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Why Child Care Is So Expensive

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Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#251

Post by roenxi »

darawk wrote: post #205
klipt wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is subsidized daycare necessary in these cases though? In America if daycare costs X and you earn Y much greater than X, then obviously you'll make more money going to work and sending your kid to daycare than being a stay at home parent. The people who choose to stay at home often either have multiple kids (higher X) or earn little enough (lower Y) that it's not an economic advantage for them to work. But those…

So, I think the argument would be that many mother's could go back to school and increase their skill-value to Y if they weren't stuck caring for children, maybe. I'm not sure. It's not clear to me that subsidized child-care is necessary, but I think if I were to make the argument, it'd look like that. EDIT: Another argument is that there are economies of scale to subsidized child-care. Such that caring for the margi…

> Another argument is that there are economies of scale to subsidized child-care

There are some very difficult to snswer questions with a scale argument applied to young children. Without bothering to look for a source it seems quite reasonable that young children who socialise 1:(small n) with a caregiver in a family unit turn out quite differently to those who socalise 1:(big N) in a 'highly efficient' daycare centre.

I could see that argument either being a pro or a con; most parents are as bad at parenting as they are at everything else. But the issues involved in creating economies-of-scale in child care mean it should be considered potentially neutral until they have been debated (vs considered as a net-positive as is normal in economics).

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#252

Post by chongli »

bdamm wrote: post #172
xamuel wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's as if they read in "Brave New World" about the abolition of the family unit and they took that as an instruction guide.

That happened some time ago. In fact, one of the issues with so many women in the workforce is that in the 50's that same class of women were providing community networking functions, allowing for local problem solving and support that is somewhat extinct now. Frankly I am unsold on the benefit to society of women in the workforce. Did we gain women's freedom at the cost of strong and good families? It's a taboo, now…

Yes, exactly. We traded away strong families and neighbourhoods for women's freedom. And then most of the benefits of that freedom were captured by employers through stagnating wages and landlords through skyrocketing rent and real estate prices.

We should be aiming to have fewer people in the workforce, not more. The economy is for the people, not people for the economy.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#253

Post by petra »

com2kid wrote: post #214
pfortuny wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It would allow more women to enter the workforce”. I understand what the quote means but, honestly, this is one of the big wrong points of our society: that caring for the children full-time is NOT being part of the workforce. This is one of those cultural ideas embedded in XXI Century logic which only does harm and transmits the wrong message: people’s life is as valuable as the money the work or the “job” they hav…

> This is one of those cultural ideas embedded in XXI Century logic which only does harm and transmits the wrong message: people’s life is as valuable as the money the work or the “job” they have, and of course, caring for the family is not a proper job. First off, what if someone doesn't want to be a stay at home parent? Why force traditional values on them? But, in terms of pure economics, let's put it at an extrem…

I'm not sure .

In a very large share of people work either in bullshit jobs or unnecessary jobs or are replacablable.

On the other hand, if children would get more love,maybe more of them would grow to be exceptional?

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#254

Post by aidenn0 »

jperras wrote: post #115
glofish wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article specifically calls out the Quebec experiment as having a negative impact on the children: > So, did the Quebec child-care experiment “work”? Yes, for parents and public financing. Perhaps not for the kids.

And it was about as vague as could possibly be: > But young Canadians who were eligible for the program experienced, as teenagers, “a significant worsening in self-reported health and in life satisfaction” relative to Canadians from other provinces. So, did the Quebec child-care experiment “work”? Yes, for parents and public financing. Perhaps not for the kids. The paper itself expands on it a little bit more: > A re…

Subsidizing something tends to increase the utilization of it, so more kids will be in childcare if you subsidize childcare.

Intuitively the extremely poor will benefit (the kid would have been neglected or malnourished &c. without subsidized child care) at the expense of the slightly less poor (the kid would have had a stay-at-home parent without subsidized child care).

Policy is full of tradeoffs (and politics is full of lying about the tradeoffs to get support for a particular policy).

