This is something one hears an awful lot:
So, if two incomes are mandatory for the basics of middle class life -- home, car, kids, dog, then childcare is now a necessity for most families. Those babies don't raise themselves. Yet, where is the child-care discussion in this presidential debate?
Food, shelter, or clothing are also necessities for children. But no one suggests that the government should provide them, except in the cases of those who are too poor to provide for themselves. Why should childcare be any different?
They wont be satisfied until there are handouts at every step from cradle to grave. Oh yeah, they're socialists, what do we expect.
Hillary's latest give-away (ie dollars for votes) scheme, $200 million for child-care.
Two incomes are NOT mandatory in any way shape or form. That is false on its face. US military enlisted and officers do quite well on one salary (since its hard for a spouse to hold a job when moving every 2-3 years). I have seen it many times. Heck my wife left the workforce when she became pregnant with our first and never wnet back. We have a house, 3 kids, 2 dogs, 2 cars - no problem.
So the basic premise is wrong. Thus no need to discuss childcare, except for the single mothers who have deadbeat dads (or the other way).
I second the point by buffpilot. Two incomes might be needed for a home in a gated community, two BMW payments, and 2 kids in private school. However, it is with in the power of a lot of "middle class" families to scale back a little and live quite comfortably on one income.
State and federal governments do help with food, shelter, and clothing (no sales tax on food or clothing in many places, tax incentives and low interest loans for homebuyers, etc.). Similarly, government could help with child care without "providing" it. Let's not overreact to what's really a very mild suggestion.
Well, in my area of the country, childcare costs $12,000 per year for the basic package at an average quality center. If you have two kids, that means $24,000. You get a few bucks back in taxes, but not enough. My brother is a journalist and his wife is a school teacher. I'm not sure how they are going to make it next year, when their second baby comes.
As Megan knows, supporting a family of four on a journalist salary in the Northeast is close to impossible. They really need the two incomes.
Read the "Millionaire Next Door." End of subject IMHO. Sunsidized childcare is just a way to allow the well-off to afford new BMWs and SUVs as opposed to a used Camry. It is NOT for the children.
laura - the solution is to MOVE. You can easily make it on those salaries in Columbus Ohio, Dallas TX, Denver, Cleveland, etc. I could care less if you can't make it in Boston or NYC. That's your brother's choice, and I should have to support it with my tax dollors. Or maybe get a job in a profession that pays more? Like become a corporate lawyer for haliburton. :)
The problem is people expect to have it all and will find any way to milk the government to support their preferred lifestyle. It's for the children (TM).
The difference between child care and food/clothes is that the second doesn't substantially affect labor force participation rates.
Not having suitable child care leads to a lot of educated women leaving the labor force to care for their children, which is a less efficient, and therefore less productive, outcome than their working and men/women with less education providing child care. Of course, under the current system, women could continue working and pay for child care themselves. But given the positive externalities that reproduction brings (especially if the kid is likely to go to college, as most children of the college-educated are), the argument that society should bear part of this cost isn't an outlandish one.
Now, I personally don't think the government should provide childcare. But there is an efficiency/growth argument for doing so that distinguishes it from other necessities.
Given geographic variations in demand for subsidized child care, surely everyone can agree that this is an issue that should be handled (if at all) by state governments.
Food, shelter, or clothing are also necessities for children. But no one suggests that the government should provide them ...
Food and shelter are massively subsidized, via agricultural subsidies and the mortgage deduction.
That said, even putting expense aside for the moment, it seems like it would be difficult to effectively subsidize child care. In particular, tax deductions and credits for child care oversubsidize those who can already afford it. I have no idea how other countries accomplish that but it seems worth talking aboit.
Like I'm presuming many others will do, I'm saving this to bring back up when Megan Makes a Mini-McArdle.
And then we'll see what she thinks of child care.
Wealth and need is relative, so we have a means test that doesn't take that into account at all. $60,000 in Indiana doesn't compare to $60,000 in San Francisco.
Given geographic variations in demand for subsidized child care, surely everyone can agree that this is an issue that should be handled (if at all) by state governments.
Just like most personal issues should be handled. As close to the person as possible.
Megan, you have no soul.
You neither, Keith Indy, but you're not worth starting a blog about.
So, BRAD, why should the Federal government subsidize child-care rather then having it occur at the state level?
When we had our second child I built a spreadsheet starting with my wife's take home pay as a kindergarten teacher, then subtracted out child care, transportation expenses for her to get to work, work clothes, lunches, etc. Any expense I could think of that was variable based on her working got included. The net benefit to us from her working with 2 kids was $200 a week.
She stayed home, I delivered pizza a few night a week to make up the difference. One of the easiest (and best) decisions we ever made.
If child care is going to eat 1/2 of one parent's income, I suspect a similar analysis will yield similar results. The actual net effect of one parent staying home is not nearly as great as the simplified loss of that income, because you also avoid a lot of expenses with that decision too.
... why should the Federal government subsidize child-care rather then having it occur at the state level?
The same reason everything happens at the federal level these days: state governments have effectively no ability to raise revenue to do anything other than what they are currently doing. (See this post by Ezra Klein on why state health care initiatives fail for substantially similar reasons.)
I think the argument on why states can't do health care depends on people with costly medical conditions moving to states that try to provide health care. The analogy would be people with big families moving from Utah to New York to take advantage of the subsidy. Which seems pretty unlikely.
There's also an equity argument for government involvement in child care. Good quality early childhood education (i.e. ages 2-5) produces significant improvement in long-term academic and social outcomes (see for example, Barnett, 1995).
Kids from poor families are more likely to be in low-quality child care situations, like a bad (but cheap) daycare, or having an incompetent babysitter. These same kids are also less likely to get the kind of "educational" play at home that most middle-to-upper-class parents will provide.
The kids themselves are also not in a position to know whether they're getting good early childhood education, or to change their situation if they did know.
Given all these factors, I'd argue that early childhood education/day care is more analogous to primary schooling than food and shelter. The quality of child care varies systematically with socioeconomic status; the effects of the variation are lasting; ergo, government intervention to improve horizontal equity.
I was building and selling houses back in the 70's when the credit rules were changed to count spousal income. Theoretically this made it possible for more people to buy a house or a bigger better one. However, within months the price of houses in our area jumped to levels that soaked up the new purchasing power. Single earner families were put at a disadvantage in the marketplace. All things being equal, it is still true.
I am not sure that childcare should be subsidized as in cash payments at least at the federal level but a general tax deduction for childcare seems reasonbable.
Child care is a job, but when mom (or dad) does it they are not taxed on their wages (the foregone cost of day care)
However when a woman (or man) chooses to work outside the home their income is first taxed and then out of after tax dollars they have to pay for day care.
This drives a pretty big wedge into the stay at home vs work decision. My wife and I just had a daughter and did some of the math.
Why stop at at the end of the workday? Why not government supplied boarding schools?
Really, is it just too much to ask that people take care of their own children?
we have government single payer healthcare here, and a few years ago also got government subsidized daycare (a few dollars per day)
so yeah, it is a natural progression
(fyi, the daycare workers are unionized and periodically go on strike, there is a huge, multi-year waiting list for spots, generally what you would expect from government subsidized services)
Because Gail Collins says so?
"Food, shelter, or clothing are also necessities for children. But no one suggests that the government should provide them, except in the cases of those who are too poor to provide for themselves. Why should childcare be any different?"
I presume the same thing is true about school (i.e. care of children after the age of 5)? I know there are folks out there who believe that school shouldn't be provided by the government/tax dollars. But is Ms. McArdle one of them? How about the others here who opposed government sponsored child care?
