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It doesn't have to be this way. Québec has had subsidized daycare for almost 25 years, and the program literally pays for itself (and more!) via increased inco

It doesn't have to be this way. Québec has had subsidized daycare for almost 25 years, and the program literally pays for itself (and more!) via increased income taxes from parents that would have otherwise chosen to stay at home. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/12/affordable-daycare-subsidized-child-care-working-mom-quebec/579193/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/12/affordable-daycare-su... > In Montreal, Quebec’s largest city, a day of child care cost on average $10 in 2016 > Quebec’s program, which introduced low-fee, universal child care in the province in 1996, centered on a few core premises: that if the government helped make child care accessible and affordable, it would allow more women to join the workforce, increase childhood development and social skills, and ultimately raise revenue for the government through increased payroll taxes. In at least two of those objectives, the scheme has been widely successful, says Pierre Fortin, an economist at the University of Quebec at Montreal, and the country’s leading expert in the economics of subsidized child care: It’s increased participation of women in the workforce, and cost efficiency. > Since beginning the program more than two decades ago, Quebec has seen the rate of women age 26 to 44 in the workforce reach 85 percent, the highest in the world. > Early estimates anticipated the program would generate 40 percent of its costs via increased income taxes from working parents. Instead, it generated income taxes to cover more than 100 percent of the cost. “In other words, it costs zero, or the cost is negative,” Fortin said. “The governments are making money out of the program.” The program isn't perfect; there are a variety of issues that have popped up over the years, but since we were literally the first in the world to offer such a comprehensive, sweeping, subsidized plan for the entire provincial population of ~7.1MM in 1996 that was then used as a model in various Scandinavian countries, I'd call it a rousing success.

