Tories to increase immigration levels for election year

[Michael Hardner]

Not at all.....one could live the dream in Rome as a slave !

Also known as 'unpaid internships'...

[hitops]

But I'm not approaching this from the perspective of helping individuals. I'm speaking of a society in which you can reduce the number of workers caring for children by 75% or more. And you're continuing to make the error of doing a one on one comparison. If we go by what I said, which is that instead of 10 women caring for 10 kids we have 2 women caring for ten kids, then five women are working for every daycare worker. Will five women working be able to contribute more than $1000 a month of production to our economy? I would say most certainly.

Now I do agree that at minimum wage of about $1600 gross per month income it often isn't economically viable on an individual level to pay $1000 a month in child care. But I'm not even sure where those costs come from. If we figure five or six kids per day care worker earning $12hr that implies wage costs of about $20 per day per child. Granted you have ongoing costs for power and heat and such, but it seems to me reducing the costs is quite doable in terms of government incentives for which it expects to earn back taxes from working mothers.

In addition, of course, and going back to the actual topic of this thread, better daycare is one of the prime motivating factors in young middle and low income mothers who might want to have more children. Thus it would help increase our low birth rate, which some believe (erroneously) justifies high immigration.

The argument that paying people or subsidizing them in some way so they work and pay more taxes has never really made much sense. If you pay a dollar to somebody in a government job for example, you don't get a dollar back. You get an average of say 25 - 30 cents back on income tax. Then you get 5-14 cents more on the portion then on taxable consumer goods. Still not even close to what you put in. If you subsidize daycare that would normally take, let's say, half a persons gross income (using the number you used earlier), you're still not getting back even half the money.

If the goal is economic, the argument is a total fail. But as you say, the goal might not be economic, it might be simply getting more kids and growing the population. Well in that case it would be far more efficient and FAR cheaper, to just increase immigration. Immigrants have way more kids, and they tend to have cohesive families as well that don't require state-sponsored family replacement such as daycare.

Edited November 17, 2014 by hitops

[Argus]

The argument that paying people or subsidizing them in some way so they work and pay more taxes has never really made much sense. If you pay a dollar to somebody in a government job for example, you don't get a dollar back. You get an average of say 25 - 30 cents back on income tax. Then you get 5-14 cents more on the portion then on taxable consumer goods. Still not even close to what you put in. If you subsidize daycare that would normally take, let's say, half a persons gross income (using the number you used earlier), you're still not getting back even half the money.

I think you have to take it on a macro scale, not on an individual scale. In some cases the subsidy would be a large percentage of someone's income, and in other cases it would be considerably less. In still other cases you'd be replacing a weekly welfare payment in which the government gets nothing back, with a full-time job. You would also get added production from all those women (it is normally women) going back into the ranks of actively employed people, you would help families, which is a government goal, and help encourage a higher birthrate, which is also a government goal, or ought to be.

If the goal is economic, the argument is a total fail.

That is far from proven.

But as you say, the goal might not be economic, it might be simply getting more kids and growing the population. Well in that case it would be far more efficient and FAR cheaper, to just increase immigration. Immigrants have way more kids, and they tend to have cohesive families as well that don't require state-sponsored family replacement such as daycare.

That has already been shown by demographers to be false (I have cited their statements to that effect earlier on this topic). We would have to bring in over a million immigrants a year for decades to make up for a low birth rate, for as these immigrants acclimated to this society they would have fewer kids.

[eyeball]

You're not gonna bring the lower class up to to the middle class by taxing the middle class, you can only bring the middle class down.

Thankfully we still have the rich to tax. The amount we're talking about won't even register on them.

The biggest hurdle will be the moral outrage of those who are appalled or fearful at the thought of troubling our betters.