Agricultural subsidies are directed towards producers and have the effect of actually making food more expensive for consumers and not less. As far as the mortgage interest deduction, the interest deduction has already been factored into the price of housing and it’s probably a wash (you pay a higher price but you get to deduct the interest on a mortgage).
Alright, let's try another argument. We should pay for good childcare for the same reason that we pay for public schools. Because it is in the interest of all Americans, that the future of this country isn't being raised in substandard conditions.
Susan wins. She sounds more like an economist than the blog author.
I presume the same thing is true about school (i.e. care of children after the age of 5)? I know there are folks out there who believe that school shouldn't be provided by the government/tax dollars.
Public schooling has been generally agreed upon, even by persons who do not have children yet pay their property taxes et al, as a necessary public good that can be optimally provided in a collective fashion.
Good luck rounding up that consensus on daycare provision. People are expected, to the greatest extent of their ability, to provide food and shelter for themselves and their dependents. Daycare is merely the hiring out of food and shelter provision for some portion of the day. Outside of subsidies for low income families, perhaps, I expect you will find very low support for publicly subsidizing such a thing as it is tantamount to demanding a food and shelter handout merely for existing.
laura wrote: Alright, let's try another argument. We should pay for good childcare for the same reason that we pay for public schools. Because it is in the interest of all Americans, that the future of this country isn't being raised in substandard conditions.
The point of public schooling is not for the raising of children, but they educating of them -- a large and significant difference.
But I think I can see uses for that logic. Let's try another one: it is in the best interest of all Americans that I not begin stealing stereos out of cars in order to supplement my income to the living standards I would like to have. Therefore, I believe I am entitled to a $12k/year handout in order to prevent this unfortunate outcome. Please begin lobbying for the Anony-Mouse Income Subsidy immediately.
Any takers? Your congressman is just a letter away...
"Because it is in the interest of all Americans, that the future of this country isn't being raised in substandard conditions."
What leads you to think they currently are? This may be a valid argument for the lowest classes, but you have to prove that it's a problem now for children of the middle class and up.
laura,
Move to a place were you can live on one income and have one spouse not work until all the children are in elementary school. Simple.
We don't need to give a subsidy to anyone, but making a means-tested welfare, would be fine with mean. But base it on the income needed in Mississippi - since you can move! If you want to live in NYC make the money, don't have kids, or move. Its YOUR choice. But don't ask me to give you money so you can live your lifestyle without making any sacrifices. That's what you want.
No, childcare shouldn't be an entitlement. However, Amber has an excellent point. I think the middle ground is that society does have an interest in seeing childcare be as good as possible. My ex and I decided to bite the bullet and hire a nanny for a year -- when it was a very significant % of our income -- because the childcare we observed, even at the high end was appalling.
We can do this by establishing some minimal standards for childcare centers and workers, but parents must take on the responsibility for paying for it. As many commenters have pointed out, sometimes the economics doesn't work and one of the parents goes on hiatus. This is not wrong. I'd describe it as rational.
We need to re-define quality of life. The environmental reasons loom large in my mind, but just as importantly is measuring the quality of our lives by measures other than the size of the plasma TV. I know, I know, there are those living on the edge...but cash payments and the EITC and some form of subsidized childcare at the local level can take care of these marginal folks.
No, childcare shouldn't be an entitlement. However, Amber has an excellent point. I think the middle ground is that society does have an interest in seeing childcare be as good as possible. My ex and I decided to bite the bullet and hire a nanny for a year -- when it was a very significant % of our income -- because the childcare we observed, even at the high end was appalling.
We can do this by establishing some minimal standards for childcare centers and workers, but parents must take on the responsibility for paying for it. As many commenters have pointed out, sometimes the economics doesn't work and one of the parents goes on hiatus. This is not wrong. I'd describe it as rational.
We need to re-define quality of life. The environmental reasons loom large in my mind, but just as importantly is measuring the quality of our lives by measures other than the size of the plasma TV. I know, I know, there are those living on the edge...but cash payments and the EITC and some form of subsidized childcare at the local level can take care of these marginal folks.
If daycare and the other costs of having both parents working take up just about your whole paycheck, that's the market's way of telling you that you that your babysitting is worth as much as your paid work - and you will probably be doing a better job of it than anyone you hire it out to.
If daycare and the other costs of having both parents working take up just about your whole paycheck, that's the market's way of telling you that you that your babysitting is worth as much as your paid work - and you will probably be doing a better job of it than anyone you hire it out to.
anonymouse: "it is in the best interest of all Americans that I not begin stealing stereos out of cars in order to supplement my income to the living standards I would like to have. Therefore, I believe I am entitled to a $12k/year handout in order to prevent this unfortunate outcome."
It's a weak analogy at best to subsidized childcare, but even on its own terms I'm not sure your point is as strong as you think.
Loosely inspired by Coase and Scitovsky, you have to wonder: if a modest portion of my tax dollars could go toward essentially buying out the relatively small percentage of really hopeless characters who put inordinate strain on public services (welfare, policing, prisons), then I wonder if I might not quietly make the payoff? (I would, of course, do so privately, while in public loudly voicing my insistence that crime doesn't pay, and that pathological behaviour will be punished, not rewarded).
It is a profound tragedy that some people are doomed by circumstance to fall into a life of crime or dependence, and that they are often far beyond redemption by the time they reach adulthood. We should strive to prevent such tragedies. But given that tragedies have already happened, and given that those hard cases tend to put disproportionate strain on government services, then yes, I might just be willing to quietly pay them off, devoting a patently unjust share of government resources to getting them off the streets and happily settled somewhere with a steady income and careful monitoring -- if, of course, the social benefits of the payoff made it worthwhile, and if it could be done without much or any public fanfare (thus minimizing the obvious moral hazard involved).
Like Buffpilot, I don't much want to subsidize urban hipsters in, say, Mannhattan, San Francisco, and Vancouver who feel entitled to the lifestyle they'd most desire in the location they love. But I don't think that's a serious concern: Amber, Susan, and Laura together make a good case that better and more accessible early childhood education (which is what good daycare really amounts to) yields societal benefits in improved child welfare, future labour productivity, and current labour market efficiency. Those are good reasons, even if a few hipsters also benefit!
School and daycare are on the same continuum, but there are crucial differences in care for different age groups. One person can teach 20 8-year-olds with fine results, but having one person caring for 20 newborns would be a disaster and potentially cause permanent damage to the children, as in Romanian orphanages. Early on, two infants per caregiver is really the maximum if you want quality care (maybe three per caregiver if things are really conveniently set-up). At that point, the infants need to be fed, and changed many, many times a day. If they are young and colicky, they'll need to be held round the clock. As time goes by and little kids can feed themselves and walk holding hands, the number of children per caregiver can be gradually expanded. By the time they're potty trained and have reasonably good self-control (say around 4), they can be in fairly big groups. So, all things being equal, infant care has to be much more expensive than daycare for preschoolers.
While there are similarities between child care and school, there are also large differences. As a mother with some experience, I know that I can take care of an infant or a toddler or a preschooler, and do just fine. I could take you to any park in the country and show you mothers and fathers and nannies doing super work--those child care skills are fortunately very wide spread in the population. However, I'm already pretty sure that I can't teach my five-year-old as well as her teachers are doing. If I wanted to take over from them, I suppose I could if I worked really hard, but at some point (high school, at the latest) I would have to give up.
Is this blog primarily supported by the "We are strong and totally illogical" crowd?
Every attempt to discuss the appropriate role of government is overwhelmed by the "They are just looking for cradle to grave handouts" baloney.