dfc_agency 7y ago
Another "win" in the column of me buying a condo in Montreal...
jawns 7y ago
I'm curious about the other side of the coin: Parents who would like to stay at home and provide care to their own children, but who feel as if they cannot because of financial constraints. Does this program do anything to help them?
- jperras 7y ago
  That's actually one of the not-so-great facets of this program. It demands a minimum of 80% participation, meaning that if you wanted to stay at home to take care of your children but use subsidized daycare 1-2 days a week to give yourself a break, it's currently not possible. If a child is absent for more than 20% of the "regular" schedule, then the daycare loses that subsidy spot due to it being under-utilized. There's a movement to help correct this, but it's not simple due to how funds and resources are allocated and planned for.
  - xamuel 7y ago
    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.
    - bdamm 7y ago
      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. I'm not saying we should go back, but as a society we appear generally unwilling to discuss this reality and loss to family. As if nannies are an entirely sufficient replacement for mothers, but I don't think they are.
      - blaser-waffle 7y ago
        That's a hot take you've got there, and probably going to get downvoted to oblivion, but I'm curious about some of these points: > community networking functions, allowing for local problem solving and support that is somewhat extinct now What are you referring to in particular? Community booster orgs? The PTA? > Did we gain women's freedom at the cost of strong and good families? Were families really that better off? I think back to the 50's and all I see is things like alcoholism, racism, parochialism, and insularity. I also see a world in the aftermath of WW2, where all other global-scale economies were devastated, save for the US, and could afford to pay husbands fantastic wages while mom stayed home and ran the house; those salaries aren't a reality now.
jaltekruse 7y ago
I'm not sure this is the strongest case you could make for saying this ought to be the responsibility of the government. If people can make more working than childcare costs, then they can make their own decision about how to invest their own time and money. Why does the government need to pay for this, if they argument is ultimately that the wages of women now working is what ends up paying the cost of the service? I am generally not one to rail against the government running efficient programs for general welfare, I support single payer healthcare in the US and many progressive policies. I do however think we need to consider the line where anything you buy has the government involved in re-distributing resources to make it cheaper for people with less money. Ultimately, it might be good to allow economic forces to produce an economy again where single income households can afford to raise children, regardless of the gender of the parent who is earning an income. More work doesn't always mean societies or families ended up better off, parents spending time raising kids should not be seen as just sunken cost because we could have gotten tax money out of them.
- yorwba 7y ago
  > If people can make more working than childcare costs, then they can make their own decision about how to invest their own time and money. Why does the government need to pay for this, if they argument is ultimately that the wages of women now working is what ends up paying the cost of the service? Before a stay-at-home parent enters the workforce, they may not have the money to pay for the childcare that would free up time to work. Essentially only governments have both the money and the incentive to invest in making childcare widely available.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    That is an excellent reason to provide maybe 1 or 2 months of subsidised healthcare to women who with children who are seeking work. Something extremely targeted and modest. But it seems a bit questionable in the thread context of "the program literally pays for itself" which presumably means the program is encouraging high earning women to enter the workforce, ie, those with valuable skills, substantial experience and a contacts network that means they can probably bear the cost of finding work.
pfortuny 7y ago
“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 have, and of course, caring for the family is not a proper job. That is so wrong on so many levels. I am not claiming that it is easy, the best or the most engaging or whatever. I only claim that society has given up on valuing raising one’s children and keeping the household together, and this is terrible.
- meheleventyone 7y ago
  I don’t think that it’s that people don’t value those things but that people are unable to have the luxury to act on that belief. I’m also not convinced that the choice was made by the broad base of society.
- orev 7y ago
  I think you’re being overly picky and cherry-picking your argument here. I don’t know anyone who thinks that child rearing is not hard work, and all agree that it is valuable. But in the context of this discussion, “productivity” is an economic term for the production of goods or services, and the generation of income for the workers. Child rearing does neither of those things directly, so as an economic activity, it doesn’t register and thus those parents are not part of the workforce. Again, that does not mean it is not a valuable thing to do for both the child and society, but it also does not directly add to GDP, generate income taxes, etc.
  - cjmcqueen 7y ago
    Child rearing produces children that are adults and had the attention of a fully invested parent. Are you sure you're measuring the right thing?
    - tristanstcyr 7y ago
ativzzz 7y ago
Guess you didn't read the original article, because it mentions the exact program you linked towards the bottom about Quebec. One negative found was > 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 a success for parents and for the economy, but not for the well being of the kids.
- jperras 7y ago
  I did read the article. It didn't link to the CityLab article that I posted, which I found to be a bit easier to read. If you read the meta-analysis paper that they link to that describes the "not so good for the well being of the kids", you'll see that they're comparing children that attend daycare to children that are wholly raised at home with one or more parents: > A recent view of effects of previous child care exposure on outcomes in adolescence suggest that more hours in 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). These negative findings have nothing at all to do with subsidized vs. non-subsidized childcare.
- dang 7y ago
  "Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."" https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - ativzzz 7y ago
    You're right, the way I structured that takes away from what I was trying to say. Thanks for your hard work.
mherdeg 7y ago
Interesting! Any response to the view that universal-childcare-educated children are "DQN" from over in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21745453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21745453 ? (I'm not sure I understand it.)
- jperras 7y ago
