Claims that government-funded centre-based daycare and pre-kindergarten programs promote positive early-childhood development unsubstantiated; research remains inconclusive

By Ben Eisen of The Fraser Institute.

The Impact of Daycare Participation on Children's Development: A Review of Recent Evidence

• In recent years, Canadian governments have made large financial commitments to expand access to and participation in formal daycare centres. One of the stated rationales for these expenditures is that they will have a positive impact on child development.
• This study examines that premise by reviewing recent empirical research on the effects of participation in centre-based daycare and pre-kindergarten programs on child development.
• The review is illustrative rather than comprehensive. We selected studies based on their prominence, methodological credibility (randomized, quasi-experimental, or meta-analytic designs), and policy relevance.
• The results from the studies examined here are mixed. One study from Boston shows significant positive effects from childcare participation on academic attainment. But other studies from New Haven and Ontario as well as a meta-analysis from across OECD countries show null or mixed effects on child development outcomes. Studies from Quebec and Tennessee show negative results.
• Taken together, the recent evidence remains inconclusive about whether participation in formal childcare has an effect on children’s well-being and by how much. On balance, the studies reviewed here support the long-standing reality that evidence about the developmental effects from participation in centre-based childcare are mixed, often modest, and contingent upon a wide variety of factors.
• Policymakers should therefore be modest about any claims they make about the developmental effects from government expenditures designed to expand participation in centre-based daycare.

Regulation and entrepreneurship in the U.S. child care market

By Anna Claire Flowers.

"Abstract

This paper examines how regulations affect entrepreneurial activity in the U.S. child care industry. By analyzing research on child care affordability, availability, and quality, I contrast the regulatory process against the entrepreneurial market process to identify key sources of market dysfunction. State-level regulations for formal child care aim to resolve information asymmetries and establish standards for measuring quality. In practice, they produce at least three significant unintended consequences that hinder entrepreneurship and innovation in the child care market: regulations create barriers to entry, disrupt essential feedback loops between consumers and providers, and generate profit opportunities for entrepreneurship outside the regulated sector. These effects directly undermine the stated policy objectives for licensed child care by inhibiting transparency, availability, and affordability for families."

More Childcare Regulations Equal Fewer Babies, Study Finds

By Michael Tennant of The New American. 

"States with more-restrictive childcare regulations have lower fertility rates than states with less-restrictive ones in part because stricter regulations drive up the cost of childcare, according to a recent study from West Virginia University’s (WVU) Knee Regulatory Research Center.

“Childcare workers and parents bear the weight of licensing regulations and administrative costs,” study co-author Anna Claire Flowers, a PhD fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, said in a statement to the Daily Caller. “High-quality care is the goal, but some measures have been shown to boost prices much more than quality.”

The Daily Caller reported that “childcare costs rose nationally by 32% from 2019 to 2023, outpacing the 20% rise in overall prices within that same time frame.”

For this reason, many consider childcare “a ‘classic’ example of market failure,” the report explains, and thus demand “greater intervention in the form of subsidies” to offset the higher costs. “However,” continues the report,

a subsidy approach misses the key role that the regulatory environment of the childcare market plays in raising costs. Though well-intended, the regulatory framework cripples progress towards affordability, availability, flexibility, and quality for American families seeking childcare solutions.

Nanny States

The authors created a childcare regulation index that ranks states on a zero-to-10 scale on the basis of their childcare regulations, with zero being the most restrictive and 10 being the least restrictive. The states with the lowest rankings are, not surprisingly, clustered primarily in liberal New England, though a few Great Lakes-area states including Tim Walz’s Minnesota also have highly restrictive childcare regulations. The states with the greatest childcare freedom are mostly in the South and the West. The freest state for childcare is Louisiana, with an index of 9.08, while Massachusetts came in dead last at just 1.73.

The rankings considered 17 variables in four major categories of regulation: “group size and staff-child ratios by age range” and “training hours and educational requirements by position.” New York, for example, requires childcare facilities to have one staff member for every eight pre-kindergarten children, while North Carolina, at the other end of the spectrum, allows up to 20 kids per instructor. “Illinois requires preschool teachers to have a high school diploma and 60 college credit hours, plus additional training and experience to become licensed, whereas other states only require a GED,” notes the study. Virginia, meanwhile, mandates “75 square feet of outdoor space per child,” a third of which “must be shaded playground space with shock-absorbent surfacing.”

According to the authors:

These indicators … are also poor indicators of true quality. Rather, they are the only “proxies” that regulators can objectively set. In contrast, through repeated interactions, parents are generally able to determine the value and level of quality on harder to evaluate metrics. However, these easy-to-observe metrics for regulators that do not correlate well with actual quality drive up cost[s] considerably. Childcare providers must invest in meeting the regulatory standards, which can involve hiring more staff, obtaining certifications, upgrading facilities, or purchasing specialized equipment. These compliance costs are typically passed on to parents through higher fees…. In other words, regulation[s] tighten the supply of services in ways that drive up prices[,] which fuels the affordability concerns.

Expensive? No Kidding!

Faced with higher costs for childcare, it is only natural that couples should curtail their childbearing. The authors found this to be the case by comparing each state’s ranking to its “fertility gap,” the difference between the “replacement rate” of 2.1 births per woman and the state’s actual fertility rate:

The inverse relationship between regulation and fertility can be observed … in some states. The New England region generally demonstrates low index scores (most restrictive regulation) and above average fertility gaps. In our work, we find that a one-point increase in the childcare regulation index (toward more childcare freedom) is associated with a reduction of the fertility gap by 0.025 to 0.029 children.

If Massachusetts’ childcare regulations were to become as loose as Louisiana’s, its fertility rate would increase by 14 percent, the authors assert. And, they add, if all states became as free as Louisiana with regard to childcare, 14 states’ fertility rates would exceed 1.9 births per woman, and two would even exceed the replacement rate.