[Hal 9000]

But I'm not approaching this from the perspective of helping individuals. I'm speaking of a society in which you can reduce the number of workers caring for children by 75% or more. And you're continuing to make the error of doing a one on one comparison. If we go by what I said, which is that instead of 10 women caring for 10 kids we have 2 women caring for ten kids, then five women are working for every daycare worker. Will five women working be able to contribute more than $1000 a month of production to our economy? I would say most certainly.

Now I do agree that at minimum wage of about $1600 gross per month income it often isn't economically viable on an individual level to pay $1000 a month in child care. But I'm not even sure where those costs come from. If we figure five or six kids per day care worker earning $12hr that implies wage costs of about $20 per day per child. Granted you have ongoing costs for power and heat and such, but it seems to me reducing the costs is quite doable in terms of government incentives for which it expects to earn back taxes from working mothers.

In addition, of course, and going back to the actual topic of this thread, better daycare is one of the prime motivating factors in young middle and low income mothers who might want to have more children. Thus it would help increase our low birth rate, which some believe (erroneously) justifies high immigration.

Argus, you're dreaming if you think daycare is 20$ and daycare workers make 12/hr.

She realized when her babies were about nine months old that finding two daycare spaces at a price the family could afford would be next to impossible.

“The going rates are ... $1,200 to $1,400 per child for early child care,” she says. “With two, that becomes fairly enormous.”

Rebecca Van Der Hijde pays $620 monthly for her two-and-a-half year old son to attend daycare three times a week.

Read more: http://bc.ctvnews.ca/childcare-should-cost-10-day-boards-urge-1.1144370#ixzz3JNjwaQWoHours of Operation:

Working hours: Monday - Friday 7:30 - 5:30 PM

Parent’s vacation: Paying regular monthly fee

NOTICE from parents or caregiver: 2 month in advance - last day of the month

Closed from December 25 - January 1 and all statutory holidays

Infants/toddlers 0-2

Full-time monthly rate* $800.00

2 yrs & above

Full-time monthly rate* $750.00

After school care: $300.00

Casual rate

$15 per hour

Gradual Entry- $10 per hour

$ 45.00 PER DAY

Calculations of parttime days:

45 x 3 days X 4 weeks/ = 3 days = $540.00

2 days = $360.00

British Columbia Child Care Cost

TYPE AGE CAT. SPOT AVG. COST ($) ENTRIES Licensed Infant Full-Time 897.27 1199 Licensed Infant Part-Time 48.05 376 Unlicensed Infant Full-Time 824.79 167 Unlicensed Infant Part-Time 40.58 58 Licensed Toddler Full-Time 837.67 1029 Licensed Toddler Part-Time 45.58 340 Unlicensed Toddler Full-Time 795.39 218 Unlicensed Toddler Part-Time 48.11 86 Licensed Preschool Full-Time 744.36 731 Licensed Preschool Part-Time 45.83 170 Unlicensed Preschool Full-Time 696.48 81 Unlicensed Preschool Part-Time 35.48 21 Licensed Kindergarten Full-Time 651.06 97 Licensed Kindergarten Part-Time 26.74 19 Unlicensed Kindergarten Full-Time 678.75 16 Unlicensed Kindergarten Part-Time 38.00 10 Licensed Schoolage Full-Time 504.51 169 Licensed Schoolage Part-Time 29.92 63 Unlicensed Schoolage Full-Time 578.76 37 Unlicensed Schoolage Part-Time 36.89 27

[Hal 9000]

Clearly you don't, since the vast majority of literature points to a substantial return on public investment for quality early childhood education programs. Not only can it set up children to be more productive and successful in school, but it also lowers the risk that they will engage in risky and criminal behaviours which add to the social expense of not having a child care program. Further still, the workforce accounting was simplified by Argus, but you've completely disregarded that without providing any substantive rebuke.

You have absolutely no understanding of the economics of it at all, further proven by your suggested course of action which does nothing to ensure that there is any sort of return on the investment.

You have to be joking if you think that his 10 women with ten children analogy is even close to reality.