  As I've linked to in previous replies, all the studies[1] I've seen are meta-analyses that compare kids in Quebec to kids in other provinces. I don't see anything that accounts (nor could they, really) for the huge variety of factors that can differ among children in the same age group across vastly different provinces. Quebec is markedly different from the rest of the country and North America in more ways than our socialized universal daycare programme. Moreover, they are comparing kids that are in daycare vs. kids that are raised solely by one or more of their parents; the fact that the daycare is "universal" or subsidized doesn't have anything to do with it. Moreover, the studies show that the kids are effectively more impulsive and more prone to risk-taking, and have found zero correlation with their cognitive abilities. 1. https://www.nber.org/papers/w21571.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w21571.pdf
epanchin 7y ago
Do you think inflation has been a significant outcome of this program?
- astrodust 7y ago
  Quebec hasn't become measurably more expensive than other Canadian cities in the last 25 years and is way more affordable than a comparable city like Toronto.
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    This is true, but keep in mind that in QC the salaries are lower, and there is a high demand for workers. A big part of this is because the workers have to be Francophone, and often bilingual (esp. in Montreal).
glofish 7y ago
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.
- jperras 7y ago
  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 recent view of effects of previous child care exposure on outcomes in adolescence suggest that more hours in 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). These negative findings have nothing at all to do with subsidized vs. non-subsidized childcare. They're essentially comparing children in daycare vs. children that are able to be raised by one or more parents, full-time. Would kids be better off being raised by their parents more than being raised by specialized childcare workers? Perhaps. But not everyone is given that opportunity, regardless.
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    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).
  - stevenicr 7y ago
    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.
F_J_H 7y ago
"pays for itself...via increased income taxes"? It's a "nit pick" for sure, but in my understanding, something that "pays for itself" is not dependent on government subsidies. Quebec has some of the highest income taxes in the country - you pay for such services one way or another. Plus, according to the linked article, there is not enough space in the subsidized program to meet demand, so there are private options available, which must be paid for out of pocket and covered by a tax rebate. According the to the article, the private options do not provide the same standard of care.
- jperras 7y ago
  > It's a "nit pick" for sure, but in my understanding, something that "pays for itself" is not dependent on government subsidies. Quebec has some of the highest income taxes in the country - you pay for such services one way or another. The subsidies that are required are offset by the increased labour force participation that occurs as a direct result of said subsidies. Conversely, if the subsidies disappeared, then there's a good chance that many of those currently employed parents would have to make a choice – do I remain in the workforce and pay $1-2k/month for childcare, or do I quit my job and raise my child/children? I've had relatives that live in Ontario that had to make this choice. Daycare in Toronto is $1600/month, and can be around $2500/month if you have two children. If one of the parents is pulling in $50,000/year (net pay of $38,979), and you have to drop close to $30,000 for childcare, for 2-4 years, is it even worth staying at your job?
  - jstanley 7y ago
    > do I remain in the workforce and pay $1-2k/month for childcare, or do I quit my job and raise my child/children? That the program "pays for itself" in increased taxes implies that the additional tax burden is at least the $1-2k/month required to pay for the childcare. So if you just cancelled the childcare and reduced the taxes you'd end up at the same place on average, except you wouldn't have non-parents subsidising childcare for parents.
    - lutorm 7y ago
chris5745 7y ago
How does the program affect the third factor- childhood development and social skills? Also, making money is fine, but are people happier? Healthier? Thanks for sharing.
throwaway_tech 7y ago
>... the program literally pays for itself (and more!) via increased income taxes from parents that would have otherwise chosen to stay at home. In the US both the left and right play a game where the only way to increase tax revenue is tax cuts to the rich. It has never worked...but politicians be damned if they will ever try anything other than trickle down economics.
unicornporn 7y ago
> It doesn't have to be this way. No it doesn't. Rates for Stockholm, Sweden (PDF): https://forskola.stockholm/globalassets/forskola-och-skola/forskola/dokument/income-form-childcare-english.pdf https://forskola.stockholm/globalassets/forskola-och-skola/f... In short: FULL-TIME RATES Full-time rates apply to children in the ages of 1-3, who are in childcare for more than 30 hours a week. Child 1: 3% of household income up to maximum a fee of 1425 kr/month (roughly 149 USD) Child 2: 2% of household income up to maximum a fee of 950 kr/month (roughly 99 USD) Child 3: 1% of household income up to maximum a fee of 475 kr/month (roughly 50 USD) PART-TIME RATES Child 1: 2% of household income up to maximum a fee of 950 kr/month Child 2: 1% of household income up to maximum a fee of 475 kr/month Child 3: 1% of household income up to maximum a fee of 475 kr/month Every family receives child allowance[1]. Child allowance for one child is 1250 kr/month for one child. Two children: 2650 kr/month. Three chidren: 4480 kr/month. [1] https://www.forsakringskassan.se/privatpers/foralder/nar_barnet_ar_fott/barnbidrag/!ut/p/z1/ https://www.forsakringskassan.se/privatpers/foralder/nar_bar...
- briandear 7y ago
  Sweden has a top marginal tax rate of 70% that kicks in at around $98,000. That $149 per month is deceptive when you are paying very high tax rates.
  - empath75 7y ago
    The people benefiting from it aren’t paying those taxes. But obviously taxes pay for government programs.
  - edoceo 7y ago
    You're right! Taxing the high earners is a good idea, subsidized child care is just one of the many benefits.
    - aceofspades19 7y ago
      Why is taxing high earners more a good idea? It just gives people an incentive to either not make that much money or leave the country to make more money.
User23 7y ago
> the program literally pays for itself (and more!) via increased income taxes from parents that would have otherwise chosen to stay at home. Getting around 50-80k of untaxed labor value for the household is an excellent reason for any family that can manage to have one parent do the childcare job. It’s not so much an affordability issue as it is a cash flow management issue.
steve1977 7y ago
If the program pays for itself via increased income taxes, it's still as expensive. It's just the money flow that is different. As it involves the state, it might be even a bit more expensive due to overhead cost (it might also not, if it's not profit oriented).