“While not the only major player, childcare regulation is one piece of the policy puzzle that can make it more or less difficult for families to find compatibility between work responsibilities and raising children,” Flowers told the Daily Caller.

That, in turn, has a direct bearing on how many children are born. Another study cited by the authors concluded:

Where the two [career and family] are easy to combine, many women have both a career and multiple children, resulting in high fertility and high female labor force participation. When career and family goals are in conflict, fewer women work and fewer babies are born.

Vance Virtually Vindicated

By implication, the WVU study vindicates Ohio Senator J.D. Vance’s much-mocked suggestion that car-seat regulations are to some degree responsible for America’s falling birthrate. The more rules that manufacturers must follow — and thus the more they must charge for their products — and the more advanced the age at which children are forced to ride in car seats, the more expensive having children becomes. The more expensive having children becomes, the less of it there will be. As with childcare regulations, car-seat regulations don’t explain the entire birthrate decline, but they undoubtedly play a part in it."

The 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion reduced employment among unmarried mothers with relatively low levels of education and young children

See Employment and Labor Supply Responses to the Child Tax Credit Expansion: Theory and Evidence by Michael R. Strain & Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach of AEI.

"Abstract

The 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion increased government benefits to families, and especially to families with the lowest incomes. Economic theory predicts that this policy intervention would have led to a reduction in labor supply among adults in those families. Our review of available research suggests that employment within broadly defined demographic groups was not reduced by the 2021 CTC changes. However, we see some evidence that employment was reduced among unmarried mothers with relatively low levels of education and young children—the demographic group that was most affected by the CTC expansion"

Do Family Leave Policies Work?

By Jeffrey Miron of Cato.

"Policies that subsidize or mandate family leave aim to reduce the gender pay gap, shrink the “child penalty,” and otherwise promote success for women in the labor market.

A recent study, however, finds

no evidence that [California’s 2004 Paid Family Leave Act (CPFL)] … increased employment, boosted earnings, or encouraged childbearing, suggesting that CPFL had little effect on the gender pay gap or child penalty. For first-time mothers, … CPFL reduced employment and earnings roughly a decade after they gave birth.

The study authors conclude,

Given the growing research on the health and well-being benefits of paid family leave policies, US policymakers favoring these benefits may want to consider alternative implementation strategies to mitigate the potentially adverse effects on women’s employment and careers.

One alternative is to leave decisions about career and child-rearing to women and their families, with no government thumb on the scale!"

The Long-Term Effects of Income for At-Risk Infants: Evidence from Supplemental Security Income

By Amelia Hawkins, Christopher Hollrah, Sarah Miller, Laura R. Wherry, Gloria Aldana & Mitchell Wong.

Abstract

"The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program uses a birthweight cutoff at 1200 grams to determine eligibility. Using birth certificates linked to administrative records, we find low-income families of infants born just below the cutoff receive higher monthly cash benefits (equal to 27% of family income) at ages 0-2 and small but significant effects on transfers through age 10. Yet, we detect no improvements in health care use and mortality in infancy, nor health and human capital outcomes as observed through young adulthood for these infants. We also find no improvements for their older siblings."

Degrees for all: How to make day care more expensive, less available

From Joanne Jacobs.

"Requiring day-care workers to earn a college degree would backfire, critics said. It would drive experienced people out of the field, making day care harder to find and more expensive. And that's exactly what it's doing, now that the District of Columbia regulation has gone into effect, reports Justin Zuckerman on Reason. 

Ami Bawa, lead teacher and assistant director at a nursery school in northwest D.C., has 20 years of experience, but no degree. She's been waiting five months for a waiver that's supposed to be offered to veteran teachers. So far, nothing. Even if she gets to keep her job, she fears losing good teachers.

The evidence that a two- or four-year degree makes a child-care teacher more effective "is not strong," Robert Pianta, a professor of early childhood education at the University of Virginia, tells Zuckerman.

"Many day care teachers eager to retain their jobs have enrolled part-time at institutions such as Trinity Washington University," which has very loose requirements for its early education degree, writes Zuckerman. They "can take classes like American history and music appreciation but aren't required to take courses in early education." 

On the flip side, Nicole Page, a local preschool director, employs a teacher with a Ph.D. in family and children studies who's considered unqualified to teach at a day care because her degree isn't in early childhood education. Ten other teachers also don't meet the requirements."

Congress Should Fix the Nanny Tax

By Adam N. Michel of Cato.

"The federal government makes hiring a nanny or other household employee a labyrinthine nightmare of tax, labor, and immigration law. These rigid rules decrease childcare options and increase costs for families and childcare providers. Congress could add flexibility by allowing household employees to work as independent contractors, bypassing much of the complexity.

If a family pays a household worker—nanny, maid, gardener—$2,700 or more in 2024, they are considered “employers,” and the individual providing the service is an “employee.” That threshold is easily surpassed by hiring a babysitter for four weeks a year at the DC minimum wage of $17 per hour.

Triggering the IRS thresholds can come with requirements to pay, collect, and remit income, payroll, and unemployment taxes. It also requires registering as an employer with federal and state governments, collecting and retaining employment eligibility verifications, carrying a worker’s compensation insurance policy, and displaying Department of Labor employee rights notices in your home (yes, the same ones hanging in your lunchroom you’ve probably never read).

Not complying with these rules can trigger tens of thousands of dollars in fines and penalties.

These rules are ostensibly in place to protect the household employees. Instead, their cost and complexity push many parents and workers into the grey economy—often unknowingly opening them up to legal liabilities and tax penalties. The rules also incentivize the use of less flexible third‐​party service providers and institutional childcare that raises costs for families and lowers pay for providers.

