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For what its worth, the Economist recently wrote about how universal child care can harm children, citing a study from Quebec. > The trio published their first
by czhu12 11mo ago
For what its worth, the Economist recently wrote about how universal child care can harm children, citing a study from Quebec.
> The trio published their first study in 2005, and the results were damning. Shifting to universal child care appeared to lead to a rise in aggression, anxiety and hyperactivity among Quebecer children, as well as a fall in motor and social skills. The effects were large: anxiety rates doubled; roughly a third more kids were reported to be hyperactive. Indeed, the difference in hyperactivity rates was larger than is typically reported between boys and girls.
They basically make the case that childcare is extremely difficult and requires a lot of attentive care, which is hard to scale up in a universal way.
[1] https://archive.is/ScFRX https://archive.is/ScFRX
- outside1234 11mo agoThis is probably because they are actually measuring hyperactivity when there is universal care versus 40% of it going unmeasured.
- reliabilityguy 11mo agoI suspect that if the sample pre universal care was big enough, then the measurement of 40% is still good.
- vlovich123 11mo agoNot if the samples are skewed. For example, the people who get the care are from stable environments with financial means. After universal childcare is implemented, we start measuring these things in the broader population that has fewer access to resources generally.
- reliabilityguy 11mo agoThe assumption here is that only people with means got care and were surveyed. I am not sure that this is the case. Moreover, you can correct for those factors, and, I assume, any statistician worth their salt are.
- vlovich123 11mo agoGiven the reproducibility crisis, particularly in the social sciences, I wouldn’t put too much weight into the skill or honesty of the people doing that work (and statisticians they are not - more like people with a humanities background who take some statistics courses and then do numerology)
- eesmith 11mo agoEven if you assume the statistics for hyperactivity are correct, how did the researchers decide which statistics were relevant? In any case, the original 2008 publication is at https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w11832/w11832.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w11832/w118... . That's long enough ago that we can read how academics interpret the study. For example, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0885200625000572 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088520062... attributes the problems to the increased used of lower-quality for-profit and unlicensed providers: "To address the growing demand for ECEC spaces as the cost of care went down, the province saw an expansion of both for-profit and unlicensed home care providers. Data from the aforementioned longitudinal study indicated that 35 % of center-based settings and 29 % of home-based settings were rated as “good” or better quality, compared to only 14 % of for-profit centers and 10 % of unlicensed home care providers. Furthermore, for-profit and unlicensed home care settings were more likely to be rated as “inadequate” than their licensed counterparts (Japel et al., 2005; Japel, 2012; Bigras et al., 2010). At the same time, Quebec experienced a decline across various child health, developmental, and behavioral outcomes, including heightened hyperactivity, inattention, and physical aggression, along with reduced motor and social development (Baker et al., 2008; Kottelenberg & Lehrer, 2013). These findings underscore the challenges of maintaining high standards in the context of expansion associated with rapid reduction in the cost of ECEC." https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/19345747.2023.2187325 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/19345747.2023.21... also affirms the importance of quality "Meta-analyses have, quite consistently, shown targeted preschool programs—for 3 to 4-year-old children—to be effective in promoting preschool cognitive skills in the short run, with effect sizes averaging around 20–30% of a standard deviation (Camilli et al., 2010; Duncan & Magnuson, 2013). There is also some meta-analytic evidence of persistent effects throughout adolescence and early adulthood on outcomes such as grade retention and special education placement (McCoy et al., 2017). The same is true for universal preschool programs in cases where structural quality is high (i.e., high teacher: child ratios, educational requirements for teachers), with effects evident primarily among children from families with lower income and/or parental education (van Huizen & Plantenga, 2018). There are, however, notable exceptions. Most prominent are quasi-experimental studies of Quebec’s scale-up of universal ECEC subsidies (Baker et al., 2008; Baker et al., 2019; Kottelenberg & Lehrer, 2017), covering children aged 0–4. These studies found mixed short- and long-term effects on cognitive- and academic outcomes (for example, negative effects of about 20% of a standard deviation of program exposure on a Canadian national test in math and reading for ages 13 and 16, yet with positive effects of about 10–30% for PISA math and reading scores; Baker et al., 2019). Consistent with effects of universal ECEC being conditional on quality ..." The van Huizen & Plantenga citation at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775716303788 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02727... has bullet points "The results show that ECEC quality matters critically.", "The evidence does not indicate that effects are fading out in the long run." and "The gains of ECEC are concentrated within children from lower SES families." In more detail it also cites Baker et al 2008, with: "In fact, the research estimating the causal effects of universal programs is far from conclusive: some studies find that participation in ECEC improves child development (Drange and Havnes, 2015, Gormley, Gayer, Phillips and Dawson, 2005), while others show that ECEC has no significant impact (Blanden, Del Bono, Hansen and Rabe, 2017, Fitzpatrick, 2008) or may produce adverse effects on children's outcomes (Baker, Gruber and Milligan, 2008, Baker, Gruber and Milligan, 2015). As societal returns depend critically on the effects on children's outcomes (e.g. van Huizen, Dumhs, & Plantenga, 2018), universal child care and preschool expansions may in some cases be considered as a promising but in other cases as a costly and ineffective policy strategy."