Listen. Safety is a human need. Since human needs must NOT --according to these self styled philosophers, EVER be met by government, why don't I hear calls for cuts in the military budget? How about dissolving the police?
Oh --THOSE human needs ARE the appropriate focus of government....ergo, meeting SOME human needs is a purpose of government.
Gosh, then how do we determine WHICH needs are appropriate for government participation in a free society? Oh --discussion. And of course, desparaging people names when they raise a potential need that YOU don't want to support PROMOTES free discussion --or, er, maybe not.
I am sure thses self styled philospher kings fear for the republic. So do I, but I doubt we do it for the same reasons.
Gosh, then how do we determine WHICH needs are appropriate for government participation in a free society?
Well, I guess we vote. For the most part, the results of that voting have given the USA a government that is less involved in supporting the needs of its people. But I think more and more Americans are beginning to look with envy at the choices of their European cousins, as it at least appears as though the latter enjoy a saner, more secure, and less stressful lifestyle, because they make government their servant. It's not cheap, but it's not unfordable either -- at least not in rich countries. And the extra bite the tax man takes from your paycheck or at the checkout counter pays big quality of life dividends. Moreover, there need not be much of a cost to those who value the libertarian lifestyle. In some respects, the ability of the average Dane or Austrian to live the life of the individual is greater than it is in America, because in the latter you're more of a slave to the market. Dependence on the market can be every bit as dehumanizing as dependence on government. The key is striking the right balance. To my eyes the more smoothly functioning European small states and Canada get that balance "righter" than either the socially Darwinistic US or the sclerotic, large continental powers.
I am not sure that childcare should be subsidized as in cash payments at least at the federal level but a general tax deduction for childcare seems reasonbable. - Eccdogg
In other words, subsidize the rich who earn enough money and pay enough taxes for the tax credit to be meaningful, while continuing to stick it to the poor. The pro-tax-credit versus subsidy bias in this country is reprehensible. It results in the federal government constantly subsidizing the rich.
If daycare and the other costs of having both parents working take up just about your whole paycheck, that's the market's way of telling you that - markm
And I thought the idea that libertarians worshipped the market was just a figure of speech! I never suspected they actually imbued it with a mystical persona. What does the market look like, markm? Does it have a long beard, and reach out with its invisible hand to touch the finger of Adam Smith? More important, when the market only pays $8.50 an hour for day care workers, is that the market's way of telling us that it hates kids? In that case, I'm thinking maybe I don't like this market so much, and may decide to worship something else.
markm said "...that's the market's way of telling you that you that your babysitting is worth as much as your paid work..."
I have to disagree. Front-line child-care workers earn very little (a median of $7.34 an hour in 2004). If your hourly wage is higher than that, the market is telling you that you should hire someone else to do your babysitting.
It's the tax regime that's changing the equation. Existing tax policy is engineering a social outcome (whether intentionally or not) that encourages the lower-earning parent to stay at home. A different tax policy could encourage both parents to work. We can debate the merits of the various outcomes, but what you're seeing is the result of a particular taxation scheme, not the product of the invisible hand.
laura - the solution is to MOVE. You can easily make it on those salaries in Columbus Ohio, Dallas TX, Denver, Cleveland, etc.
buffpilot, you genius, costs are lower in those places because SALARIES ARE LOWER in those places. Journalists make more in Boston than they do in Columbus. Incidentally, the idea that you can just up and get a job in journalism -- and that your spouse can get a job teaching in the same place you move to -- is pretty ridiculous. "Change careers, then!" And, of course, presumably, these people also have to find jobs that provide health care, since if they don't and try to rely on S-CHIP they'll be "irresponsible parents" according to the right. So to sum up: everyone has to immediately move to cheaper parts of the country and find jobs there that include health insurance.
Try getting some experience outside of a subsidized socialist system like the military. If the whole economy were like the military -- with subsidized housing close to one's place of work, guaranteed employment with no risk of layoff, employer-provided health care, etc. -- we certainly wouldn't be having this particular kind of problem.
Again, why not just set up government run boarding houses for the kids? All of the arguments advanced so far basically come down to the idea that quality childcare is important enough to subsidize or be supplied by the government, so why stop at the end of the working day, or the school day?
For those who think this is a reductio ad absurdum, I would point out this is just on "the same continuum" with school.
I have to disagree. Front-line child-care workers earn very little (a median of $7.34 an hour in 2004). If your hourly wage is higher than that, the market is telling you that you should hire someone else to do your babysitting.
As someone who worked in child-care I can tell you, this is absurd. Yeah, most child-care workers make only a little, but then there's a little something called overhead that increases the total price for parents. Unless you just drop your kids off in an open field, then you are also paying for the child care facilities, the toys, the playground, the insurance, in addition to the wages of the staff.
This is why many parents of infants choose to go with home-based child-care or babysitters: much lower overhead.
So yeah, for many families, especially with multiple children, it just doesn't make sense for both parents to work because their child care costs are too much relative to their income.
But I agree that changing the taxation scheme is worth doing. I for one favor abolishing the income and payroll tax, for starters.
Yancey: what significant advantage would boarding schools provide? They wouldn't increase parents' ability to work; they wouldn't improve the care or education of the children; they wouldn't meet the stated lifestyle desires of any significant bloc of parents. In short, there's no reason at all for pursuing such a policy, which is why no one is calling for subsidized boarding schools.
By contrast, this thread is full of arguments explaining why subsidizing child care might meet the above criteria. You're choosing not to engage with them, and instead are simply assuming that such an idea is ridiculous on its face. Your argument is meaningless.
Tom,
Of course they would increase the parents' ability to work, but the work issue is minor since someone has to care for the children in any case. Basically, we would be subsidizing trade between those who don't want to care for their own children with those who are willing to do so.
Also, if my boarding houses won't improve the care or education of the children, then the limited versions being advocated won't either, and we can agree that was a bogus argument to begin with, can't we?
Again, why is it too much to ask of people to care for their own children?
Look north! Subsidized daycare was a huge election issue last time.
Quebec in particular has had subsidized daycare for a number of years now, although the intention was to increase the birth rate. (Which was not particularly successful.)
The somewhat predictable problems have been cost and universality. Those parents lucky enough to have subsidized daycare pay $7 a day for a space. The catch? The number of parents who want a space far exceeds the number of spaces.
Friends in Quebec report that this means you need to put yourself on the waiting list for a spot on average 2 years before you need one. Given that Canada offers ~1 year of paid parental leave, in practical terms you must sign up before you get pregnant.
The outcome has been that the subsidized spots are almost entirely used by the upper middle class, e.g. those who can plan reproduction most carefully. The poor and accidentally pregnant are out of luck!
The other problem of course is that costs have spiraled out of control, and are now eating up a huge chunk of the provincial budget.
There is one fundamental disagreement that colors a lot of these discussions. Some believe that people are entitled to what they earn while others do not. It makes it hard to really discuss issues of government subsidy, taxation, and entitlement if you disagree on this basic point.
It's too bad more poeple don't have extended families. My kids are taken care of by their grand parents when we need help. We're lucky to have both sets in the same city (as of a year or so ag) so they can help out. We also have my brother in the same city so we can trade child care to some extent.
The government is never your servant... letting the government have control of more aspects of your life means that you don't have control...
EI
To reduce inequality, the simple solution would be to subsidize child care for sub-median-income households by taxing super-median-income households. Given a progressive tax structure, subsidizing super-median-income households seems to create an unnecessary middleman.
lot of educated women leaving the labor force to care for their children, which is a less efficient, and therefore less productive, outcome than their working and men/women with less education providing child care.