To fix this, Congress could allow families and nannies the flexibility to bypass the formal employment rules by allowing them to elect independent contractor status. In 2020, Rachel Greszler proposed such a reform to allow more flexibility for families and workers, writing, “Congress should create a safe harbor to allow individuals performing household work to choose to be treated as contractors instead of household employees, if they prefer such treatment.” Households would still have to report wages exceeding $600 a year to the IRS. This is a much more reasonable requirement. Greszler explains that “this choice would allow individuals to receive higher base pay as contractors because of the compliance and tax savings for the household they serve.”

The complexity of household employment relationships is not unique. Existing definitions of employer, employee, and independent contractor are often ambiguous and contradictory under tax law, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the National Labor Relations Act, and as many as 25 other laws that cover employment arrangements. These definitions are ripe for reform—or at least standardization and clarification.

One such attempt is Senator Mike Lee’s 21^st Century Worker Act, which creates a bright line test to determine a worker’s employment status and standardizes definitions across the major tax and employment laws. The bill also allows a safe harbor election for workers and employers to choose their legal status in ambiguous cases. If mutually agreed, similar safe harbor treatment should be afforded to individual households and their service providers.

In‐​home childcare’s tax and regulatory cost is only one small facet of a much broader policy discussion covering family affordability and declining fertility. For example, Ryan Bourne discusses how state and federal policies, more broadly, unnecessarily raise the cost of childcare. Vanessa Brown Calder and Chelsea Follett provide an excellent overview of fertility trends and reforms that would make family life easier for Americans with children. Alex Nowrasteh recently outlined how new proposed regulations could end affordable childcare services provided through the Au Pair Program.

As a new parent who considers himself relatively well‐​versed in tax law and adept at figuring out the arcana of government programs, I naïvely assumed that legally hiring in‐​home childcare would be reasonably straightforward. I was wrong. Even with a plethora of online payroll services, faithfully navigating state and federal tax and employment law is a nightmare.

The cost and complexity incentivize families to use formal center‐​based childcare and make it more likely that household employees operate in grey markets that expose families and workers to steep penalties and back taxes. Allowing an opt‐​out would benefit families and caregivers."

Caring for Small Children Does Not Require a College Degree

By Vanessa Brown Calder of Cato.

"Last week, a federal court upheld D.C.’s licensing regulation, which requires child care providers to have a college degree in order to care for children. In so doing, the court gives D.C. officials the go ahead to implement the regulation, which will make D.C. the most restrictively regulated state or territory in the country in this regard. This is unfortunate news, as the new regulation will have a negative impact on child care professionals, parents, and children alike.

Perhaps most obviously, D.C.’s rulemaking acts as a barrier to employment for existing and would‐​be child care providers. One of the plaintiffs in the case, Ilumi Sanchez, is an example of such a care provider. Sanchez is a mother herself, and has provided care to children since the mid‐​90s, only to be told in 2016 that her qualifications do not meet new D.C. standards that require a college degree to care for small tots.

Perhaps D.C. officials need to be reminded that caring for small tots does not require a college degree. In 2021, 54 percent of U.S. children lived in a household where neither parent would qualify to care for small children by D.C.’s standard that requires child care directors to have a bachelor’s degree. And 43 percent of U.S. children live in a household where neither parent would qualify to care for small children based on D.C.’s requirement that child care staff have an associate degree.

Moreover, a majority of adults in 56 of D.C.‘s neighborhoods would not qualify to care for children by its bachelor’s degree requirement, and a majority of adults in 25 of D.C.’s neighborhoods would not qualify to care for children by its associate degree requirement. Many of these “unqualified” adults are, of course, parents themselves.^[i]

In addition to being a senseless barrier to work for would‐​be carers, D.C. regulations also act as a barrier for parents looking for child care: a study on the impact of child care regulations found that imposing just minimum educational requirements on staff reduced the number of child care centers in associated markets. That is bad news for parents, as it means that they are likely to have even fewer choices at a time when the child care industry is still recovering its pre‐​pandemic workforce and child care is hard to come by.

Finally, having fewer care options is similarly problematic for D.C. children: in the same study, the authors conclude that imposing regulations on the childcare market creates winners and losers, where the losers are primarily children in lower income zip codes.

The authors report that children in more regulated areas were pushed into home‐​based day care, resulting in more children in home‐​based day care. But because the home‐​based day cares did not or could not hire more adults, individual children likely received less care and attention.

Unfortunately, D.C.’s licensing regulation goes beyond child care center staff and applies to some staff in home‐​based day cares, too. So for D.C. children, informal care is more likely to be the fallback option, which may mean that D.C. kids have less predictable care providers, less consistency, and less developmentally enriching environments than they would without the regulation.

It should not be a surprise that child care regulations, like many regulations, are regressive. But it is a shame that in the most expensive child care market in the country, D.C. officials seem intent on making care harder to come by. Particularly under these circumstances, it is a disgrace to put devoted, experienced workers out of a job; eliminate perfectly good child care options for parents; and keep children from consistent, reliable, developmentally appropriate care.

---

^[i] D.C.’s licensing rules for child care staff are more complex than simply requiring a bachelor’s or associate degree for would‐​be carers, and they include additional experience and educational focus requirements. After taking those into account, it is safe to say that an even smaller minority of U.S. parents qualify to care for small children under D.C. standards."

A top researcher says it's time to rethink our entire approach to preschool

By Anya Kamanetz of NPR.

"Dale Farran has been studying early childhood education for half a century. Yet her most recent scientific publication has made her question everything she thought she knew.

"It really has required a lot of soul-searching, a lot of reading of the literature to try to think of what were plausible reasons that might account for this."

And by "this," she means the outcome of a study that lasted more than a decade. It included 2,990 low-income children in Tennessee who applied to free, public prekindergarten programs. Some were admitted by lottery, and the others were rejected, creating the closest thing you can get in the real world to a randomized, controlled trial — the gold standard in showing causality in science. 