[hitops]

I think you have to take it on a macro scale, not on an individual scale. In some cases the subsidy would be a large percentage of someone's income, and in other cases it would be considerably less. In still other cases you'd be replacing a weekly welfare payment in which the government gets nothing back, with a full-time job. You would also get added production from all those women (it is normally women) going back into the ranks of actively employed people, you would help families, which is a government goal, and help encourage a higher birthrate, which is also a government goal, or ought to be.

That has already been shown by demographers to be false (I have cited their statements to that effect earlier on this topic). We would have to bring in over a million immigrants a year for decades to make up for a low birth rate, for as these immigrants acclimated to this society they would have fewer kids.

Whether government should be in the business of social engineering of people's family structure is entirely debatable.

When I'm talking about poor returns on government employment, I'm talking about on a macro scale. The point about added production is redundant. The increased production is exactly the same (or much more likely, quite a bit less) than what the person is being paid. So there's not real net increase in production nor any generation of wealth, there is just some shifting around of taxpayer money.

The point about moving somebody from welfare (total loss) to government employment (some loss but not total) is valid economically, however even better would be to shift to non-government employment (some gain).

The only reason immigration doesn't solve the overall problem is because of the scale of the native born vs immigrants. But per capita, obviously immigrants have move kids. But for the same reason that addressing the majority of women who might return to work would have a large reach, it would also have an enormous cost. Inevitably that cost gets passed onto everybody, and puts another anchor onto economic activity, lowering our competitiveness. The primary driver for anybody, including women to relocated somewhere and enter the workforce is the availability of quality employment.

And that's not even considering the fact that it doesn't even work, as per the Quebec example. Not only have they been unsuccessful in increasing employment beyond the Canadian average, they are also broke, and they are losing people to other parts of the country.

Edited November 18, 2014 by hitops

[eyeball]

Deleted

Edited November 18, 2014 by eyeball

[Argus]

Whether government should be in the business of social engineering of people's family structure is entirely debatable.

Not really. We're talking about ensuring the future viability of this society, after all.

When I'm talking about poor returns on government employment, I'm talking about on a macro scale. The point about added production is redundant. The increased production is exactly the same (or much more likely, quite a bit less) than what the person is being paid.

This makes no sense to me. First, your use of the term 'government employment' is confusing. We're speaking about a subsidy for child care to enable women to return to the work force. In every case, including the minimum wage workers, the return will be greater than that paid out in subsidies. In the great majority of cases the return will be greater.

Return = tens of thousands of workers freed from child care to work in factories, warehouses, shops, offices, and I suppose, yes, sometimes for the government, thus generating considerable economic activity. This is a return to society, not directly to government, although that economic activity will generate taxes in addition to the taxes paid directly by the employed women.

The only reason immigration doesn't solve the overall problem is because of the scale of the native born vs immigrants. But per capita, obviously immigrants have move kids.

When you encourage native born children you produce newborn kids vs immigration which brings in a mixture of people of all ages. Yes, you get families with kids -- and who then bring over their 80 year old parents. Thus the average age of immigrants is only a couple of years lower than the average age of the native born population. Now if you want to try banning the immigration of anyone over a certain age you're welcome to try. Good luck flying taht kite. But even if you did that, according to a cite I posted way back you'd still need to bring over a million a year.

The point is it's not a viable solution.

But for the same reason that addressing the majority of women who might return to work would have a large reach, it would also have an enormous cost. Inevitably that cost gets passed onto everybody, and puts another anchor onto economic activity, lowering our competitiveness.

Society's cost money to function, it's true. Nevertheless, I don't notice a lack of economic activity amongst the much more highly taxed Nordic countries. And immigration has a cost, as well. The Fraser Institute estimates it as anywhere from $16b-23b per year to society. Imagine how great that cost would be if we quadrupled immigration.

And that's not even considering the fact that it doesn't even work, as per the Quebec example. Not only have they been unsuccessful in increasing employment beyond the Canadian average, they are also broke, and they are losing people to other parts of the country.

