
Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program (2015) [pdf] - allthebest
https://www.nber.org/papers/w21571.pdf
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didibus
Had to search what are non-cognitive skills. They are: emotional maturity,
empathy, interpersonal skills and verbal and non-verbal communication.

~~~
drjasonharrison
In other words, soft skills not explicitly taught as part of the technical
education.

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hkt
Does this suggest that a full time parent yields better outcomes for children
than access to childcare? I have read that correctly, I think..

~~~
shoo
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
childcare programs may support development of non-cognitive skills, but the
Quebec childcare program that they analysed did not.

    
    
      > We find that the Quebec policy [of making non-parental child care much more affordable]
      > had a lasting negative impact on the non-cognitive skills of exposed children, but no consistent 
      > impact on their cognitive skills.  At older ages, program exposure is associated with worsened 
      > health and life satisfaction, and increased rates of criminal activity.  Increases in aggression and 
      > hyperactivity are concentrated in boys, as is the rise in the crime rates. 
    
      > [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. This suggests that
      > measuring the impact of child care programs on the non-cognitive development is important.
      > When a child care program fails to improve non-cognitive development, it may have no
      > long-standing positive effects on children.  
    
      > [...] An important outstanding question is whether universally provided child care can have
      > widespread positive impacts on non-cognitive development, which our results together with
      > evidence such as Heckman et al. (2013) suggest should lead to long run positive outcomes.

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xupybd
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 force but this may not pay off
in the long term if future generations fail to perform in life.

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briandear
> Economically we are far better off with children in care and parents in the
> work force

Any data to support that? Given that there is a deadweight economic loss due
to taxes, if both parents work and the income from the second parent doesn’t
exceed the cost of child care + taxes, it would seem that in many cases, two
parents working could actually be a net loss for the economy as the family
might have less disposable income than if just one parent worked. A family
with two kids could very easily spend $50k per year on child care. So the
other parent would have to make $50k just to break even before the taxes. The
second parent could very easily have to make $80k just to cover child care
plus the loss from taxes since that second income is taxed as part of the
overall household income. Kids with stay at home parents have higher school
performance, which has an economic impact as well.

[https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/eric-bettinger-why-
sta...](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/eric-bettinger-why-stay-home-
parents-are-good-older-children)

~~~
flukus
Take away the dollar figures and it makes sense, 1 person caring for 8 or so
children (child care) should be much more efficient than 1 person looking
after 1/2/3 children (normal for home care).

That this efficiency ends up lining someone else's pockets would be a separate
issue.

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Spooky23
For most families, the efficiency gained is a few thousand dollars a year max.

The real motivator is that leaving the workforce these days for any length of
time is a death sentence for future employment.

~~~
drjasonharrison
This is not true. You can do it! I
did:[https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjasonharrison/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjasonharrison/)

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jelliclesfarm
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?

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didibus
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.

~~~
zimablue
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...](https://medium.com/makingofamillionaire/rich-families-are-having-more-
kids-1c0b80d5a16e)

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.

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kaybe
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.

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zimablue
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.