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#255

Post by pnathan »

The solution is simple: extend the public school system to the newborn. It's widespread, the background check system is in place, the logistics are in place. The only question is funding and the legislation mandating it.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#256

Post by savingGrace »

umvi wrote: post #179

Unpopular opinion - but I think farming out the majority of the raising of children to daycares is a bad idea in the long term. Obviously some times you don't have a choice, but I think stay-at-home moms (or dads) are extremely valuable for the development of the child and potentially worth more than any monetary gains to be had from dual-income. Yeah, you might not be able to afford a nice house or car as quickly, b…

Exactly. This offends so many people to even bring it up, but I agree 100%. Our children are the most precious people in our lives, but we're willing to give them the worst of our time. If both parents are working, they come home at the end of the day too exhausted to invest in their children. Why are the kids getting the left-overs? Does that seem fair to them?

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#257

Post by nine_zeros »

mrlala wrote: post #240
nine_zeros wrote: post #226

How about going to Asian style societies where the caregivers are grandparents or older people? Most people close to retirement (or already retired) don't need as much money since medicare already takes care of them.

That would be great be apparently current older generations have been brainwashed into thinking that your entire goal for your life is to save for a lavish retirement where you will finally get to enjoy yourself every day after you retire and should have no responsibilities. Which basically equates to- don't enjoy any day until you retire because you are so busy focused on retirement. My parents are like that.. my mo…

>My parents are like that.. my mom even moved to live close to one of my siblings and the grandchildren.. but complains every single time she has to watch them because it takes up her valuable retired time... ok.

That can't be serious complaining since most financially wholesome retirees are bored out of their minds. Besides the few vacations they take a year, what else is there to do all day?

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#258

Post by factsaresacred »

mrlala wrote: post #240
nine_zeros wrote: post #226

How about going to Asian style societies where the caregivers are grandparents or older people? Most people close to retirement (or already retired) don't need as much money since medicare already takes care of them.

That would be great be apparently current older generations have been brainwashed into thinking that your entire goal for your life is to save for a lavish retirement where you will finally get to enjoy yourself every day after you retire and should have no responsibilities. Which basically equates to- don't enjoy any day until you retire because you are so busy focused on retirement. My parents are like that.. my mo…

The deal works both ways in most Asian societies. Grandparents take care of the grandchildren, children take care of the grandparents.

But in the West many children shuffle their folks off to a home. Kind of tragic all around.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#259

Post by stevenicr »

jperras wrote: post #115
glofish wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article specifically calls out the Quebec experiment as having a negative impact on the children: > So, did the Quebec child-care experiment “work”? Yes, for parents and public financing. Perhaps not for the kids.

And it was about as vague as could possibly be: > But young Canadians who were eligible for the program experienced, as teenagers, “a significant worsening in self-reported health and in life satisfaction” relative to Canadians from other provinces. So, did the Quebec child-care experiment “work”? Yes, for parents and public financing. Perhaps not for the kids. The paper itself expands on it a little bit more: > A re…

I've been taking an interest in issues around this:

"child care in general does not affect test scores, but has a negative effect on non-cognitive outcomes, such as impulsivity and risk-taking (Vandell et al., 2010)."

Lately. I believe this is serious factor in the seemingly exponential rise in juvenile crimes in our city lately.

I have also been exploring bad learning / testing in the schools along with lots of other problems like bullying and violence.. talking with some people who work in these areas, it appears no amount of money thrown at the schools / teachers / in school counselors / resource officers is going to fix it...

unless things are fixed at the homes of all the kids in the community. I believe in many of these communities one of the prevalent factors is no stay at home parent..

and sadly this has been going on for so long, in many cases the parents do not have the right knowledge or skills to teach the kids as they likely grew up in a similar no at-home parents, stare at the tube and get bigger kind of situation as well.

I am interested in any research into these areas.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#260

Post by simonsarris »

umvi wrote: post #179

Unpopular opinion - but I think farming out the majority of the raising of children to daycares is a bad idea in the long term. Obviously some times you don't have a choice, but I think stay-at-home moms (or dads) are extremely valuable for the development of the child and potentially worth more than any monetary gains to be had from dual-income. Yeah, you might not be able to afford a nice house or car as quickly, b…

Studying Quebec's universal daycare launched in 1997 (with slogan "Children at the heart of our choice"), Jon Gruber @MIT and colleagues found... they didn't fare so well. Negative effects especially for boys and aggressive kids.

https://ifstudies.org/blog/measuring-the-long-term-effects-o...

It's weird to me the goal would be "make sure everyone has daycare" instead of "make sure people can raise their children".

What would taking the same amount of money and using it as a direct cash transfer subsidy look like?

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