dfc_agency 7y ago

Another "win" in the column of me buying a condo in Montreal...

jawns 7y ago

I'm curious about the other side of the coin: Parents who would like to stay at home and provide care to their own children, but who feel as if they cannot because of financial constraints. Does this program do anything to help them?

jperras 7y ago
That's actually one of the not-so-great facets of this program. It demands a minimum of 80% participation, meaning that if you wanted to stay at home to take care of your children but use subsidized daycare 1-2 days a week to give yourself a break, it's currently not possible. If a child is absent for more than 20% of the "regular" schedule, then the daycare loses that subsidy spot due to it being under-utilized. There's a movement to help correct this, but it's not simple due to how funds and resources are allocated and planned for.
- xamuel 7y ago
  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.
  - bdamm 7y ago
    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. I'm not saying we should go back, but as a society we appear generally unwilling to discuss this reality and loss to family. As if nannies are an entirely sufficient replacement for mothers, but I don't think they are.
    - blaser-waffle 7y ago
      That's a hot take you've got there, and probably going to get downvoted to oblivion, but I'm curious about some of these points: > community networking functions, allowing for local problem solving and support that is somewhat extinct now What are you referring to in particular? Community booster orgs? The PTA? > Did we gain women's freedom at the cost of strong and good families? Were families really that better off? I think back to the 50's and all I see is things like alcoholism, racism, parochialism, and insularity. I also see a world in the aftermath of WW2, where all other global-scale economies were devastated, save for the US, and could afford to pay husbands fantastic wages while mom stayed home and ran the house; those salaries aren't a reality now.

jaltekruse 7y ago

I'm not sure this is the strongest case you could make for saying this ought to be the responsibility of the government. If people can make more working than childcare costs, then they can make their own decision about how to invest their own time and money. Why does the government need to pay for this, if they argument is ultimately that the wages of women now working is what ends up paying the cost of the service? I am generally not one to rail against the government running efficient programs for general welfare, I support single payer healthcare in the US and many progressive policies. I do however think we need to consider the line where anything you buy has the government involved in re-distributing resources to make it cheaper for people with less money. Ultimately, it might be good to allow economic forces to produce an economy again where single income households can afford to raise children, regardless of the gender of the parent who is earning an income. More work doesn't always mean societies or families ended up better off, parents spending time raising kids should not be seen as just sunken cost because we could have gotten tax money out of them.

yorwba 7y ago
> If people can make more working than childcare costs, then they can make their own decision about how to invest their own time and money. Why does the government need to pay for this, if they argument is ultimately that the wages of women now working is what ends up paying the cost of the service? Before a stay-at-home parent enters the workforce, they may not have the money to pay for the childcare that would free up time to work. Essentially only governments have both the money and the incentive to invest in making childcare widely available.
- roenxi 7y ago
  That is an excellent reason to provide maybe 1 or 2 months of subsidised healthcare to women who with children who are seeking work. Something extremely targeted and modest. But it seems a bit questionable in the thread context of "the program literally pays for itself" which presumably means the program is encouraging high earning women to enter the workforce, ie, those with valuable skills, substantial experience and a contacts network that means they can probably bear the cost of finding work.