- beowulfey 11mo agoIt's not an intractable issue. It's just a matter of economics.
- hammock 11mo agoAgreed. If we could fund universal child care so that the ratio of caregiver to child was more like 1 to 2 or 1 to 5 or even 1 to 8 in extreme cases, then the lack of attentiveness would not be a problem. Wait a minute… that sounds like…
- Buttons840 11mo agoThat sounds like the ideal situation we have decided to make unrealistic.
- Spivak 11mo agoOkay but you do understand that what you're suggesting costs the full salary a woman (because of course it would never be men asked give up their careers) could earn for the family and the economic gains that come with it. Back of the napkin calculation is three trillion dollars of value lost annually. And that's before the knock-on effects of such a massive recession. Household income will drop by 30-40% across the board because you're daft if you think men will be getting a raise. So there goes the demand side too. Then there's the small issue that women's liberation happened and there's no reason to believe it wouldn't happen again given the conditions would be the exact same. Women won't be put back into financial captivity without a fight. In some ways I understand why men idealize this era of the past, but women were not having a good time.
- Wowfunhappy 11mo agoThe other way to interpret GP is that we could implement long-term government-funded parental leave, especially if (!) the cost was comparable to universal child care. This could go to either parent, not necessarily the mother.
- nathanaldensr 11mo ago
- bryanlarsen 11mo agoYou'd think the Economist would care more about this study: https://childcarecanada.org/documents/child-care-news/11/06/quebecs-child-care-scheme-pays-itself-economist https://childcarecanada.org/documents/child-care-news/11/06/... Showing that subsidized day care pays for itself.
- czhu12 11mo agoI think the case that they are making is exactly that -- because it is run on the cheap, is what leads to worse outcomes for children.
- insane_dreamer 11mo agoThe Economist is a capitalism cheerleader, so no, they would not care for that study.
- bryanlarsen 11mo agoYes, that's why I thought they'd cheer it. When the state provides day care, more Moms work and contribute to capitalism more than the cost of the day care.
- insane_dreamer 11mo agoYes, but the state providing day care is "socialism", so ...
- bryanlarsen 11mo agoThey economist is capitalist, not right wing. They have previously endorsed some socialist positions.
- ninalanyon 11mo agoIn Norway every child has a right to a barnehage place (kindergarten). It's not free unless you are poor but it is very affordable at a maximum of about 3 000 NOK per month, about 300 USD, for five full days a week. Children in barnehage learn to be social and cooperative, resilient and adaptable. They play outside in all weathers, learn to put on and take off their outer clothes, to set tables, help each other and the staff. They certainly do not fail to gain motor skills. It's not just child care and every barnehage has to be led by someone with a qualification in early childhood education although no formal class based instruction takes place. So what exactly is New Mexico proposing to provide and what did Quebec provide?
- david38 11mo agoNorway accepts they are a homogeneous country. Americans lose their minds at the thought
- mlrtime 11mo agoWhat do you mean?
- amypetrik8 11mo ago[flagged]
- mindslight 11mo agoI know higher order functions are cool and all, but using (apply ...) makes nested applications easier to notice.
- penultimatename 11mo agoThe US isn’t homogenous country. It can’t become that without amending the constitution and then deporting or killing 40% of the population. Honestly, opinions like this are the best anti-white propaganda around.
- 11mo ago
- watwut 11mo agoI take the fact that child care is not some kind of super new thing and exists in well run countries without their kids being behind, worst behaved or more aggressive then American kids.
- zdragnar 11mo agoYou may be surprised to learn that Quebec is not in America.
- jjk166 11mo agoAmerica is the place without universal childcare being used as a control here.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- legolas2412 11mo agoI am reading the article and it looks like it is being compared to the elder cohorts of Qubec children and also rest of Canada. Looks like Quebec's past and rest of Canada is the control.
- jjk166 11mo agoI'm referring to the comment you responded to comparing america to various countries that offer free childcare.
- nineplay 11mo agoFTA > Think of the Perry and Quebec experiments—two of the most widely cited in the early-education literature—as poles at either end of a spectrum Even The Economist acknowledges that its a single study in a single province which runs contradictory to other studies. That they turn that into headline article says more about The Economist and readers of The Economist than it does about universal child care.
- insane_dreamer 11mo ago> the Economist recently wrote about how universal child care can harm children I expect nothing less from the Economist, of course. If you read more closely, the issue wasn't that universal child care is bad, but how it's implemented is important (of course). Not to mention that a host of other factors could be contributing to the study's findings. For example, it could be that mothers spending less time with their children is detrimental to their development. Few people would argue with that. But let's examine why mothers are working full-time in the first place -- largely it's because families can no longer be sustained on a single income. And _that_ is more likely the root of the problem than "universal childcare".
- jonplackett 11mo agoThe problem is that the word ‘childcare’ can mean anything from a one on one nanny looking after a child to an after school club where it’s just one adult and the kids just do whatever they want with no guidance at all. You can’t really compare them without a better definition.