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Today @ehaspel is out with a piece responding to my argument that support for children should be routed through allowances instead of care. He argues we should indeed earmark spending for childcare. https://www.capitasocial.org/capita-ideas/2020/11/12/universal-child-care-and-a-child-allowance-why-not-both
My piece is here: https://ifstudies.org/blog/why-a-child-allowance-is-preferable-to-subsidized-child-care
I think part of the issue is @ehaspel and I just conceptualize the issue differently.
He asks, "Would it be good to have a universal public childcare program?"
I ask, "What is the best way to transfer more money to parents and children?"
He asks, "Would it be good to have a universal public childcare program?"
I ask, "What is the best way to transfer more money to parents and children?"
This is an important distinction.
In his piece, there's no actual argument for why we should have public childcare. So you want parents to have options for childcare: great! Take the money you would have spent on childcare and give it as a cash allowance.
In his piece, there's no actual argument for why we should have public childcare. So you want parents to have options for childcare: great! Take the money you would have spent on childcare and give it as a cash allowance.
What's wild is @ehaspel makes the same concession that @MattBruenig makes: that those who opt out of childcare should STILL GET a cash payment!
So why bother with childcare at all?
So why bother with childcare at all?
The only argument is that public childcare is somehow BETTER than the alternative: that having the government establish a "default option" of public center-based creates a superior kind of society.
That is, that a world where we simply give all parents a sum of money equal to what we would pay in childcare, i.e. where we afford parents more choices and allow more diversity in care model, is in fact an inferior outcome.
I'm adopting the superior/inferior language intentionally. The kindergarten movement begins in Europe in the 19th century rather explicitly connected to ideas of race nationalism, and the most prominent universal childcare example, Quebec, is also a case of nationalistic intent.
Interestingly enough I just led a class discussion in my PhD program *yesterday* about the Quebec childcare model (and my program is of course in Montreal, so this hits close to home), and the literature isn't ambiguous: it's about reprogramming people into Quebecois.
The childcare outcomes are not great. The outcomes for turning Arab speakers into French speakers are considerably better.
More broadly, Quebec's example is really fascinating. Academic study has found (repeatedly) that Quebec's expansion DID NOT close achievement gaps. The conventionally-cited reason is mostly that it expanded "too fast," and capacity couldn't keep up so quality fell.
But here's the wild thing:
Quebec's daycares, despite this "low quality expansion"..... still have huge waiting lists! You don't just get into a daycare here! Let me tell you, conversation at the playground with other parents is all about daycare selection.
Quebec's daycares, despite this "low quality expansion"..... still have huge waiting lists! You don't just get into a daycare here! Let me tell you, conversation at the playground with other parents is all about daycare selection.
It turns out that Quebec generated a huge expansion by allowing in tons of low-quality providers.... and STILL couldn't get rid of long waiting lists for most center-based providers!
If you expanded US childcare by RAISING standards of care, it'd be even more difficult. You cannot simultaneously expand capacity and raise standards without positively jaw-dropping costs.
But Quebec's example isn't unique.
Germany had a big childcare expansion recently, which has gotten high-quality academic study. And it created some plausibly exogenous shocks to study, which is even better than the Quebec case! https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/699979
Germany had a big childcare expansion recently, which has gotten high-quality academic study. And it created some plausibly exogenous shocks to study, which is even better than the Quebec case! https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/699979
What those authors find is exactly what I was explaining in US data, and which @ehaspel downplays:
Poor people do not use universal childcare because they do not WANT childcare.
Poor people do not use universal childcare because they do not WANT childcare.
Germany's childcare expansion was primarily taken up by well-to-do families. They explicitly say it "disproportionately subsidizes advantaged families." They suggest "cultural or religious concerns" motivate resistance to childcare.
The problem that @ehaspel has to wrestle with is that the academic literature is increasingly finding that 1) the kids who benefit from childcare come from cultural backgrounds opposed to it for non-economic reasons, 2) the kids who enroll tend to not benefit from it
The reality is, childcare programs cost a lot of money without actually achieving their goals. In purely technical terms, they are "mistargeted," unless they are made mandatory or quasi mandatory. The paper I cited above hints at this.
It suggests that the choices parents make may be different from the choices children would make for themselves. This of course presupposes children wouldn't make culturally/religiously informed choices, and that children would choose less time with parents.
But the intuition it's getting at is the idea in many welfarist models that parents are suboptimal agents for their children and that the state should often intervene between children and parents even in cases which do not rise to the level of abuse.
And this is what I'm prodding at in my writing on childcare. The reason childcare advocates favor childcare is not that they want to provide more benefits for kids or more parents. Cash transfers are probably better for that.
They reason they support childcare as opposed to allowances is that childcare achieves desired ends related to the ongoing kulturkampf. It separates parents and children and provides the state more involvement in a child's life, which is prima facie seen as desirable.
So @ehaspel says "Why not both?"
He says the argument is money.
No, it's not. I guarantee you my willingness to spend on kids rises to whatever level he is willing to set.
He says the argument is money.
No, it's not. I guarantee you my willingness to spend on kids rises to whatever level he is willing to set.
My argument is simply that there is not actually any reason in almost any circumstance to prefer routing funding for children and parents through childcare centers rather than providing directly.
If the concern is the quality of care, just issue regulations. If the concern is cost of care, provide cash benefits, or, heck, set a price ceiling.
As you can see, the view here is literal, entirely un-reconstructed Leninist-Stalinist approaches to childcare, as anybody who's studied early Soviet family policy will recognize. https://twitter.com/renegadenarwhal/status/1326921180104765443
AS I SAID, the objective is cultural reprogramming, not empowering family choice or improving child outcomes.
But the point is, for whatever sum of money is to be spent, it is almost always preferable to just give it in cash to the intended beneficiaries.
As it happens, this is also my view of primary, secondary, and tertiary education too. So I know I'm an outlier. But I think the more years of school you have the stronger the argument for more choice in them becomes.
So if you only have 6 years of schooling, one-size-fits all no-choice mandatory schooling makes sense. It's not that much of a burden all things considered. But when you're talking about ages 2-25 being in school, I think you need to have more choice at all levels.
Yes, there's an income benefit for parents. That's an issue neither @ehaspel nor I addressed since both of us are focused on child welfare. https://twitter.com/BairdTom/status/1326922188881076229
Finally, as a quest of the Quebecois nation, I should note here that I actually appreciate their commitment to integrating foreigners. It's actually hugely helpful to have people actually help me with my French, whereas in HK people were like "Foreigners cannot learn Cantonese."
In Quebec people are like, "You are trying to learn French and talking to your baby in French, therefore you are Good Immigrant: I will give you a brief helpful French lesson related to playground equipment, so that you can be an Even Better Immigrant."
HK is obviously easier for immigrants who don't want to integrate, for people who want to recreate their prior world on different dirt and maintain separate societies apart from locals.
Quebec is much better for turning immigrants into Quebecois.
Quebec is much better for turning immigrants into Quebecois.