What is better for the children? To be raised by well-educated mothers or by less educated child-care workers? There is a long-run societal issue there.
A couple that decides to take the financial hit and have one parent stay home shouldn't be subsidizing the choice of a family that has two working parents.
A larger tax deduction for child-care age dependents would be the fairest answer, with parents deciding whether to put it toward professional childcare or their own expenses caring for their children.
Laura brings up a utility issue:
Alright, let's try another argument. We should pay for good childcare for the same reason that we pay for public schools. Because it is in the interest of all Americans, that the future of this country isn't being raised in substandard conditions.
This is a comparison between good child care and bad child care.
But another comparison is just as important -- that between good child care and parental care. If you have a two parent working-class family (and I know that's a big if) it is likely to be equally cost effective for one parent to stay home as for both to work and pay for child care.
Provide free child care and you will hurt the future of the country by incentivizing one-parent families.
Damned if you do. Damned if you don't.
What is better for the children? To be raised by well-educated mothers or by less educated child-care workers? There is a long-run societal issue there.
Depends on how you define educated and what ages we're talking about. The demonstrated lack of harm from daycare once the reasonable things are controlled for illustrates that, yes, someone with normal mental functioning really isn't that much worse at burping infants and wiping butts even sans a Vassar degree and Michigan JD.
someone with normal mental functioning really isn't that much worse at burping infants and wiping butts even sans a Vassar degree and Michigan JD.
vs
The quality of child care varies systematically with socioeconomic status; the effects of the variation are lasting; ergo, government intervention to improve horizontal equity.
If it is about normal mental functioning adults wiping butts and burping infants, where is the argument for high quality daycare?
I don't want the improvement in horizontal equity to come from high-quality parents being economically enticed/coerced into sending their children to lower-quality (than them) childcare.
Loosely inspired by Coase and Scitovsky, you have to wonder: if a modest portion of my tax dollars could go toward essentially buying out the relatively small percentage of really hopeless characters who put inordinate strain on public services (welfare, policing, prisons), then I wonder if I might not quietly make the payoff? (I would, of course, do so privately, while in public loudly voicing my insistence that crime doesn't pay, and that pathological behaviour will be punished, not rewarded).
Except that's not what these schemes turn into. Most people would not have a problem seeing some sort of subsidy for the children of a down-and-out single mother who faces a choice between earning next month's rent and potatoes, versus leaving the kids to fend for themselves at a "daycare provider" that amounts to a neighbor operating unlicensed and uninsured while watching a non-stop string of Oprah and daytime soaps, and then throwing candybars at the kids whenever they get to screaming too loud. Assuming such a thing happens all that often.
But what many contributors to this movement seem to want is the right to have children without making the kinds of sacrifices that family life requires. They want the benefits of two incomes and two careers and the living locale of their choice, and then have someone else pay for their child-bearing decision from day ninety onward.
Sorry, but that's not how the real world works. If you want the ability to maintain that kind of lifestyle, find incomes that support it or get the freaking operation already. All decisions in life have cost/benefit tradeoffs that are not automatically someone else's responsibility to pay for, simply because it would "benefit society" if I were richer or merely because inconvenient for me to personally change my lifestyle.
Blackmailing society with veiled threats of "the childrens' best interest" is no better, ethically, than me threatening to vandalize cars for supplemental income if my own living decisions are in excess of my existing income -- I either need to make sacrifices and work dilligently at my current profession until I have more income, or retrain to a new profession that will provide the income I desire.
Ahh. The return of brooksfoe...
"In other words, subsidize the rich who earn enough money and pay enough taxes for the tax credit to be meaningful, while continuing to stick it to the poor. The pro-tax-credit versus subsidy bias in this country is reprehensible. It results in the federal government constantly subsidizing the rich." --brooksfoe
The best thing the government could do to avoid the evil of giving tax credits to the rich, is to lower the marginal tax rates so that a family could live on one income. Voila, no need for credits. I can guarantee, however, that some portion of the population would still say, "lower marginal rates means greater take home pay for 2nd earners, time for the wife to work" and clamor for subsidized daycare. Children are not an accessory--once you have them, they are yours to love, protect, and raise. And demanding that somebody else pay for your choice is selfish, irresponsible, and immature.
In the mean time, your definition of a subsidy is somewhat different than mine. It would seem to me it is the "rich" who are subsidizing the federal government unless their dreaded tax credits exceed their tax payments.
To pile on a bit.
If you are in the first or second quintile AND you have kids, you probably pay NO income taxes. If you qualify for the EIC, you likely have a negative income tax.
Now granted, payroll taxes take a bit out of the paycheck of the working poor -- but that's a different issue.
brooksfoe wrote: And I thought the idea that libertarians worshipped the market was just a figure of speech! I never suspected they actually imbued it with a mystical persona. What does the market look like, markm? Does it have a long beard, and reach out with its invisible hand to touch the finger of Adam Smith?
Actually, it looks more like a severely-dressed, silver-haired spinster aunt who twists your ear into a slipknot with bony fingers and hisses, "Take responsibility for your own life, you spoiled little brat, and stop pretending you're owed the life and wealth you want out of somebody else's pocketbook."
Point of fact: in the natural world from time immemorial, you WORK at the level that will support your climactic needs, level of consumption, and child-bearing decisions, or you FREEZE AND STARVE TO DEATH. That is the natural law of existence, and nobody is exonerated from it. It's nice that we live in wealthy societies where we have a healthy level of insulation from the natural law of existence, and can discuss things like these as thought they were givens; but the second that we forget that they are not givens (and subject to removal without a moment's notice), the element of personal responsibility is forgotten and the whole system begins its long descent into a social-political purgatory.
Again, why is it too much to ask of people to care for their own children? - Yancey
It is too much to ask of people to have a full-time job AND care for their own children AND not live in the same city as their parents or extended family (part of America's fabled mobility of labor, which helps reduce our unemployment rate). It simply can't be done. You can't have both parents work a full-time job and have one be a full-time caregiver.
Let us put this another way. Societies and economies benefit from a division of labor. If you have, say, a Master's degree in library science, or are a skilled welder, and your wife is a CPA, then you have a specialized skill which you could use productively in the economy, which you could not use if you were taking care of your child full-time. However, if your job would only pay $30,000 per year, your after-tax income would not be sufficient to cover the child-care fees for two children. This is especially true if chil care only lasted until 3 pm, in which case you would only be able to take a part-time job.
Meanwhile, a skilled pre-school teacher can easily create a stimulating and creative environment for 8 3-year-olds at a time. And children benefit from such a social setting from age 3, if not younger. It would be to everyone's interests to have your child spend the day in preschool, allowing you to work at least a part-time job. It means that pre-school teachers use their specialized skills to teach the kids for a chunk of the day, while you use the skills you've acquired via education and work experience, rather than letting them go to waste.
The problem is that the economics currently don't work out. Believe it or not, there are some desirable results which the market does not produce. This is one of them.
There are lots of other ways you can explain the problem. You can point out that the massive entry of women into the workforce over the past 35 years has depressed wages, and that's why it's such a strain to survive on one income these days. (Can you do it? Yes, you can. But it's much, much harder than it was in 1970, and the effort of doing it would push a large number of families down closer to the poverty line, meaning that more and more of our children would be growing up poor.) You can explain that with the breakdown of the extended family and increasing mobility, people can't fall back on their relatives as caregivers; young parents are faced with some of the highest expenses of their lifetimes, but they haven't yet reached their full earning potential, and if you make one of them drop out of the workforce, they never will. And there's no effective way to save up money from better-paid parts of your life cycle, which come later, in order to pay for this part of your life cycle. You can explain it all kinds of different ways.
