Child Care Subsidies and Child Development

Abstract

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The geographic accessibility of child care subsidies and evidence on the impact of subsidy receipt on childhood obesity

“…Looking first at the fall of kindergarten results, we find that the OLS coefficient on subsidy 35 To investigate this issue, Herbst and Tekin (2010a) produce county-and state-specific correlations between the distance measure and subsidy receipt. As expected, both sets of correlations are negative on average, but the amount of variation is substantially greater among counties, as evidenced by a comparison of the standard deviations: 0.305 for the county-specific correlations and 0.172 for the state-specific correlations.…”

“…A sizeable body of work already explores some of these outcomes (e.g., Blau & Tekin, 2007;Tekin, 2005Tekin, , 2007Herbst 2010;Herbst & Tekin, 2011a, 2010aMeyers, Heintze, & Wolf, 2002). However, researchers have struggled to develop convincing empirical strategies to surmount the endogeneity of subsidy receipt.…”

“…As with our previous work (Herbst & Tekin, 2011a;2011b;2010a;2010b), the current analysis of childhood obesity is based on an ECLS-K sample of children living with an unmarried mother as of the fall of kindergarten interview. 28 We limit the sample to single mothers because they are the central focus of recent social policy reforms, including the PRWORA, which was intended to move low-skilled women from welfare to work.…”

Childcare subsidy policy: What it can and cannot accomplish

“…The first study to focus on these concerns assesses the impact of CCDF subsidies on a wide range of child outcomes in cognitive and behavioral domains [8]. Drawing on detailed data from the kindergarten cohort of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study conducted in the US, the authors document that subsidy receipt in the year before kindergarten is associated with lower reading and math test scores, reduced eagerness to learn, and more behavioral problems in kindergarten.…”

“…Evidence-based policy making are growing concerns that the twin goals of the CCDF-to encourage employment and to advance the quality of childcare-are in conflict with each other [7], [8], [9], [10], [11]. It is argued that the tension between the two goals is exacerbated by the current structure of the CCDF, which places too much emphasis on the goal of increasing parental employment and too little on enhancing the quality of childcare.…”