pfortuny 7y ago

“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 have, and of course, caring for the family is not a proper job. That is so wrong on so many levels. I am not claiming that it is easy, the best or the most engaging or whatever. I only claim that society has given up on valuing raising one’s children and keeping the household together, and this is terrible.

meheleventyone 7y ago
I don’t think that it’s that people don’t value those things but that people are unable to have the luxury to act on that belief. I’m also not convinced that the choice was made by the broad base of society.
orev 7y ago
I think you’re being overly picky and cherry-picking your argument here. I don’t know anyone who thinks that child rearing is not hard work, and all agree that it is valuable. But in the context of this discussion, “productivity” is an economic term for the production of goods or services, and the generation of income for the workers. Child rearing does neither of those things directly, so as an economic activity, it doesn’t register and thus those parents are not part of the workforce. Again, that does not mean it is not a valuable thing to do for both the child and society, but it also does not directly add to GDP, generate income taxes, etc.
- cjmcqueen 7y ago
  Child rearing produces children that are adults and had the attention of a fully invested parent. Are you sure you're measuring the right thing?
  - tristanstcyr 7y ago

ativzzz 7y ago

Guess you didn't read the original article, because it mentions the exact program you linked towards the bottom about Quebec. One negative found was > 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 a success for parents and for the economy, but not for the well being of the kids.

jperras 7y ago
I did read the article. It didn't link to the CityLab article that I posted, which I found to be a bit easier to read. If you read the meta-analysis paper that they link to that describes the "not so good for the well being of the kids", you'll see that they're comparing children that attend daycare to children that are wholly raised at home with one or more parents: > A recent view of effects of previous child care exposure on outcomes in adolescence suggest that more hours in 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). These negative findings have nothing at all to do with subsidized vs. non-subsidized childcare.
dang 7y ago
"Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."" https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ativzzz 7y ago
  You're right, the way I structured that takes away from what I was trying to say. Thanks for your hard work.

mherdeg 7y ago

Interesting! Any response to the view that universal-childcare-educated children are "DQN" from over in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21745453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21745453 ? (I'm not sure I understand it.)

jperras 7y ago
As I've linked to in previous replies, all the studies[1] I've seen are meta-analyses that compare kids in Quebec to kids in other provinces. I don't see anything that accounts (nor could they, really) for the huge variety of factors that can differ among children in the same age group across vastly different provinces. Quebec is markedly different from the rest of the country and North America in more ways than our socialized universal daycare programme. Moreover, they are comparing kids that are in daycare vs. kids that are raised solely by one or more of their parents; the fact that the daycare is "universal" or subsidized doesn't have anything to do with it. Moreover, the studies show that the kids are effectively more impulsive and more prone to risk-taking, and have found zero correlation with their cognitive abilities. 1. https://www.nber.org/papers/w21571.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w21571.pdf

epanchin 7y ago

Do you think inflation has been a significant outcome of this program?

astrodust 7y ago
Quebec hasn't become measurably more expensive than other Canadian cities in the last 25 years and is way more affordable than a comparable city like Toronto.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  This is true, but keep in mind that in QC the salaries are lower, and there is a high demand for workers. A big part of this is because the workers have to be Francophone, and often bilingual (esp. in Montreal).

glofish 7y ago

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.

jperras 7y ago
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 recent view of effects of previous child care exposure on outcomes in adolescence suggest that more hours in 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). These negative findings have nothing at all to do with subsidized vs. non-subsidized childcare. They're essentially comparing children in daycare vs. children that are able to be raised by one or more parents, full-time. Would kids be better off being raised by their parents more than being raised by specialized childcare workers? Perhaps. But not everyone is given that opportunity, regardless.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  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).
- stevenicr 7y ago
  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.