But the upshot is that a hell of a lot of parents of young children in the US are finding that our social system is fundamentally out of whack. It is incredibly stressful these days to have a family, in ways it never was for our parents' generation. The costs of different items have shifted in ways that make it extremely difficult or impossible to have the kind of easy life which our parents had effortlessly. And I'm not talking about wealthy parents; I'm talking about normal, middle-class parents. That stress is being voiced by parents. They want government to help them figure out how to make this society work better for people who are raising kids. You can demonize this growing class of stressed-out, upset parents. But I just don't think, in the long run, that calling stressed-out working moms "selfish" or "spoiled" is going to be a winning political strategy. I think that these are exactly the kinds of fundamental social concerns which we are SUPPOSED to voice through our political system: how are we raising our kids? Are we making it possible for parents to raise the next generation of Americans in a healthy, educational, affluent environment befitting the richest country on earth?
brooksfoe wrote: costs are lower in those places because SALARIES ARE LOWER in those places. Journalists make more in Boston than they do in Columbus. Incidentally, the idea that you can just up and get a job in journalism -- and that your spouse can get a job teaching in the same place you move to -- is pretty ridiculous.
Pardon your ignorance, but I happen to live in one of the places he mentioned -- Denver front range -- and yes, the salaries are lower because the costs are lower, but in point of fact, the costs are disproportionately lower.
An entry-level professional might make only $38-42k/year, but since it's possible to rent an 900 sq-ft 2BR/1.5BA in a quiet, well-policed neighborhood AND pay off all your utilities for less than $950/month -- or considerably less if you're willing to downgrade either the living space or the neighborhood -- that's not a bad deal. With five years' worth of promotions, or a marriage to a second income earner, the professional will live solidly in the middle class and be able to own a reliable car, eat well at home, eat out two or three times per week, and purchase a modest house (2-3BR, 2-3BA, 2000ish sq-ft) less than forty minutes from his or her job.
brooksfoe,
Then why should I have to care for your children, if you cannot? Why should I subsidize people having children who actually are incapable of taking care of them in the first place?
Your whole argument is that someone must help parents take care of their kids, but who are these someones? Are they not, possibly, parents themselves, or people who want to be parents, but would be unable to because they would be burdened with the care of the children of strangers?
brooksfoe wrote: But the upshot is that a hell of a lot of parents of young children in the US are finding that our social system is fundamentally out of whack. It is incredibly stressful these days to have a family, in ways it never was for our parents' generation. The costs of different items have shifted in ways that make it extremely difficult or impossible to have the kind of easy life which our parents had effortlessly. And I'm not talking about wealthy parents; I'm talking about normal, middle-class parents. That stress is being voiced by parents. They want government to help them figure out how to make this society work better for people who are raising kids.
It would really help your argument if you could provide tangible evidence of what these stressors are, and whether they represent real needs or merely misplaced consumerist priorities. The only one I can think of is healthcare, and that's a separate argument from this daycare thing.
My parents (and for that matter, their parents) regularly did without something until they could afford it with honest money. The only debt they ever took in their lives was for housing, and even then they only bought a house they believed they could pay off -- all other things were forgone until funds had been saved, which meant buying used cars and driving them for ten years or more, spending a lot of weekend time doing one's own household and automotive maintenance, taking only a coule 1-week vacations each year and visiting local and regional attractions or to visit family (with many of the on-the-road meals stockpiled in a picnic cooler, so as to save on costs), etc.
Sure, you can find lots of shop talk in the media and among social circles about the stresses of living in modern society. Too many times, though, a close investigation of that proves that people are eating out more often than they can afford, throwing unnecessarily lavish and stressful social events (e.g. high-zoot birthday parties for the kids), constantly trying to occupy their chilren's lives with an unending list of scheduled activities, buying too much car and buying it too soon, buying too much house and buying it too soon, buying other luxuries that they can't really afford at all, and on the list goes.
And then they want the government to step up with tax moneys to make their over-extended life a bit more bearable? No thanks. I have my own expenses to meet.
Some people really do fall into the kind of low-income category that needs a helping hand. Theirs really is a choice between having any food and housing at all, or crashing hard onto the welfare net. But the rest? Who cares if they think "guv'mint" should be making their life easier? Maybe it should be making mine easier, too -- but somehow, I still think it's better and more satisfying to be getting nice things the old fashioned way.
"the kind of easy life which our parents had effortlessly"
Count me in with anony-mouse--that's not the life my parents or my grandparents had. Being charitable to brooksfoe, things look a lot easier to kids than they are for the parents who are making it look easy.
bonus question: has there ever been a period of time during which the inhabitants thought they weren't living in the most modern and difficult of times?
Most people living in the U.S. would acknowledge that times were harder for every generation of Americans that preceded them. Whether we're any happier than those previous generations, I can't say. But we've sure got things easier.
Not having suitable child care leads to a lot of educated women leaving the labor force to care for their children, which is a less efficient, and therefore less productive, outcome than their working and men/women with less education providing child care.
Amber:
Please explain why this means that the government should subsidise childcare? If educated parents make enough to be able to contract out childcare, they'll have a financial incentive to do so. If they don't make enough to pay for the childcare, it is woefully inefficient to subsidise them to allow them to afford to work.
Of course, under the current system, women could continue working and pay for child care themselves. But given the positive externalities that reproduction brings (especially if the kid is likely to go to college, as most children of the college-educated are), the argument that society should bear part of this cost isn't an outlandish one.
But the positive externalities aren't related to childcare. If the children of the college-educated are worth something to society, and we want to internalise that external benefit, the way to do so is to give money to college-educated parents.
Not some nonsense childcare subsidy - just money. Give every degree-holder $1000 a year per child. Or $2000, or $5000, or whatever.
Brooksfoe:
And there's no effective way to save up money from better-paid parts of your life cycle, which come later, in order to pay for this part of your life cycle.
There is a trivial way if you own a home - get an interest-only mortgage.
If it is about normal mental functioning adults wiping butts and burping infants, where is the argument for high quality daycare?
I don't want the improvement in horizontal equity to come from high-quality parents being economically enticed/coerced into sending their children to lower-quality (than them) childcare.
What makes for high quality day care has a much weaker connection to how "high quality" the caregivers are (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean) than you'd like to believe. High quality daycare is a situation where the ratio of caregivers to children is high and the facilities are clean and well-maintained. It's perfectly reasonable position to support subsidies for high quality day care (say an infant ratio of 1:2.5 in a bright facility with windows and an outdoor playground) while being unwilling to support subsidies of one-on-one daycare.
The best thing the government could do to avoid the evil of giving tax credits to the rich, is to lower the marginal tax rates so that a family could live on one income. Voila, no need for credits.
M, what did you, fail third grade? You understand the concept of percentages, right? That when you give a 5% tax break to someone making $150,000 it adds up to a fair amount, but when you give a 5% tax break to someone making $50,000 it really doesn't add up to enough to allow their spouse to stop working?
Point of fact: in the natural world from time immemorial, you WORK at the level that will support your climactic needs, level of consumption, and child-bearing decisions, or you FREEZE AND STARVE TO DEATH. That is the natural law of existence, and nobody is exonerated from it. - anony-mouse
I feel like I'm talking to children here. Do you understand the difference between "is" and "ought"? Do you understand the principle that the institutions of human society are intended to protect people from the ravages of nature, not exacerbate their exposure to them? Point of fact: from time immemorial, humans have died of infectious diseases. So who needs medicine, or sewage treatment plants! Right?