Farran and her co-authors at Vanderbilt University followed both groups of children all the way through sixth grade. At the end of their first year, the kids who went to pre-K scored higher on school readiness — as expected.

But after third grade, they were doing worse than the control group. And at the end of sixth grade, they were doing even worse. They had lower test scores, were more likely to be in special education, and were more likely to get into trouble in school, including serious trouble like suspensions. 

"Whereas in third grade we saw negative effects on one of the three state achievement tests, in sixth grade we saw it on all three — math, science and reading," says Farran. "In third grade, where we had seen effects on one type of suspension, which is minor violations, by sixth grade we're seeing it on both types of suspensions, both major and minor."

That's right. A statewide public pre-K program, taught by licensed teachers, housed in public schools, had a measurable and statistically significant negative effect on the children in this study.

Farran hadn't expected it. She didn't like it. But her study design was unusually strong, so she couldn't easily explain it away.

"This is still the only randomized controlled trial of a statewide pre-K, and I know that people get upset about this and don't want it to be true."

Why it's a bad time for bad news

It's a bad time for early childhood advocates to get bad news about public pre-K. Federally funded universal prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds has been a cornerstone of President Biden's social agenda, and there are talks about resurrecting it from the stalled-out "Build Back Better" plan. Preschool has been expanding in recent years and is currently publicly funded to some extent in 46 states. About 7 in 10 4-year-olds now attend some kind of academic program. 

This enthusiasm has rested in part on research going back to the 1970s. Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman, among others, showed substantial long-term returns on investment for specially designed and carefully implemented programs.

To put it crudely, policymakers and experts have touted for decades now that if you give a 4-year-old who is growing up in poverty a good dose of story time and block play, they'll be more likely to grow up to become a high-earning, productive citizen.

What went wrong in Tennessee

No study is the last word. The research on pre-K continues to be mixed. In May 2021, a working paper (not yet peer reviewed) came out that looked at Boston's pre-K program. The study was a similar size to Farran's, used a similar quasi-experimental design based on random assignment, and also followed up with students for years. This study found that the preschool kids had better disciplinary records and were much more likely to graduate from high school, take the SATs and go to college, though their test scores didn't show a difference.

Farran believes that, with a citywide program, there's more opportunity for quality control than in her statewide study. Boston's program spent more per student, and it also was mixed-income, whereas Tennessee's program is for low-income kids only.

So what went wrong in Tennessee? Farran has some ideas — and they challenge almost everything about how we do school. How teachers are prepared, how programs are funded and where they are located. Even something as simple as where the bathrooms are.

In short, Farran is rethinking her own preconceptions, which are an entire field's preconceptions, about what constitutes quality pre-K.

Do kids in poverty deserve the same teaching as rich kids?

"One of the biases that I hadn't examined in myself is the idea that poor children need a different sort of preparation from children of higher-income families."

She's talking about drilling kids on basic skills. Worksheets for tracing letters and numbers. A teacher giving 10-minute lectures to a whole class of 25 kids who are expected to sit on their hands and listen, only five of whom may be paying any attention.  

"Higher-income families are not choosing this kind of preparation," she explains. "And why would we assume that we need to train children of lower-income families earlier?"

Farran points out that families of means tend to choose play-based preschool programs with art, movement, music and nature. Children are asked open-ended questions, and they are listened to. 

This is not what Farran is seeing in classrooms full of kids in poverty, where "teachers talk a lot, but they seldom listen to children." She thinks that part of the problem is that teachers in many states are certified for teaching students in prekindergarten through grade 5, or sometimes even pre-K-8. Very little of their training focuses on the youngest learners.

So another major bias that she's challenging is the idea that teacher certification equals quality. "There have been three very large studies, the latest one in 2018, which are not showing any relationship between quality and licensure."

Putting a bubble in your mouth

In 2016, Farran published a study based on her observations of publicly funded Tennessee pre-K classrooms similar to those included in this paper. She found then that the largest chunk of the day was spent in transition time. This means simply moving kids around the building. 

Partly this is an architectural problem. Private preschools, even home-based day cares, tend to be laid out with little bodies in mind. There are bathrooms just off the classrooms. Children eat in, or very near, the classroom, too. And there is outdoor play space nearby with equipment suitable for short people.

Putting these same programs in public schools can make the whole day more inconvenient.

"So if you're in an older elementary school, the bathroom is going to be down the hall. You've got to take your children out, line them up and then they wait," Farran says. "And then, if you have to use the cafeteria, it's the same thing. You have to walk through the halls, you know: 'Don't touch your neighbor, don't touch the wall, put a bubble in your mouth because you have to be quiet.' "

One of Farran's most intriguing conjectures is that this need for control could explain the extra discipline problems seen later on in her most recent study.

"I think children are not learning internal control. And if anything, they're learning sort of an almost allergic reaction to the amount of external control that they're having, that they're having to experience in school."

In other words, regularly reprimanding kids for doing normal kid stuff at 4 years old, even suspending them, could backfire down the road as children experience school as a place of unreasonable expectations.

We know from other research that the control of children's bodies at school can have disparate racial impact. Other studies have suggested that Black children are disciplined more often in preschool, as they are in later grades. Farran's study, where 70% of the kids were white, found interactions between race, gender, and discipline problems, but no extra effect of attending preschool was detected. 

Where to go from here

The United States has a child care crisis that COVID-19 both intensified and highlighted. Progressive policymakers and advocates have tried for years to expand public support for child care by "pushing it down" from the existing public school system, using the teachers and the buildings. 

Farran praises the direction that New York City, for one, has taken instead: a "mixed-delivery" program with slots for 3- and 4-year-olds. Some kids attend free public preschool in existing nonprofit day care centers, some in Head Start programs and some in traditional schools.