F_J_H 7y ago

"pays for itself...via increased income taxes"? It's a "nit pick" for sure, but in my understanding, something that "pays for itself" is not dependent on government subsidies. Quebec has some of the highest income taxes in the country - you pay for such services one way or another. Plus, according to the linked article, there is not enough space in the subsidized program to meet demand, so there are private options available, which must be paid for out of pocket and covered by a tax rebate. According the to the article, the private options do not provide the same standard of care.

jperras 7y ago
> It's a "nit pick" for sure, but in my understanding, something that "pays for itself" is not dependent on government subsidies. Quebec has some of the highest income taxes in the country - you pay for such services one way or another. The subsidies that are required are offset by the increased labour force participation that occurs as a direct result of said subsidies. Conversely, if the subsidies disappeared, then there's a good chance that many of those currently employed parents would have to make a choice – do I remain in the workforce and pay $1-2k/month for childcare, or do I quit my job and raise my child/children? I've had relatives that live in Ontario that had to make this choice. Daycare in Toronto is $1600/month, and can be around $2500/month if you have two children. If one of the parents is pulling in $50,000/year (net pay of $38,979), and you have to drop close to $30,000 for childcare, for 2-4 years, is it even worth staying at your job?
- jstanley 7y ago
  > do I remain in the workforce and pay $1-2k/month for childcare, or do I quit my job and raise my child/children? That the program "pays for itself" in increased taxes implies that the additional tax burden is at least the $1-2k/month required to pay for the childcare. So if you just cancelled the childcare and reduced the taxes you'd end up at the same place on average, except you wouldn't have non-parents subsidising childcare for parents.
  - lutorm 7y ago

chris5745 7y ago

How does the program affect the third factor- childhood development and social skills? Also, making money is fine, but are people happier? Healthier? Thanks for sharing.

throwaway_tech 7y ago

>... the program literally pays for itself (and more!) via increased income taxes from parents that would have otherwise chosen to stay at home. In the US both the left and right play a game where the only way to increase tax revenue is tax cuts to the rich. It has never worked...but politicians be damned if they will ever try anything other than trickle down economics.

unicornporn 7y ago

> It doesn't have to be this way. No it doesn't. Rates for Stockholm, Sweden (PDF): https://forskola.stockholm/globalassets/forskola-och-skola/forskola/dokument/income-form-childcare-english.pdf https://forskola.stockholm/globalassets/forskola-och-skola/f... In short: FULL-TIME RATES Full-time rates apply to children in the ages of 1-3, who are in childcare for more than 30 hours a week. Child 1: 3% of household income up to maximum a fee of 1425 kr/month (roughly 149 USD) Child 2: 2% of household income up to maximum a fee of 950 kr/month (roughly 99 USD) Child 3: 1% of household income up to maximum a fee of 475 kr/month (roughly 50 USD) PART-TIME RATES Child 1: 2% of household income up to maximum a fee of 950 kr/month Child 2: 1% of household income up to maximum a fee of 475 kr/month Child 3: 1% of household income up to maximum a fee of 475 kr/month Every family receives child allowance[1]. Child allowance for one child is 1250 kr/month for one child. Two children: 2650 kr/month. Three chidren: 4480 kr/month. [1] https://www.forsakringskassan.se/privatpers/foralder/nar_barnet_ar_fott/barnbidrag/!ut/p/z1/ https://www.forsakringskassan.se/privatpers/foralder/nar_bar...

briandear 7y ago
Sweden has a top marginal tax rate of 70% that kicks in at around $98,000. That $149 per month is deceptive when you are paying very high tax rates.
- empath75 7y ago
  The people benefiting from it aren’t paying those taxes. But obviously taxes pay for government programs.
- edoceo 7y ago
  You're right! Taxing the high earners is a good idea, subsidized child care is just one of the many benefits.
  - aceofspades19 7y ago
    Why is taxing high earners more a good idea? It just gives people an incentive to either not make that much money or leave the country to make more money.

User23 7y ago

> the program literally pays for itself (and more!) via increased income taxes from parents that would have otherwise chosen to stay at home. Getting around 50-80k of untaxed labor value for the household is an excellent reason for any family that can manage to have one parent do the childcare job. It’s not so much an affordability issue as it is a cash flow management issue.

steve1977 7y ago

If the program pays for itself via increased income taxes, it's still as expensive. It's just the money flow that is different. As it involves the state, it might be even a bit more expensive due to overhead cost (it might also not, if it's not profit oriented).