There have been two child-related issues to come to prominence in these threads: S-CHIP and day care. On both of these issues, the response of Republicans and libertarians is: kids? Screw you! I got my money fair and square; why should I give any to help the kids? I continue to have faith in the American people that this kind of argument will prove to be a political loser.
Most people living in the U.S. would acknowledge that times were harder for every generation of Americans that preceded them. - henry evans
This is false. 35-year-old American males are making substantially less than their fathers did at the same age. You're voicing an assumption from an earlier epoch that's no longer true. Per capita income is up, but that's because women have entered the workforce in droves.
Previous generations of Americans had more physically demanding jobs and consumed fewer conveniences and luxuries. There's no way life isn't easier today than it was 20, 40, or a hundred years ago.
It's perfectly reasonable position to support subsidies for high quality day care (say an infant ratio of 1:2.5 in a bright facility with windows and an outdoor playground) while being unwilling to support subsidies of one-on-one daycare. - Susan
Absolutely right. I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the so-called libertarians on this blog would be perfectly happy with providing tax breaks or EITCs to mothers, while they kick and scream about subsidizing day care. Obviously, a subsidy to mothers is incredibly inefficient: it gives money for one-to-one infant care rather than one-to-2 or one-to-2.5, and it prevents mothers with other skills from working outside the home.
Well, I suppose there is no purpose in debating with someone who really does believe that times in the United States are tougher today than they were 30 years ago, but here goes.
Brooksfoe, how could it possibly be less efficient to give the money directly to mothers to defray the lost income than to actually pay for additional caregivers and facilities to house the children and caregivers, while, at the same time, pay for the bureacracy that will have to the administer of such a system? I mean, have you looked at the public schools system and its ratio of teachers to administrators? Your whole assertion is laughable on its face.
And note, that many commenters here claim that one reason to have government supplied childcare is that it would be of higher quality than that supplied by the parents themselves, on balance. For that to even pass the smell test, the ratio of caregivers to children will not be allowed to get much beyond 1 to 2, and those caregivers will have to have actual productive abilities themselves that are just as wasted as the skill sets of the mothers that otherwise would have to stay at home to raise their own children.
And, no, I don't even support tax credits for parents beyond the dependent deduction they already get. I support that because it is fundamentally based on fairness due to the differing numbers of people reliant on a particular income stream.
Every pro argument here just sounds like someone trying to fob off on others their lifestyle choices, and doing it using the silliest, most fallaceous arguments they can lay their hands on. Having and raising a child is a personal right, and with it comes a personal responsibility. If you can't afford children, then don't have them.
Brooksfoe has no clue about the military.
The security is illusionary. Up or out is a way of life. There are plenty of people who thought they could coast to retirement who have been proven wrong.
Sorry about the 12 years, Sgt Jones, but you were passed over for a third time, and will not be allowed to reenlist. No retirement at half pay after 20 for you. Your accrued retirement, sorry to say, is zero.
There have been two child-related issues to come to prominence in these threads: S-CHIP and day care. On both of these issues, the response of Republicans and libertarians is: kids? Screw you! I got my money fair and square; why should I give any to help the kids? I continue to have faith in the American people that this kind of argument will prove to be a political loser.
It's not "screw kids," that the libertarians/conservatives are saying. It's screw these entititled SOBs who think that they have a right to taxpayer money because they aren't responsible enough to their own families.
As Roe V. Wade and all the subsequent hullaballoo about it keep reminding us, no one is forced to have children in this country. So it is absurd to pretend as if having them is some unbearable cross that some Americans are dealing with while the rest of us go merrily on our way, laughing at their misfortune.
I have been with my husband for ten years, since we were teenagers, married for four, and yet I'm only pregnant for the first time now, because we finally are financially capable of it. Why should I be punished with higher taxes because others decided that condoms and the Pill were too much bother?
Brooksfoe, there is nothing stopping you or anyone else from opening up a child-care facility that offers services on a sliding scale or something similar. That would indeed be a laudable pursuit. In what world are you a morally superior human being for believing instead that the government should use taxpayer money for such a purpose? News flash: getting the government to do something is not the same as doing it yourself, no matter how good you might feel about yourself.
My life is considerably easier and more luxurious than those of my parents and grand parents. They were much more frugal than I am and did not have many luxuries that I have. When they were younger, they worked their way through school. When they had kids, they sacrificed many things to pay for their children.
Now I have children and I am doing the same thing. My wife and I live in an older house, drive older cars, and have fewer luxuries than we would if we didn't have children. But we choose to spend money on our children. We've managed to pay for day care and continue to work, but my wife is a teacher, which is a bit of a compromise - she makes less money than she could otherwise, but has more time to help with the kids. My parents both work but have helped us out some. Her parents recently moved down her and have helped us out more.
The tax benefits we get from having children are pretty trivial compared to the costs. But I'm okay with that. I am NOT looking to use governmental power to extort money out of other people. I don't particularly want to be forced to help other people raise their children when I'm busy raising my own.
We work for our money. Why do other people deserve to have some of it to help them pay for their own choices?
Brooksfoe, how could it possibly be less efficient to give the money directly to mothers to defray the lost income than to actually pay for additional caregivers and facilities to house the children and caregivers, while, at the same time, pay for the bureacracy that will have to the administer of such a system? - Yancey
That's simple math to do. A good caregiver ratio for 3-year-olds is 1 to 6 or even 8, rather than a mother's 1 to 1. At that ratio, it's hard to see how it could NOT be more efficient to pay day-care workers, rather than mothers. For infants, it's 1 to 2 or 2.5. There, too, as long as you have fewer administrators than caregivers, it's pretty easy to see how it could be more efficient. The goal, obviously, isn't to have the caregiver's entire salary paid by the government, but to have a portion subsidized by the government, while the rest is paid by the mother through her increased earnings from being able to work. That said, day care for infants isn't something I'm personally super-happy with; I find extended family-leave-with-pay mandates for the first year or so, a la Scandinavian countries, to be a more appealing solution.
My life is considerably easier and more luxurious than those of my parents and grand parents. - EI
How nice for you. So what? Stats show that earning power for single males is lower now than it was 35 years ago. Your mileage may vary.
News flash: getting the government to do something is not the same as doing it yourself, no matter how good you might feel about yourself. - Christina
What a ridiculous thing to say. If we were to excise from this blog all arguments about what the government should do, as opposed to what we should do ourselves, there wouldn't be a blog. We are here to argue about what the government should do. If I want advice on how to start my own day-care center I will look to a considerably different forum.
I don't stand to personally benefit from any of these changes, because I don't live in the United States. We are paying for the expenses of raising our children from our salaries and benefits, and receive no government help whatsoever. However, comparing the ease of living as parents in societies with comprehensive child care systems, and the benefits for the children in those societies -- the guarantees of decent public education, health care, and social inclusion -- against the increasingly strained, uncertain, and risky environment for parents and kids in the US, I find the European systems to be more healthy for society. It seems bizarre to me that the US, which is wealthier per capita than European countries, is so threatened by the idea of subsidizing child care, and that Americans would prefer to punish lower-income parents for making the "irresponsible" decision to have kids, rather than helping them raise their kids.
One thing I find interesting is that conservatives so often attack liberals for "feeling good about ourselves", as Christina puts it. I advocate these positions because I would rather feel good about my country, if it were possible, and not be ashamed of it. It seems to me that conservatives have a very big chip on their shoulders regarding this issue of feeling good about oneself.
brooksfoe wrote: I feel like I'm talking to children here. Do you understand the difference between "is" and "ought"? Do you understand the principle that the institutions of human society are intended to protect people from the ravages of nature, not exacerbate their exposure to them? Point of fact: from time immemorial, humans have died of infectious diseases. So who needs medicine, or sewage treatment plants! Right?