I don't think we can take Quebec as our guide given the many decades of inept and often corrupt government there. Mind you, there seems to be a dearth of well-run provincial governments these days. You certainly can't find them in Ontario, Alberta or BC.

[The_Squid]

Also known as 'unpaid internships'...

They had a foreign worker program that would make Harper envious!!

[overthere]

I don't think we can take Quebec as our guide given the many decades of inept and often corrupt government there. Mind you, there seems to be a dearth of well-run provincial governments these days. You certainly can't find them in Ontario, Alberta or BC.

So, we all agree that all governments are equally inept and corrupt.

Only one of them has a low cost daycare system, so all things being equal why have we seen the following in the only place with a unique factor? " unsuccessful in increasing employment beyond the Canadian average, they are also broke, and they are losing people to other parts of the country."

It's not an unreasonable question.

[Hal 9000]

This makes no sense to me. First, your use of the term 'government employment' is confusing. We're speaking about a subsidy for child care to enable women to return to the work force. In every case, including the minimum wage workers, the return will be greater than that paid out in subsidies. In the great majority of cases the return will be greater.

Return = tens of thousands of workers freed from child care to work in factories, warehouses, shops, offices, and I suppose, yes, sometimes for the government, thus generating considerable economic activity. This is a return to society, not directly to government, although that economic activity will generate taxes in addition to the taxes paid directly by the employed women.

If this is the case, they what's the hold-up? If it's such a huge money maker, then we'll surely not only see our taxes stay the same, but a certain tax reduction.

[Hal 9000]

"Quebec’s universal daycare program has been praised by parents, child care advocates and ambitious politicians across the country as a thoroughly modern family policy. Yet providing those 223,000 spaces for children aged 0-4 at a bargain rate is also a massive drain on the public purse. Parents directly contribute a mere 13 per cent of the total $2.7-billion annual cost.....

Despite its political and parental popularity, however, there’s ample evidence showing the massive public subsidies required to fund cheap or free daycare flow mainly to those at the top of the income spectrum. Families in the top 25 per cent of annual earnings are nearly twice as likely to have a child in Quebec’s $7-a-day program, compared to families in the bottom quarter. In other words, the province is spending billions per year to make life easier for its wealthiest citizens. This makes no sense, particularly in an era of fiscal restraint....

A study by economists at Université du Québec à Montréal concludes the daycare program “has not enhanced school readiness or early literacy skills in general, with negative significant effects” for certain cognitive tests. These negative results, the authors observe, are likely due to Quebec children spending too much time in daycare. Other studies have shown Quebec’s program to be a source of greater stress and behavioural problems in children."

Edited November 19, 2014 by Hal 9000

[Michael Hardner]

HAL - thanks for that interesting point, can you add a link as well ? Thanks.

[cybercoma]

He doesn't want to provide the link since it argues what others have been arguing:

"It’s also necessary to consider Quebec’s program based on its original objectives. It’s certainly been successful in drawing more women into the workforce. A 2012 report estimates 70,000 additional mothers are now employed because of the $7-a-day program, including a disproportionate number of single mothers."

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/quebecs-plan-to-end-7-a-day-daycare-is-a-breakthrough-for-economic-fairness-and-common-sense/

Not only does the editorial fail to cite the source of the studies, but it also neglects to mention the criticism that those negative studies received for lacking scientific rigour. Namely, they didn't control for other factors that would also affect children behavioural and academic outcomes. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to fair more poorly than their peers. Economists are lousy at accounting for socio-demographic challenges and barriers to success.

The models that they used to examine academic and behavioural outcomes should have also included other variables from the NLSCY (the data set they were using) that would influence those outcomes, eg, parents income, neighbourhood, parents education, peer attitudes towards eduation, child's gender, child's ethnicity, family functioning, parents attitude towards education. They did not control for those things and as a result, the findings cannot and should not make any suggestions that daycare has a negative influence on school preparedness or children's academic/behavioural outcomes. They've not accounted for the vast amount of literature that points to numerous factors that would both influence those outcomes as well as influence whether or not a child is in daycare to begin with. Someone from an affluent background where a parent has the resources to stay at home, as well as making them more likely to have resources like numerous books and learning materials in the home, are far less likely to have their children in daycare and their children are far more likely to be more successful in school due to their access to those resources and supports.