But the biggest lesson Farran has drawn from her research is that we've simply asked too much of pre-K, based on early results from what were essentially showcase pilot programs. "We tend to want a magic bullet," she says.

"Whoever thought that you could provide a 4-year-old from an impoverished family with 5 1/2 hours a day, nine months a year of preschool, and close the achievement gap, and send them to college at a higher rate?" she asks. "I mean, why? Why do we put so much pressure on our pre-K programs?"

We might actually get better results, she says, from simply letting little children play."

Study Shows Why Biden's Universal Government Preschool Program Would Be a Disaster

Government preschool programs continue to show that they do more harm than good for the children who participate in them

By Kerry McDonald of FEE. 

"President Biden’s proposed $2 trillion-plus Build Back Better Act failed to gain US Senate approval in 2021, but efforts remain to move forward with a revised version that would include universal government preschool programs and taxpayer-funded child care subsidies.

As US Congresswoman Katherine Clark (D-MA) said recently about taxpayer-backed daycare: “It is the issue that has survived all the iterations, and it is going to be the issue that we are able to get over the line with in the Build Back Better agenda.”

The push for federally-funded universal preschool and child care programs continues despite new data showing the harms of government preschool programs, as well as harms to small community preschool providers. 

I wrote (and spoke) last year about the main reasons we should oppose Biden’s universal preschool plan, including the long track record of failure for government preschool programs such as Head Start and the Tennessee Voluntary Pre-K program. Analyses of these programs consistently show that student participants don’t experience any sustained gains, and may in fact be worse off than students who do not participate in public preschool programs. 

Government Preschool Students Have Worse Outcomes

Evaluations of the Tennessee pre-kindergarten program, in particular, found that by third grade the academic performance of children in the government preschool program was worse than the control group of similar children who did not participate in the program. 

Now, researchers at Vanderbilt University who have been tracking the long-term outcomes gleaned from the Tennessee Voluntary Pre-K program’s randomized control study discovered that by sixth grade the government preschool children fared even worse than the control group of students who did not participate in the preschool program.

Specifically, the students who attended the public preschool program scored lower on reading, math, and science achievement tests in sixth grade than the control group. Notably, the government preschool program students also performed worse on academic tests in third grade, and this achievement gap only grew by sixth grade.

The public preschool attendees were also far more likely to be diagnosed with a learning disability and given an IEP (individualized education plan) by sixth grade than the students who did not attend the program. Behaviorally, the public preschool program students were more likely to commit school-level offenses by sixth grade than the control group, and were more likely to be disciplined for serious offenses such as violence or bringing weapons to school.

Government Preschool Programs Harm Small Business Owners

If the harms to children aren’t enough to stop the expansion of government preschool programs, then the harms to small business owners should be.

In cities like Chicago where universal preschool programs have been introduced, private preschool and daycare providers, unable to compete with the “free” Chicago Public Schools (CPS) option, are being pushed out of business. Many of these private business owners are women and people of color and when their companies close, community child care shortages worsen.

As the Chicago Tribune reported last year: “Private child care owners say universal pre-K leaves many families with little choice where to send their children to preschool because cost becomes the determining factor of choosing CPS instead of private preschool, even if the private program better fits a family’s needs.”

For Jenna Colby, the impending threat of government preschool programs has prevented her from expanding her small Montessori preschool in rural Hillsborough, New Hampshire, despite a long waitlist of parents who wish to enroll their children. The lockdowns and related coronavirus policies in 2020 nearly destroyed her business, but now she can’t keep up with parent demand for private options. Colby herself recently un-enrolled her seven-year-old daughter from her local district school for homeschooling due to frustrations over ongoing coronavirus policies and lack of academic rigor. 

Parents are eager to send their children to Colby’s preschool, but her space constraints make it impossible for her to expand enrollment, which currently stands at 20 students ages 2.9 to 6 years old. Her preschool offers care five days a week from 7:00 am to 5:30 pm at a cost of $200 per week, with part-time options available. 

Colby would like to buy a building and increase her preschool capacity, but she worries that at any time the government could sweep in with a universal preschool program that would siphon away families with a “free” preschool option. “That’s the reason why we haven’t purchased a building. I’d have no job, in a town with a main street where it’s hard to get any restaurant to stay longer than six months,” she told me in a recent interview. 

Colby says the top employers in her small town are the lightbulb manufacturer Osram-Sylvania, the public schools, and Shaw’s Supermarket. Her husband is a CT technician at a local hospital who works long, late hours. If her preschool closed it would be tough on her family, particularly if she purchased a bigger space and had to keep up with mortgage payments.

Instead, Colby says she’ll stay where she is in rented space with limited capacity and a lengthy parent waiting list. Colby’s experience demonstrates that even the threat of government action in expanding universal preschool and daycare creates child care shortages in communities across the country. Small business owners can’t properly act to meet demand, creating a market mismatch. 

As the Nobel prize-winning economist, Friedrich Hayek said, “the more the state ‘plans’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.” Colby’s plight shows just how right Hayek was, and how state “planning,” and even the specter of such planning, distorts the elegant process of voluntary exchange in a free market. 

Government preschool programs continue to show that they do more harm than good for the children who participate in them, as well as harm small business owners and exacerbate child care shortages. Any efforts to introduce or expand these programs should be vigorously opposed."

Estimating the Effects of Milk Inspections on Infant and Child Mortality, 1880-1910

From NBER.

D. Mark Anderson, Kerwin Kofi Charles, Michael McKelligott & Daniel I. Rees

Working Paper 29620

DOI 10.3386/w29620

Issue Date December 2021

In the mid-19th century, the urban milk supply in the United States was regularly skimmed or diluted with water, reducing its nutritional value. At the urging of public health experts, cities across the country hired milk inspectors, who were tasked with collecting and analyzing milk samples with the goal of preventing adulteration and skimming. Using city-level data for the period 1880-1910, we explore the effects of milk inspections on infant mortality and mortality among children under the age of 5. Event-study estimates are small and statistically insignificant, providing little evidence of post-treatment reductions in either infant or child mortality.