It's a good thing you feel like you're talking to children, because if this is what you regard as a valid counterargument, you're squarely among intellectual equals. Medicine, Sewage...and subisidized daycare? Really?
In point of fact, although medicine has a very long history, it is only in recent history that some societies have decided to make it a collectively distributed thing. Sewage? Man learned a very long time ago that there were benefits to crapping in the corner rather than on one's own dinner table, although admittedly medieval Europe all but forgot about these things for centuries. Organized public works improve things even more, and become necessary where mankind is crowded into high-density areas, but I know plenty of people that live outside of such areas and maintain their own septic systems. I know of others who live on community water and sewer systems, and pay this unsubsidized access/usage-based thing called a "bill" each month. So what?
35-year-old American males are making substantially less than their fathers did at the same age. You're voicing an assumption from an earlier epoch that's no longer true. Per capita income is up, but that's because women have entered the workforce in droves.
So the workforce became crowded with new entrants, and labor became cheaper, you're saying. But since people continue to predominantly live in pairs...what is the loss? Personally, based on present conditions I expect to be making roughly the same standard of living my own father made at age 35, even though he entered the professional work force five years earlier due to the reduced need for prolonged education in those times.
And in any case, MM has noted repeatedly in times past that modern American sum take-home HAS kept pace...it's just that most of the increase has been consumed in increased healthcare benefits. Things my parents would have either "just dealt with" or died of when they were my age, now have treatment options that being paid for by employer health plans. Again: so what?
brooksfoe:
Just to be clear, your idea of helping children and families is for society to subsidize parents who leave their 3 year olds in the care of a stranger who's simultaneously caring for 5-7 other kids?
That very well may have greater social utility, but I'm hard pressed to see how it can be interpreted as caring about children or families. Short of Brave New World, I can't think of a less family friendly policy.
I must be misunderstanding your proposal.
Dear brooksfoe-
When you have solved all of the problems in your part of the world, please come back and help us solve ours. Til then, thanks but we'll manage just fine. (With a whole lot less socialism than you favor. That will be our personal cross to bear).
I keep coming back to this:
no one is forced to have children in this country. So it is absurd to pretend as if having them is some unbearable cross that some Americans are dealing with while the rest of us go merrily on our way, laughing at their misfortune.
This attitude produces inequality; it is producing a society with a severe class gap (the US has less social mobility than European countries like Germany) where the bottom half of society lacks the skills and education to compete in the global market against societies of similar wealth. If you don't consider American kids to be "our kids", you will wind up with a country where you don't recognize half the kids as part of your America.
your idea of helping children and families is for society to subsidize parents who leave their 3 year olds in the care of a stranger who's simultaneously caring for 5-7 other kids?
No one is ever going to pretend that raising one's kids is not primarily the responsibility of parents. Putting your 3-year-old in preschool for 6 hours a day means he's with you the other 18. Your post sounds like something written by someone who doesn't have a 3-year-old, or much experience with them. My 3-year-old is a wild dynamo; hanging out with him is a fun but exhausting experience. Put him in a group with 5 other 3-year-olds, however, and he settles down and engages in whatever the designated group activity is. "Parallel play", they call it. A skilled teacher can quickly settle a group of a half dozen little hellions into a quiet group of kids engaged in a lesson about how plants grow, sharing, etc. Myself, I'm happier taking care of three 3-year-olds (on a padded or grass surface!) than one. Our son's preschool teacher, by the way, is hardly a "stranger".
Just to be clear, your idea of helping children and families is for society to subsidize parents who leave their 3 year olds in the care of a stranger who's simultaneously caring for 5-7 other kids?
It might not help mothers who would like a convenient reason not to have to participate in the work force anymore. But it is proven to be just as beneficial for children. So let's not kid ourselves about who is "helped" by subsidizing SAHMs.
brooksfoe:
True, I don't have a 3 year old but as my youngest is 4 ,I do have some experience with them.
I'm not arguing against preschool. I think it's a valuable socialization step; my kids have all done it. But they did 12 hours a week (4 days * 3 hours/day) with lots of time off. I think 30 hours/week is really pushing it. But if you're going to enable both parents to work full time, you're taking about 50 hours/week for 50 weeks/year. Since kids that age sleep 12 hours a day, that leaves 84 waking hours left over. If 50 of those are spent in day care, you've talking about kids spending almost twice as many waking hours with their daycare provider than with their parents and families. That's not family friendly in my book.
Mary, please provide some links to any data showing that kids in full-time daycare starting as early as 6 months have better (or even equivalent) outcomes than kids with SAH parents. The most I've ever seen is the Head Start (which isn't full time daycare) provides a temporary boost in acheivment, but that it disappears after a couple of years.
Part of Megan's post was based on the question, why are we not hearing this in the presidential debate?
I would suggest arguments like this:
It might not help mothers who would like a convenient reason not to have to participate in the work force anymore. But it is proven to be just as beneficial for children. So let's not kid ourselves about who is "helped" by subsidizing SAHMs.-- Mary
are absolute political losers. No candidate could afford to have such an statement attached to his/her candidacy.
brooksfoe,
So, now it is 6 children to 1 for three-year olds and 2 to 1 for those younger? Or, about 3 to 1 overall, just for caregivers themselves. How about the adminstrators? Groundskeepers? What about the facilities-cost and upkeep? Heating, cooling, food. What about transportation? What about insurance? And we haven't even gotten into the government agencies that will be created to oversee this program.
Again, it is laughable to suggest it is more efficient to create such daycare than to simply pay the mothers themselves the cost of the daycare.
Yancey, you spend a lot of time laughing, apparently, but you also apparently don't have any young kids.
Parents, wherever they are, demand publicly funded playgrounds and playing fields. Societies with publicly subsidized day-care and preschool tend to put those playgrounds and fields on-site at the (pre)schools, which largely eliminates the "groundskeepers" expense you refer to. All advanced societies currently have publicly funded kindergarten, which means an expansion of preschool down to the 3-year-old level involves an incremental expansion of existing school infrastructure. Food may be the single biggest efficiency gain in putting kids in larger groups; it's far less time-consuming and there's far less waste when you feed 12 kids together than when you feed each kid separately. (Besides the faster preparation, they convince each other to actually eat.)
The ratio of caregivers to kids starts looking like 4 to 1 at about 1.5 to 2 years. A teacher and 2 assistants for a group of 12 is excellent. For 3-year-olds, 6-8 to 1. Overall, a typical school district spends 80 percent of its budget on salaries. Most school districts limit the ratio of administrators to teachers to 1 to 10 or less, sometimes by law. It's clearly more efficient to pay preschools than to pay moms.
Creches for infants under 1 are really a different issue, and there isn't a strong consensus in the US that they're part of the same debate around public funding for day care. As I said, the Scandinavian system of guaranteeing 1 year or more of paid leave for a new parent is another great option.