In other words, the editorial stretches the limits of the study and in fact the researchers do so themselves. Economists frequently fail to account for sociodemographic barriers to success in their models and failing to account for the role parents income, education, and wealth plays in their child's academic and behavioural development, as well as whether or not they're even in daycare to begin with is a huge problem with this study.

Here is a link to the preliminary version of the study that the Macleans article doesn't reference: http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r15504/pdf/LM_CB_Table_oct_2010.pdf

Edited November 19, 2014 by cybercoma

[Argus]

So, we all agree that all governments are equally inept and corrupt.

Only one of them has a low cost daycare system, so all things being equal why have we seen the following in the only place with a unique factor? " unsuccessful in increasing employment beyond the Canadian average, they are also broke, and they are losing people to other parts of the country."

It's not an unreasonable question.

I said nothing about corruption. That seems focussed on Quebec. And Quebec's inept management has bee a more long-term thing than in the other provinces. Ontario, for example, had fairly good government until the Liberals took over. Albera had pretty good government until 2007, when someone said "Send in the clowns". And people are leaving Quebec because it's made itself 'provincial' in the truest sense of the word.

[Argus]

If this is the case, they what's the hold-up? If it's such a huge money maker, then we'll surely not only see our taxes stay the same, but a certain tax reduction.

I'm not saying it's a huge money make. I'm not even saying it will, on its own, be 'profitable' in purely monetary terms. I'm suggesting it's not necessarily going to be the huge economic brake you seem to be suggesting it will be.

[overthere]

It's not an unreasonable question.

I said nothing about corruption. That seems focussed on Quebec. And Quebec's inept management has bee a more long-term thing than in the other provinces. Ontario, for example, had fairly good government until the Liberals took over. Albera had pretty good government until 2007, when someone said "Send in the clowns". And people are leaving Quebec because it's made itself 'provincial' in the truest sense of the word.

Um yeah, you did specifically mention corruption.

People are leaving Quebec, specifically for jobs in West, because there aren't many jobs.

It's a sweet deal to have other provinces pay for social programs that allow both parents to work and have affordable daycare. But there is a catch- you both need jobs to make it work.

The social experiment in Quebec day care has been running for a long time now. I don't see why you cannot use that experience to examine if the program is effective, achieves clear goals and is cost effective both on the micro and macro scales.

[guyser]

People are leaving Quebec, specifically for jobs in West, because there aren't many jobs.

One in four go west, 2 of 3 wind up in Ont.

The social experiment in Quebec day care has been running for a long time now. I don't see why you cannot use that experience to examine if the program is effective, achieves clear goals and is cost effective both on the micro and macro scales.

This is true, but at a better price point for everyone and it just may work. Gear it to income maybe?

[hitops]

Not really. We're talking about ensuring the future viability of this society, after all.

That assume social engineering has anything to do with that, or that if it does, that the relationship is positive. We can't affirm either.

This makes no sense to me. First, your use of the term 'government employment' is confusing. We're speaking about a subsidy for child care to enable women to return to the work force. In every case, including the minimum wage workers, the return will be greater than that paid out in subsidies. In the great majority of cases the return will be greater.

There's no evidence for that. First, you'd have to show that $160 a month vs $100 (or $100 vs nothing) actually enables women to go back to work in a greater number than they otherwise would. Not that it seems logical it would, but that it actually DOES in reality. Or, you're have to show that $15 daycare in Quebec costs less than the ROI on that women working. Neither are evident.

Return = tens of thousands of workers freed from child care to work in factories, warehouses, shops, offices, and I suppose, yes, sometimes for the government, thus generating considerable economic activity. This is a return to society, not directly to government, although that economic activity will generate taxes in addition to the taxes paid directly by the employed women.