 

The Spending Bill Is an Attack on Work and Marriage

A single mom could end up paying thousands more for daycare if she marries. Children will suffer

By Casey B. Mulligan. Excerpts:

"For each year that a couple has children under 5, being unmarried could easily save them over $10,000 annually in child-care costs compared with being married.

That’s because of how the subsidies are structured. A single mother earning 75% of the median household income in her state would pay nothing for child care, regardless of how much the child’s father earned. But the father’s income counts if he is legally part of the family. A husband and wife who each earned about 75% of the median income would have to pay thousands for the same daycare. In 2022-24, the married couple would pay full price, which would likely exceed $15,000 a child a year—$30,000 for two children under 5."

"Democrats will claim that their new bill at least encourages work by making child care free, but that refers only to a narrow slice of the population. Most families, especially those that don’t qualify for a full subsidy or that have older children, will pay more for child care. One reason: Under the heading of “quality regulation,” the bill requires that child-care workers be paid a “living wage” and that their earnings be “equivalent to wages for elementary educators with similar credentials and experience.”

The precise meaning of that would be left to regulators, but according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, elementary-school teachers earned an average of $63,930 annually in 2019, compared with $25,510 for child-care workers. By that benchmark, child-care facilities would need to pay workers 151% more."

"As one’s income from working increases, the amount offered by these benefit programs decreases. The marginal tax rate on working an extra hour, day or week, or improving your skills, can be extremely high."

"the several implicit employment and income taxes in the revised bill would increase marginal tax rates on work by about five percentage points. I expect that such a change, over five years, would reduce full-time equivalent employment by about 4%, or about five million jobs."

"Quebec imposed “quality” regulation on its child-care market, which, a landmark study found, led to “increases in early childhood anxiety and aggression” with “little measured impact on cognitive skills.” Kids exposed to the program suffered “worse health, lower life satisfaction, and higher crime rates later in life.”"

Liberal Think-Tank Says Biden Plan Will Cause Childcare Costs to Skyrocket

From The Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC).

"A prominent liberal think tank has discovered a glaring red flag at the heart of Biden’s $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. In a report posted last week, Matt Bruenig, founder and director of the People’s Policy Project, revealed that the Democratic child care plan embedded in Biden’s “Build Back Better” bill would increase the cost of child care for millions of middle-class families by an average of more than $13,000 per year. In response, Democrats are now actively working to discredit Bruenig and his findings.

One of the supposed benefits of Biden’s multi-trillion dollar bill constantly touted by the administration has been the promise of expanded access to affordable child care for middle-class families with young children across the country. Simultaneously, they have also promised to improve wages for childcare workers. To that end, under the Democratic plan, child care workers would have their income increased, via taxpayer subsidies, to match that of elementary school teachers – amounting to a staggering 138 percent increase. In addition, middle-class families would also receive subsidies via a “sliding-scale income-based copayment.” Families who meet certain income criteria would pay a certain amount and the federal government would pay the rest.

According to the liberal think tank, this is where the problems arise. Under the Biden plan, if a family makes as much as one dollar above the median household income (roughly $67,000 in 2020), they will lose all subsidies. As a result, average families would be forced to pay unsubsidized and massively inflated prices for basic childcare. According to Bruenig, the unsubsidized price of childcare would go from $15,888 per year to $28,970 per year under the Biden plan. For families just above the median income level in their state, such an increase would be devastating, as they would be forced to pay the entire unsubsidized cost.

The “scale” would be removed three years after the plan is implemented, opening up subsidies to all families. Until that time, however, Bruenig predicts:

There will be many dual-earning couples who cannot afford child care if both of them continue to work but could afford childcare if one of them quit their job and thereby brought their family income below the eligibility cutoff. Normally people who quit jobs to take care of their kids do so in order to save the money they’d have to spend on child care. Under this plan, they have to quit their job in order to afford child care!

If the experience of Obamacare and subsequently skyrocketing healthcare premiums teaches us anything, it’s that whatever the government subsidizes to make it “affordable” soon becomes dramatically more expensive.  

Bruenig, a leftist, does offer several “solutions” as to how Democrats could supposedly fix the issue he points out in their plan. Democrats, however, would have none of it. Apparently they want a quick political win now, even if it means catastrophe for American families later. Within days of Bruenig publishing his report, Democratic partisans pounced on him. A Politico story suggested Democrats were working to “dull a dagger aimed — from the left, of all places — at their much-touted plan to make child care more affordable for American families.” Advocates for the Biden plan called Bruenig’s argument “illogical” and “not based on a close reading.” Conservative think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation and CATO Institute, have raised similar concerns to Bruenig’s. Democrats have gotten away with summarily dismissing them as “partisan” – but they can’t do that so easily with one of their own.

Bruenig has faced such an extreme backlash to his report that he has been forced to write not one, but two follow-up pieces defending his argument. While he acknowledges the critics, he points out that no one has refuted the crux of his argument: that the Biden plan will increase the cost of child care for many middle class families

As negotiations drag on over the bill, Democrats may be forced to slash the $3.5 trillion price tag by as much as $1.6 trillion. While the child care credit will likely remain in the bill, some analysts predict that the size of the subsidies will decrease. However, the hostility Democrats have demonstrated toward a fellow progressive for even questioning the effectiveness of the program further calls into question just how much scrutiny the various provisions of the bill have faced. Other aspects of the bill may have similar issues. For months, Democrats have failed to effectively explain to the American people what exactly is in the bill. Perhaps major flaws like this one are the reason why."