SG -- you're right about the number of hours that make sense for young kids; for parents who have an option, I think it's much better to send young kids to preschool for 30 hours or less. I think that more day-care has to be part of a number of social adjustments, which include much greater tolerance for people to work shorter workweeks when they have young kids. For too many couples, the choice is between two full-time careers and one full-time career; part-time employment generally pays so much less that it's not worth the day-care costs. And the hiatus when you take a few years off can dramatically reduce your earning power when you re-enter the workforce. We need to readjust our expectations to include the idea that a primary caregiver should be able to go on a shorter flexi-time schedule for a few years. Of course that's especially hard in the modern economy where jobs only last a few years at a time. But flexi-time can make it work: if one spouse can take Fridays off and work Saturdays, the other can work a full day Friday and short days the rest of the week, and so on. The Dutch system mandates that employees can switch to 4- or 3-day workweeks. There's a lot of debate about whether it's working, but that partly has to do with the fact that the Netherlands actually provides very little subsidized day care; instead they pay stay-at-home mothers.
Anyway, there are also a lot of Americans who truly can't afford quality day care, and who are also the ones who need it the most. They don't have the option of flexi-time, and they can't afford to give up their jobs. Their kids often get dumped with indifferent relatives, acquaintances, or the neighborhood lady who takes in kids, to watch TV all day. Those kids are the ones who are being actively damaged by our failure to provide affordable quality day care; and when those parents are unable to work full-time because they have to take care of their kids, they're getting pushed into poverty, and that's part of the story of rising income inequality and the disappearing middle class.
brooksfoe:
I have a fair amount of agreement with (some of) what you write, although I disagree with the root causes.
I frankly don't see the tie to income inequality. The fact that some hedge fund managers are obscenely compensated doesn't materially affect the basic cost of living. (It might even lower it...)
Instead, I see a culture that is largely unable to distinguish between wants and needs. (Here income inequality does come into play by raising the bar on consumption. Much like an all you can eat buffet doesn't require someone to gorge, but it certainly encourages it. However that's at most a second order effect.). Since our society has a near infinite number of ways to satisfy wants, this creates a huge pressure to increase consumption, and frankly, children will inevitably make that more difficult.
Children require time. Since there is only a finite amount of time, that time comes from somewhere and most often comes from work. If you work less, you'll make less money. If you make less money, your standard of living will be lowered. Ergo, a decision to have children is a decision to have a lower standard of living.
This is neither good nor bad, it simply is. The hope is that children add enough to your quality of life to compensate for a decreased material standard of living. You could try to re-engineer society to compensate. This can be done in ways advantageous to children (increased flex time, greater paid leave) or disadvantageous (subsidized full time daycare for children starting at 6 months) but any of these only shifts the burden to the childless. That's not fair either.
I do support a more generous child tax credit. Having and raising children is a direct contribution to the country's future.
What's the NPV of a future productive citizen? I do not support making the credit refundable, however.
To be clear, I'm only talking about middle class and higher families. This doesn't apply to truly poor (and typically single parent) households. These children really do need help, and good quality day care is required and probably should be subsidized, both for the good of the children as well as for society at large.
The advocates for state-paid child care might want to remember that if I'm paying for it, I'm going to decide how it works.
If you think that US public schools are great and getting better with more federal govt oversight, this shouldn't bother you. If you don't ....
Andy, it hurts to be the one to break it to you, but no, you're not going to be the one who decides how it works.
If you doubt me, go to your next local school board meeting and tell them that you're paying and you want them to fire the poor performing teachers. Hell, tell them that to sweeten the deal, you're willing to increase the pay of the high performing teachers.
Let me know how that turns out...
Amber wrote:
"Not having suitable child care leads to a lot of educated women leaving the labor force to care for their children, which is a less efficient, and therefore less productive, outcome than their working and men/women with less education providing child care."
Spoken like a young lefty woman who has no kids. Am I right?
Yes, you can shove your children into daycare; some of us, however, give a crap how they turn out.
THAT is why there are stay-at-home moms (and stay-at-home dads).
Taxes (both directly and by increasing your joint bracket) plus the increased expenditures on child care, clothing, transportation, insurance, dry cleaning, meals, and services like house cleaning eat up all the second income anyway.
Do the math. It ain't hard. And your kid will love you for it.
Gosh, then how do we determine WHICH needs are appropriate for government participation in a free society?
Funny, I thought I was making the argument that child-care wasn't best handled at the level of the FEDERAL government.
What states and local governments decide is best for their area, is more acceptable.
Chester - I'm hoping to swing being a stay-at-home dad when we start having kids. Economically, and for peace of mind, I think it's the best choice.
Aside from the qualifiers, I think it would be better of communities worked together on this kind of thing. Relatives (who aren't necessarily indifferent) and other members of a community could help with child care. A big problem with our society is that neighbors often do not interact in any meaningful way.
Personally, my relatives have been a great help in raising my children. If only we could find some way to encourage stronger families, we might not need to spend a lot of money on professional day care/babysitting...
My children are 4 and 7 and have been in day care/school since they were a few months old. We carefully selected the facility and monitored their progress and communicated with their caregivers and teachers. So far, they are going well both academically and socially. You don't necessarily need to spend a lot of time with your children as long as the time you do spend with them is spent well.
Attitudes have changed about children, as well. My dad comments that he really missed out. When he was a child, they were to be seen and not heard. Children were not the center of the family and were expected to behave and not be trouble. When he grew up and had children, though, the expectation was that children were the focus of the family and parenting had become the most important thing you did. I don't advocate going back to "seen and not heard" but I do see people structuring their lives entirely around their children and am not sure that that is healthy for either parents or children.
EI
Mindbogglingly, after like 90 posts this turned into a civil conversation.
EI -- my relatives aren't indifferent either, though unfortunately they live 12,000 miles away. But when I read about more working-class families under a lot more stress, it sounds like they often end up putting the kids with people who have only a marginal commitment (cousins, aunts and uncles who'd rather be doing something else). Not to cast too many aspersions, but if you take, say, the single moms in Nicole Leblanc's "Random Family", their kids are constantly being minded by grandmothers, sisters, friends and aunts who have abusive or drug-dealing unreliable boyfriends over, or who have drug habits themselves. These kids are not being raised with enough attention, and it's not their fault. A strong family would be better for them, but it's not there. The government institutions that should fill in the gaps are woefully underfunded and inadequate; the charitable institution are like swiss cheese. In one heartbreaking moment in that book, one character's little girl, a preemie with breathing difficulties who's been thriving in Head Start, has to drop out of Head Start because the teachers can't deal with her medical needs. She winds up back on the floor in the tiny house with the two siblings in one bedroom and the drug-dealing boyfriends dropping in, the TV on, everyone up until 2 am, mom trying to hold down a just-above-minimum-wage job at the meat counter of the supermarket...and on and on.
Even if we drop the whole discussion about middle-class day care, those kids, the kids in poverty, need more help. They're not getting it. America is still the richest country on earth, and at an absolute minimum, we could at least do this.
I would be willing to pay taxes to provide care for children who would otherwise be left in the care of drug-addicts or neglectful relatives or whatever. The problem is that I'd want to make sure that those people used the program and only those people used the program.
S-CHIP is a classic case of how a program to help kids too poor for health insurance is slowly growing into a program to help people who are not necessarily kids nor who are too poor to afford health insurance.
I'm not sure how to prevent the former from turning into the latter... I don't trust our legislature (along with like 90% of the country, apparently).
EI
Well, it only took 90-plus comments to agree with Megan's assertion that childcare *is* like other services that should only be provided to the poor. Hurrah.
Now, if someone could address the following aspect, I would be much obliged: At what point do one's choices become one's responsibility?
If I ruin my life with illegal drugs, does that give me the right to go take money out of my neighbors cookie jar? Or do I need the beneficent hand of government to do that for me?
With obvious exceptions for rape and incest, why is my having a child an automatic obligation on society?Don't I have a responsibility as a citizen NOT to burden others? Do I have a responsibility to plan and sacrifice to provide for my choices?