Sorry I got us off track with the government work comment. I don't mean that they will all go to government work. I was simply using government employment as an example of how government economic intervention does not create wealth but rather just moves money around.

See yes, those women in particular would be free to return to work. But no, society as a whole has not offloaded the costs of caring for those children. Society as a whole is still paying for that, which is a cost. Do the women returning to work provide more tax dollars down the line than the cost of that daycare? Pretty unlikely. The question is not whether the women return to work and generate taxable-income and taxable increased consumption. The question is whether that number is greater than the cost of the state sponsored daycare. And indeed, that is very unlikely. Furthermore, it's not even effective, as per Quebec.

When you encourage native born children you produce newborn kids vs immigration which brings in a mixture of people of all ages. Yes, you get families with kids -- and who then bring over their 80 year old parents. Thus the average age of immigrants is only a couple of years lower than the average age of the native born population. Now if you want to try banning the immigration of anyone over a certain age you're welcome to try. Good luck flying that kite. But even if you did that, according to a cite I posted way back you'd still need to bring over a million a year.

Whether I'd have good luck with it, isn't related to whether it's a good idea.

The point is it's not a viable solution.

Not on the scale we might want, but if we choose the immigrants carefully, it makes a net positive difference. Regardless, you've implied there is a better one. If you can think of a supportive-of-reproducing policy than Quebec, I'd like to hear it. That policy has not been effective. What would?

Society's cost money to function, it's true. Nevertheless, I don't notice a lack of economic activity amongst the much more highly taxed Nordic countries. And immigration has a cost, as well. The Fraser Institute estimates it as anywhere from $16b-23b per year to society. Imagine how great that cost would be if we quadrupled immigration.

The questions is not the cost, but the net cost/benefit. Given that certain immigrants are far more productive than others (and indeed, than Canadians) and their kids far more educated, the net value is a large positive. Not so for every group, which is why judgement needs to be used on who we let in.

I don't think we can take Quebec as our guide given the many decades of inept and often corrupt government there. Mind you, there seems to be a dearth of well-run provincial governments these days. You certainly can't find them in Ontario, Alberta or BC.

I'm using Quebec because it is the best possible comparison to the ROC in terms of similar culture, demographics, laws, etc. While with differences, certainly better than comparing to any other country. Nordic countries are not a good comparison, because their demographics are highly favorable compared to ours. They are HIGHLY restrictive on immigration, and therefore have a very homogeneous population. Comparing Canada to Nordic countries has some value, but the BEST, most controlled comparison would be comparing Scandinavians to Canadians of Scandinavian descent. Know what? White Scandinavians (pretty much all of them) do very well. White Canadians of Scandinavian descent also do very well. Finland often has a high-ranking education system. What if you took Canadians of Finnish descent, and looked at their performance? I'm certain it would be just as excellent. Hong Kong has always performed VERY well on math scores. Chinese from Hong Kong in Canada also wreck the average. Etc

Edited November 19, 2014 by hitops

[Smallc]

One in four go west, 2 of 3 wind up in Ont.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure, from the Quebec perspective, Ontario is to the west.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Smallc

[guyser]

To be fair, I'm pretty sure, from the Quebec perspective, Ontario is to the west.

Ya got me there, yes indeed it is west of Quebec, at least in whole. Why its the centre of the universe !

[Hal 9000]

He doesn't want to provide the link since it argues what others have been arguing:

"It’s also necessary to consider Quebec’s program based on its original objectives. It’s certainly been successful in drawing more women into the workforce. A 2012 report estimates 70,000 additional mothers are now employed because of the $7-a-day program, including a disproportionate number of single mothers."

