-to-child ratio? That's probably most of it. Studies show that siblings born too close together have reduced intelligence compared to siblings born further apart. Studies also show that the number of words per day spoken to a child has a direct impact on intelligence. A small child will completely monopolize all of your attention for huge chunks of the day. It's just not possible for one person to pr…

Studies probably show the opposite is true too. Social science has proved itself not to be trustworthy enough that we can just bandy about the terms "studies show" like it means something. It doesn't mean anything anymore and we need to start holding people to higher standards of proof and competency. As a rule I would suggest it's no longer viable to say studies show, you must provide the details of which studies ha…

>I'm not saying anything for or against your position by the way. Just "studies show" doesn't cut it any more.

Studies show never "cut it" depending on what your definition of cut it is. I just assume that anyone that cares to look further into it can Google it if they want to.

If it's a particularly contraversial, or unbelievable study I tend to take the time to link to it.

But time a child spends interacting with adults correlates positively with intelligence, is very widely accepted/supported, so a Google search should be easy.

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

#58

Post by zimablue » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

kaybe wrote: post #49

zimablue wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think that's true, it's true that "money is not real", and will need to be exchanged for services.

But a lot of the expenses each generation has are for example housing, food, cars. So sure, that method doesn't hedge against the price of services or fluctuations in whatever you invest the money in, but neither does the current system. Current system is exposed to inflation, FX etc too. It does at least hedge against [working vs retirement age] population which is one which definitely varies. Basically the current system is going to screw my generation (in the UK) because we're paying off our parent's triple-locked gold-plated pensions, which we are definitely not going to receive. So we'll be the one that pays for ending the offset.

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

#59

Post by james_s_tayler » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #57

james_s_tayler wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studies probably show the opposite is true too. Social science has proved itself not to be trustworthy enough that we can just bandy about the terms "studies show" like it means something. It doesn't mean anything anymore and we need to start holding people to higher standards of proof and competency. As a rule I would suggest it's no longer viable to say studies show, you must provide the details of which studies ha…

>I'm not saying anything for or against your position by the way. Just "studies show" doesn't cut it any more. Studies show never "cut it" depending on what your definition of cut it is. I just assume that anyone that cares to look further into it can Google it if they want to. If it's a particularly contraversial, or unbelievable study I tend to take the time to link to it. But time a child spends interacting with a…

On the one hand I agree that it sort of did never really cut it, but on the other hand, culturally, it really felt like that before the whole reproducibility crisis went mainstream that science, while not infallible, was at least good and it worked and so could be trusted to some degree. And I think in that case yeah, if you wanted to poke further into things then you could just go hunt for the information.

There really has been a three-pronged breakdown in trust over "studies" over the last few decades. First we learned to distrust the phrase "studies show" after we learned Big Tobacco paid for studies to show what they wanted to show. Next we learned to be more skeptical of studies show after the whole anti-vaxxer crowd latched onto fraudulent research. Finally after the reproducibility crisis went mainstream we are now facing the reality that the economics of the industry is bust and is driven it into a pathological state and there are massive systemic failures.

This is a huge problem. Science is a really important part of our sense-making apparatus. It's social science in particular that so many widely accepted beliefs that came from research that turned out to not replicate. So what does it even matter that something is widely believed anymore?

To quote Nietzsche "I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you."

Culturally, we've turned a corner and we need to toss the phrase "studies show" out the window and push back when we hear it in isolation like that. We need to shine a light on the claims being made so that bad and/or incompetent actors can't hide in the shadows. It's one small step on the journey to mend our most important sense-making apparatus.

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

#60

Post by learc83 » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

james_s_tayler wrote: post #59

learc83 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm not saying anything for or against your position by the way. Just "studies show" doesn't cut it any more. Studies show never "cut it" depending on what your definition of cut it is. I just assume that anyone that cares to look further into it can Google it if they want to. If it's a particularly contraversial, or unbelievable study I tend to take the time to link to it. But time a child spends interacting with a…

On the one hand I agree that it sort of did never really cut it, but on the other hand, culturally, it really felt like that before the whole reproducibility crisis went mainstream that science, while not infallible, was at least good and it worked and so could be trusted to some degree. And I think in that case yeah, if you wanted to poke further into things then you could just go hunt for the information. There rea…

Mark Twain popularized the phrase "lies, damn lies, and statistics" over a hundred years ago.

There's never been a time when you could just trust someone saying "studies show", or "experts agree". If you read something like that, you don't already know it to be true, and you have the time and inclination, look it up.

This has nothing to do with a reproducibility crisis, or a societal shift and everything to do with me not having the time to to include footnotes with every 2 paragraph comment I make on the internet.

>Culturally, we've turned a corner and we need to toss the phrase "studies show" out the window and push back when we hear it in isolation like that.

We haven't turned a corner. You're explicitly arguing that we should. Your argument is that society can only be saved if we change our society to enforce your preferred taboos.

>It's social science in particular that so many widely accepted beliefs that came from research that turned out to not replicate. So what does it even matter that something is widely believed anymore?

Tossing out the last century of social science research probably isn't the best solution to the problem. But hey what do I know.