Quality child care is helpful to children and their parents, and though it’s expensive in the short term, it’s cost effective in the long term. And we spend half as much of our Gross National Product on it as the average industrialized country.
All this information is in a New York Times article. The surprise is, it’s in the business section, not a section about child rearing or education. But it’s not out of place among articles about finances and the economy, because, even disregarding its value as a societal good, quality child care makes good economic sense.
[R]ecent studies show that of any policy aimed to help struggling families, aid for high-quality care has the biggest economic payoff for parents and their children — and even their grandchildren. It has the biggest positive effect on women’s employment and pay. It’s especially helpful for low-income families, because it can propel generations of children toward increased earnings, better jobs, improved health, more education and decreased criminal activity as adults.
A recent study out of the University of Chicago looks at two long-term studies out of North Carolina where young children from low-income families received free, full-time child care. The children and their families were compared to a control group. The mothers of the children in child care earned more than those in a control group, which is no surprise, but they were still earning more twenty years later. The children stayed in school longer, and they earned more as well. The study found that at age 30, the men who had been in quality child care earned almost $20,000 more a year than the control group and the women earned $2,500 more. The researchers admit that the small sample size of the study means that $20,000 figure for the men likely isn’t representative, but even if it were considerably less, it would still be significant.
A hell of a lot of money was spent on those kids while they were in child care, almost $19,000 a year, but the researchers said the financial benefits far outweighed the costs.
[A]fter calculating effects like the cost to society of unemployment, crime and poor health, the researchers concluded that it returned $7.30 for every dollar spent.
And that doesn’t factor in the personal and social value of helping people live happier, healthier lives.
Can we afford better, more available child care? Arizona’s Republican lawmakers would say absolutely not. Hell, we can’t even afford to pay our K-12 teachers a decent wage. Conservatives around the country want to reverse the social programs which were begun by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and added to by Lyndon Baines Johnson — Privatize Medicare! Privatize Social Security! Stop coddling poor people! Head Start is a fraud! — not add to them. But our fellow industrialized countries somehow manage to spend significantly more on child care than we do.
The study found the United States spends 0.4 percent of G.D.P. on child care, the lowest level among industrialized countries and half the average.
So we could find a way to do it if we cared enough, or were smart enough.
This article appears in Apr 20-26, 2017.
Did the mothers in the study want to turn their children over to daycare 40 or more hours a week, or would they have preferred to have a family income sufficient to enable one parent to provide pre-school and after-school care while the other parent worked full time? Why doesn’t the political party that is supposed to defend the interests of working families defend the right to wages for full time work that can actually support a family properly?
Did the typically insufficiently educated and underpaid child care workers want to work for low wages taking care of other women’s children in a group setting, or would they, if they had had the opportunity, have preferred a different way of life — either a better paying job with better working conditions and benefits or the opportunity to take care of their own children, not someone else’s? You forgot to mention what an economic ghetto paid child care workers live in. Try making it a genuine profession and then come talk to us about how much it will benefit society for us to (under)pay an (under)educated child care work force to raise the next generation of children.
Could you make an argument with some actual thought content to it in support of a different point of view?
Compensation and credentialing standards in the child care “industry” are an acknowledged problem among educators. It’s people who mindlessly promote expansion of the sector without acknowledging that wage and quality of care issues need to be addressed who are promoting shoddy public policy, a la TUSD’s “early childhood education” centers. Talk to an expert in early childhood education some time about whether the execution of that particular local expansion of child care “opportunities” deserved praise or blame.
But asking questions that would help the public understand whether the public policy initiatives party operatives like Safier pitch actually benefit the constituents they are supposed to benefit — or someone or something else — is not something you’d be inclined to do. I wonder why not.
A recent study out of the University of Chicago….just think of the irony that U of C could not look at results in Chicago, so they went outside their own state.
Ummm ummmm ummm Obama. Chicago bleeds for you.
Repeal Birthright Citizenship:
WIC, ($7,000,000,000) SNAP ($80,000,000,000 a year), TANF ($31,000,000,000), Supplemental housing ($24,000,000,000) and MEDICAID ($265,000,000,000), CHIP ($9,000,000,000) School Lunch Program ($11,600,000,000) total $795 BILLION A YEAR this doesn’t count 8 Cash Assistance programs 8 vocational training programs 3 utility assistance programs total 2 child care and development programs. ALL together are tax payer burdens.
That would save the US TRILLIONS!
In 2010 there were 6,000,000 kids of illegals in the us. 1 year of education = $12,600 (2010) KP-12 = $163,800 X 6,000,000 = $982,800,000,000.
Mexican Anchor Kids come over the Mexico/US border in Juarez to attend school and burden the people of those counties. Pregnant women sneak over the border to DROP human flesh on US soil leaving US with the Hospital bill and the Educational Bill the Medical bill and any other kind of bill they can suck out of US! The Banditos! Stop Bandito Births!
In the 60s we had no child care and the children were more productive and Intelligent and did not require police in the schools. Less of this:
Several hospitals, including ones in Stockton (40% Hispanic & Bankrupt), CA and Dallas, TX, report as many as 70% of their deliveries are to nonUS-residents. Similarly, the parents of infant citizens still qualify for welfare in order to protect the child.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michealene-cristini-risley/the-14th_b_1343158.html
What other things do these parents have to do since they have kids every 2 years to maintain Welfare Services. The majority don’t need daycare because they don’t work and don’t plan to work!
This is where our education money went. Given choices politicians lose sight of any priorities, so everything becomes their priority. Take away the funds, leave them the purse.
Ummm ummmm ummm. Rat T in disguise.
Rat T. is a female. Keep trying. Maybe one day you’ll get something right. But I doubt it.