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/quebecs-plan-to-end-7-a-day-daycare-is-a-breakthrough-for-economic-fairness-and-common-sense/

Not only does the editorial fail to cite the source of the studies, but it also neglects to mention the criticism that those negative studies received for lacking scientific rigour. Namely, they didn't control for other factors that would also affect children behavioural and academic outcomes. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to fair more poorly than their peers. Economists are lousy at accounting for socio-demographic challenges and barriers to success.

The models that they used to examine academic and behavioural outcomes should have also included other variables from the NLSCY (the data set they were using) that would influence those outcomes, eg, parents income, neighbourhood, parents education, peer attitudes towards eduation, child's gender, child's ethnicity, family functioning, parents attitude towards education. They did not control for those things and as a result, the findings cannot and should not make any suggestions that daycare has a negative influence on school preparedness or children's academic/behavioural outcomes. They've not accounted for the vast amount of literature that points to numerous factors that would both influence those outcomes as well as influence whether or not a child is in daycare to begin with. Someone from an affluent background where a parent has the resources to stay at home, as well as making them more likely to have resources like numerous books and learning materials in the home, are far less likely to have their children in daycare and their children are far more likely to be more successful in school due to their access to those resources and supports.

In other words, the editorial stretches the limits of the study and in fact the researchers do so themselves. Economists frequently fail to account for sociodemographic barriers to success in their models and failing to account for the role parents income, education, and wealth plays in their child's academic and behavioural development, as well as whether or not they're even in daycare to begin with is a huge problem with this study.

Here is a link to the preliminary version of the study that the Macleans article doesn't reference: http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r15504/pdf/LM_CB_Table_oct_2010.pdf

Who are these critics? The federal NDP, CCCABC, thetyee? The university of Quebec did the research and they plenty of data to use, I'm sure they considered socioeconomics. You could t be more wrong on this one.

The program is crumbling in Quebec and it's too late for them, but not for us.

[Hal 9000]

He doesn't want to provide the link since it argues what others have been arguing:

"It’s also necessary to consider Quebec’s program based on its original objectives. It’s certainly been successful in drawing more women into the workforce. A 2012 report estimates 70,000 additional mothers are now employed because of the $7-a-day program, including a disproportionate number of single mothers."

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/quebecs-plan-to-end-7-a-day-daycare-is-a-breakthrough-for-economic-fairness-and-common-sense/

Not only does the editorial fail to cite the source of the studies, but it also neglects to mention the criticism that those negative studies received for lacking scientific rigour. Namely, they didn't control for other factors that would also affect children behavioural and academic outcomes. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to fair more poorly than their peers. Economists are lousy at accounting for socio-demographic challenges and barriers to success.

The models that they used to examine academic and behavioural outcomes should have also included other variables from the NLSCY (the data set they were using) that would influence those outcomes, eg, parents income, neighbourhood, parents education, peer attitudes towards eduation, child's gender, child's ethnicity, family functioning, parents attitude towards education. They did not control for those things and as a result, the findings cannot and should not make any suggestions that daycare has a negative influence on school preparedness or children's academic/behavioural outcomes. They've not accounted for the vast amount of literature that points to numerous factors that would both influence those outcomes as well as influence whether or not a child is in daycare to begin with. Someone from an affluent background where a parent has the resources to stay at home, as well as making them more likely to have resources like numerous books and learning materials in the home, are far less likely to have their children in daycare and their children are far more likely to be more successful in school due to their access to those resources and supports.

In other words, the editorial stretches the limits of the study and in fact the researchers do so themselves. Economists frequently fail to account for sociodemographic barriers to success in their models and failing to account for the role parents income, education, and wealth plays in their child's academic and behavioural development, as well as whether or not they're even in daycare to begin with is a huge problem with this study.

Here is a link to the preliminary version of the study that the Macleans article doesn't reference: http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r15504/pdf/LM_CB_Table_oct_2010.pdf

"The study, entitled “Quebec’s Childcare Universal Low Fees Policy 10 Years After: Effects, Costs and Benefits,” is co-authored by Université du Québec à Montréal economists Pierre Lefebvre, Philip Merrigan and Francis Roy-Desrosiers. They look at the main goals of Quebec’s daycare policy—allowing more mothers of young children to work outside the home, and enhancing prospects of success in school for kids, especially those from lower-income families. On letting more moms enter the labour force, the program has been a smashing success, dramatically boosting their participation rates.