Little evidence that the California paid leave law increased women’s employment, wage earnings, or attachment to employers

By John McCormick of The WSJ.

"The Biden administration has argued that its proposal to spend $225 billion over a decade to offer 12 weeks of paid leave for parenting, family, illness and other needs, worth up to 80% of a worker’s salary, would boost both quality of life and economic output by encouraging more women with children to enter the workforce.

In 2002, California became the first state to enact a paid family leave program. Since July 2004, the Paid Family Leave Act has offered six weeks of partial paid leave, funded by payroll deductions, to attend to the employee’s or a family member’s serious health condition, or to bond with a new child.

The number of annual claims has steadily grown from 154,425 in 2005 (the program’s first full year) to 288,778 in 2020, according to the state’s Employment Development Department.

The White House cites a study of the California program that suggests new mothers who took the leave are, on the whole, more likely to be working nine to 12 months after childbirth, perhaps because those with weaker attachments to the labor force had increased job continuity.

But taking a longer view, a 2019 research paper written by three economists in academia and one at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago that used IRS tax data found “little evidence that (the law) increased women’s employment, wage earnings, or attachment to employers.”

Compared with women giving birth in earlier years and in other states, the paper found new mothers using paid parental leave saw “reduced employment by 7 percent and lowered annual wages by 8 percent, six to 10 years after giving birth.”

New mothers with access to the paid leave could expect to receive around $1,833 in wage replacement for one year, the study found, but approximately $25,681 lower earnings over the next decade, for a net 10-year loss of about $24,000."

The negative effect of universal child care in Quebec

From American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.

"Abstract

Past research documents the persistence of positive impacts of early life interventions on noncognitive skills. We test the symmetry of this finding by studying the persistence of a sizeable negative shock to noncognitive outcomes arising with the introduction of universal child care in Quebec. We find that the negative effects on noncognitive outcomes persisted to school ages, and also that cohorts with increased child care access had worse health, lower life satisfaction, and higher crime rates later in life. Our results reinforce previous evidence of the central role of the early childhood environment for long-run success.

Citation

Baker, Michael, Jonathan Gruber, and Kevin Milligan. 2019. "The Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 11 (3): 1-26."

Lack of childcare is not holding back employment

By John Phelan. He is an economist at the Center of the American Experiment. 

"Recently, I had an op-ed in the Star Tribune in which I argued that increased federal unemployment benefits were one factor behind the phenomenon of record numbers of job openings coexisting with high unemployment. A typical response was some hand-waving about a lack of evidence. Since then, however, evidence has continued to mount.

A common argument against this proposition is that it is a lack of childcare that is preventing people from reentering the workforce. A new study casts doubt on this, however.

In it, economists Jason Furman, Melissa Kearney and Wilson Powell III conclude that school and daycare closures are not driving low employment levels: indeed, they find that that the employment rate for parents of young children actually declined at a lower rate than it did for those without kids. The authors suggest that other factors, including increased federal unemployment benefits, are playing a role in keeping people out of the workforce.

This evidence is worth listening to. Furman chaired the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration so he cannot be written off as some right wing shill.

A persistent early failing of the Biden administration has been its diagnosis of every problem as one of insufficient spending to be remedied by more spending. Claiming that a lack of childcare options is responsible for restricted labor supply, they propose to spend vast amounts on childcare. But if this isn’t the problem – and this analysis suggests that it isn’t – then they will incur all the problems of spending vast amounts of borrowed and printed money without any benefits to show for it.

The Biden administration inherited an economy that was recovering briskly from a massive, exogenous shock. If they are serious about keeping this going, they need to deal with the actual, supply side problems facing the economy. If they keep dumping new money into a supply-constrained economy, the only thing that will rise will be prices."

Biden’s Daycare Plan Is Bad for Families

Young children are clearly happier and healthier when they spend the day at home with a parent

By J.D. Vance and Jenet Erickson. Mr. Vance is an investor and author. Ms. Erickson is a Research Fellow of the Wheatley Institution. Excerpts:

"Brown University economist Emily Oster argues that criticisms of Mr. Biden’s proposal are “not supported by the data. . . . Child care is not ‘terrible for children.’ ” The essential point isn’t that “child care” is bad for kids, however, but that a federal push to get droves of children into daycare is. These are two different things, raising radically different questions. For example, how can we ensure safe facilities and capable caregivers for millions of additional children moved abruptly into child care? Hardly a trivial logistical challenge.  

Moreover, the available empirical data contradict Ms. Oster’s argument. In 1997 the provincial government of Quebec began offering child care for 5 Canadian dollars a day to all families, regardless of income. Almost two decades later, economists Michael Baker, Kevin Milligan and Jonathan Gruber found that children from two-parent families who participated showed significant increases in anxiety, aggression and hyperactivity. Those effects persisted—and even grew—as they reached young adulthood. Self-reported health and life satisfaction decreased significantly. Boys who participated were more likely to commit crimes. It was, to put it bluntly, a disaster for Quebec’s children.

Some advocates argue that Quebec’s failure proves simply that low-quality care produces low-quality results, something they think the U.S. could surely avoid. This ignores the federal government’s persistent failure to provide high-quality care for the relatively small number of children in the $10 billion Head Start program. It also ignores that even high-quality child care in the U.S. is linked to negative social and emotional outcomes for children who spend lots of time in institutional care. A major longitudinal study conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development found that the more time infants and toddlers spent in nonfamilial care, the more likely they were to engage in aggressive, disobedient or risky behavior. 

That doesn’t mean child care is bad for all kids. Research shows that high-quality care is often beneficial for children from disadvantaged homes. But young children from average, healthy homes can be harmed by spending long hours in child care. Moving millions of young children out of their homes into nonparental group care will have unintended negative effects on children’s emotional and social well-being."