The paper is far more contentious, however, when it turns to how children are affected by Quebec’s incentive for parents to put their kids in care at a younger age and for more hours each week. The data comes mainly from a massive, ongoing Statistics Canada project called the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. The NLSCY tracks the progress of thousands of young people: its latest stage, for example, looks at 35,795 children from less than one to seven years old, and youths from 14 to 25. Such a deep data pool allows researchers to make broad comparisons among groups.

For kids at the ages that the Montreal economists studied, the NLSCY has scores nationwide for more than 10,000 four-year-olds and more than 18,000 five-year-olds. All those children were given what’s called the Peabody Picture and Vocabulary Test, an oral test that’s widely used to gauge verbal ability. The results are adjusted by age group to a mean score of 100; variations above and below that level are what matter.

Sampling seven years of NLSCY data, the Montreal researchers found no conclusive evidence that Quebec’s daycare policy had changed PPVT scores markedly for four-year-olds. Still, they cautiously flag some negative indications for the children of mothers with low education, calling these variations in PPVT results “large enough for policy-makers to worry about.”

Their findings for five-year-olds, though, are more pronounced. They discovered “sizable negative and significant effects.” For example, they found that Quebec’s child care policy reduced the PPVT score for five-year-olds in 2002-2003 by 4.9 points on average. “This is a very large effect,” they say. To give a sense of how large, they point out that, by comparison, a child whose mother has a university degree typically scores three points above a child whose mother has only a high school diploma.

For Quebec five-year-olds who took the test in 2006-2007, compared with their peers elsewhere in Canada, the study says “negative effects” show up for children of both highly educated and less-educated mothers, but tend to be slightly worse for kids whose mothers had a high school diploma or less. In other words, Quebec kids, after many of their parents began taking advantage of the province’s new low-cost daycare, did worse on a basic vocabulary test. “Therefore,” the researchers conclude with withering understatement, “the picture is not quite what it should be for a policy that seeks to increase early literacy skills and better prepare children for school.”"

Edited November 20, 2014 by Hal 9000

[Hal 9000]

Here's more from the NLSCY:

"Social equity and efficiency

Two further considerations can be raised concerning social equity and efficiency. Transfers in kind

to families using subsidized childcare, which is the way the Québec’s policy function, raise the question of their horizontal and vertical equity. Using data from the SLID and the NLSCY for year 2002, Grenier (2005) has imputed the value of the in-kind subsidy (after considering incomes taxes to finance the program) by income quartiles of families and their use of childcare by type for families with a child aged 0 to 4 years. Some of his results are summarized in Table A6. The subsidy is higher for higher-income families, although they pay much more income taxes, and their use of the costlier subsidized childcare services increases with income quartile. In his Innis Lecture on equity and equality given to the Canadian Economic Association, Duclos (2006) uses Grenier’s results as one of his examples and concludes:

“The child-care subsidy system thus fails both in terms of vertical and horizontal equity in the income support dimension. Furthermore, and as discussed above, such a preference-based subsidy system also fails in the dimension of freedom to choose. It first horizontally penalizes the freedom of choice of those families that would otherwise prefer those childcare arrangements that are not subsidized by the state. Since those families have on average a lower level of disposable income, that freedom-to-choose penalty is also on average larger for those with less well-being in the income dimension. Hence, extending the consideration of well-being to other dimensions reinforces the conclusion that Quebec’s current child-care subsidy is both vertically and horizontally inequitable in the income dimension (p. 1001).”"

http://www.cirano.qc.ca/icirano/public/pdf/20101202_P-Lefebvre_2.pdf

Edited November 20, 2014 by Hal 9000