"In fact, the highest quality standards for child care promote exactly what happens in the average home—one adult in an active, stable and encouraging relationship with two to three children. This standard is difficult to duplicate in institutional settings, especially on a large scale."

What lessons can the child welfare system take from the COVID-19 pandemic?

From AEI.

Key Points

• COVID-19 and subsequent government responses introduced new barriers to detection and responding to child maltreatment and achieving permanency for children in foster care.
• New strategies and better use of existing technologies are needed to detect child maltreatment for children unseen by school personnel.
• Improved use of virtual technology could improve family court processes and family treatment options during and after the pandemic.
• Indications of positive adaptation by community-based agencies during the pandemic allowed them to sustain or increase services to foster, kin, and biological families, but greater support for data collection and transparency for government contracted services is still needed.

 

Limited Secondary Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in Child Care Programs — Rhode Island, June 1–July 31, 2020

It looks like there were over 18,000 kids in the study and just 52 confirmed and probable cases.

From Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report .

"On June 1, 2020, with declines in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases and hospitalizations in Rhode Island,* child care programs in the state reopened after a nearly 3-month closure implemented as part of mitigation efforts. To reopen safely, the Rhode Island Department of Human Services (RIDHS) required licensed center- and home-based child care programs to reduce enrollment, initially to a maximum of 12 persons, including staff members, in stable groups (i.e., staff members and students not switching between groups) in physically separated spaces, increasing to a maximum of 20 persons on June 29. Additional requirements included universal use of masks for adults, daily symptom screening of adults and children, and enhanced cleaning and disinfection according to CDC guidelines.^† As of July 31, 666 of 891 (75%) programs were approved to reopen, with capacity for 18,945 children, representing 74% of the state’s January 2020 child care program population (25,749 children).

High compliance with RIDHS requirements was observed during 127 unannounced program monitoring visits (C Molina, RIDHS, personal communication, 2020). Program administrators reported that maintaining stable staffing was the most difficult requirement to implement because of the need to rotate staff members to cover teacher breaks, vacation, and sick leave and that continued adherence to small, stable classes might not be feasible without additional funding.

During June 1–July 31, the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) conducted investigations of any reported COVID-19 case in a child or adult, including staff members, parents, or guardians, present at a child care program. Reported cases were classified as confirmed if a person received a positive reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test result for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, or probable if a person met clinical and epidemiologic criteria with no laboratory testing.^§ Child care classes with a symptomatic person identified were required to close for 14 days or until the case could be ruled out by a negative RT-PCR test result. RIDOH quarantined contacts^¶ and conducted symptom monitoring via a weekly phone call or daily text message; symptomatic contacts were referred for testing.

A total of 101 possible child care–associated COVID-19 cases were reported during June 1–July 31. Among them, 49 (49%) symptomatic persons were excluded after receiving negative laboratory test results, 33 persons (33%) had confirmed cases, and 19 (19%) were classified as having probable cases. Among the 52 confirmed and probable cases, 30 (58%) were among children (median age = 5 years), and 22 (42%) were among adults (20 teachers and two parents [median age = 30 years]) (Table). Overall, 39 (75%) cases occurred from mid- to late July, when incidence in the state was increasing (Figure). Cases were confirmed a median of 2 days (range = 0–11 days) after specimen collection. The identification of 101 possible child care–associated COVID-19 cases resulted in closures of 89 classes and quarantine of 687 children and 166 staff members, including contacts.

Cases occurred in 29 child care programs, 20 (69%) of which had a single case with no apparent secondary transmission. Five (15%) programs had two to five cases; however, RIDOH excluded child care–related transmission because of the timing of symptom onset. In late June, a child aged 2 years attended child care for 6 days while potentially infectious, including 3 days before symptom onset (parent-reported fever to 100.3°F [37.9°C] and chills) and 3 days after symptom resolution. Ten of 11 child care contacts were tested for SARS-CoV-2 a median of 2 days after last exposure (range = 1–3 days); none had a positive test result. Epidemiologic investigation by RIDOH indicated adherence to RIDHS regulations.

Secondary transmission in four child care programs after July 15 could not be ruled out. In one program, RIDOH epidemiologic investigation identified lack of adherence to RIDHS regulations, including switching between groups. Ten confirmed cases (five children, four staff members, and one parent) were identified among contacts in the program. The program was closed, and 60 children and 21 staff members were quarantined for 14 days. In the second program, three confirmed cases were identified from a single classroom; 26 students and 17 staff members were quarantined. The third program had two cases with symptom onset dates indicating potential transmission; however, no epidemiologic link was identified. The fourth program had two cases, one in a staff member and the other in a child contact of the staff member. The staff member moved among all classrooms, exposing adults and children in the entire program, which was subsequently closed; 37 students and 16 staff members were quarantined.

Rhode Island reopened child care programs in the context of low SARS-CoV-2 transmission relative to other U.S. states. Possible secondary transmission was identified in four of the 666 programs that had been allowed to reopen, all in the last 2 weeks of July, when community transmission in Rhode Island increased. The apparent absence of secondary transmission within the other 662 child care programs was likely the result of RIDOH response efforts to contain transmission and child care programs’ adherence to RIDHS requirements, in particular maximum class sizes and use of face masks for adults (1). However, case ascertainment among children is challenging, given high rates of asymptomatic infection or mild disease (2,3), and SARS-CoV-2 infections were likely undetected. Despite limited identified secondary transmission, the impact on child care programs was substantial, with 853 children and staff members quarantined, which highlights the importance of community mitigation efforts to safeguard child care programs. Adherence to current CDC recommendations remains critical to reducing transmission in child care settings, including wearing of masks by adults, limiting mixing between established student-teacher groups, staying home when ill, and cleaning and disinfecting frequently touched surfaces.** Timely public health action, including case investigation and contact tracing, is critical to minimizing outbreaks in child care programs.^††"