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...conclusions academic analysts, and the arguments of advocates loom large. Not surprising to anyone who is a parent, the matter remains unresolved. Here in Canada, one dimension, the appropriate role for non-parental education and care of pre-school children, has become a major component of the national political dialogue. (To avoid cumbersome jargon or inelegant acronyms, we use the admittedly imprecise term "childcare" to refer to all forms of non-parental education and care of pre-school children. Where necessary, we specify more precisely.)
In the 2004 Speech from the Throne, the federal government announced its intention to promote a national program of "high quality," "universally inclusive," essentially publicly financed, childcare centres, "focused on enhancing early childhood learning opportunities." The precedent is Quebec's Centres de la petite enfance (CPEs), launched in 1997 at a cost to parents of $5/day/child (now raised to $7). Such a program falls within the jurisdiction of the provinces. To induce their cooperation in the national program, the 2005 federal budget offered conditional grants, amounting to $5 billion over five years. To access the funds, provincial governments agreed to launch programs consistent with the following guidelines:
Quality--evidence-based, high-quality practices relating to programs for children, training and supports for early childhood educators and childcare providers, and provincial/territorial regulation and monitoring. Universally inclusive--open to all children, without discrimination. Accessible--available and affordable for those who choose to use it. Developmental--focused on enhancing early childhood learning opportunities and the developmental component of early learning and childcare programs and services. (Canada 2005, chap. 4.)
During the last federal election campaign, the Conservatives (2006, 31) described all this as a "one-size-fits-all plan to build a massive childcare bureaucracy which will benefit only a small percentage of Canadians." Instead, "let parents choose what's best for their children, and provide parents with the resources to balance work and family life as they see fit--whether that means formal childcare, informal care through neighbours or relatives, or a parent staying at home." The Conservatives promised to scrap the Liberal subsidy to provincial childcare programs and instead give $1,200 annually to parents for each child under age six. This is a promise kept. The 2006 budget proposes to phase out the Liberals' conditional grant program by March 2007, and sets forth an annual grant of $1,200 to parents for each child under age six (Canada 2006).
Canadian childcare policy is lurching from one strategy to another. Why? There are at least three underlying reasons.
First is the Kulturkampf between feminist childcare proponents and defenders of at-home parenting. Both in political debates and in relevant disciplines such as psychology, proponents of group socialization of children are debating those who argue for maximum parent-child interaction in early childhood. (1) If women's expectations are to be fully realized, most feminist advocates argue, women must be able to participate fully in the labour force on the same basis as men; to do so, they need high-quality, state-subsidized childcare--as Quebec has undertaken and the previous federal budget promised.
The feminist perspective on women's role in the world of paid work has effectively prevailed. Over the last half-century, female labour force participation has dramatically increased. This is so even among mothers of young children. As recently as the mid-1970s, less than one-third of mothers with children under age six were employed; as of this decade, two-thirds are. Canada crossed a symbolic benchmark in the late 1990s: over half of children ages six months to five years are now in some form of non-parental childcare (Bushnik 2006, 10).
The Conservative platform indicates that defenders of at-home parenting are attempting to draw a line in the policy sand with respect to further subsidy of childcare. Why should our taxes finance your lifestyle choice? If parents want to work outside the home, OK. However, government should not distort the choice of non-parental childcare versus at-home parenting by massively subsidizing the former. If government is to spend money helping parents raise young children, it should provide money to parents and let them decide.
A second reason for controversy--not altogether independent of the first--is the increase in divorce and in births to never-married mothers, and the response of social service agencies. The overwhelming majority of these single-parent families are headed by women, and the majority are poor. In most OECD countries, Canada included, government strategies to aid poor families with children shifted over the last two decades: less untied financial aid, more aid conditional on the parent's agreeing to work. Motivating this shift toward workfare has been concern with intergenerational welfare dependency and evidence of the positive role effect on children of working parents. (2) Financial support for single mothers, even for mothers of young pre-school children, is no longer deemed to be a right. Once children are above, say, age two, most social service ministries in Canadian provinces classify single parents as employable and aid is made conditional on their working. This shift has created an obvious demand for childcare for single-parent families. In the mid-1990s, less than 40 percent of children ages six months to five years living in single-parent families were in childcare; now 65 percent are (Bushnik 2006, 12).
A third source of controversy turns around interpretation of rigorous evaluative studies that have produced divergent results as to the benefits derived from non-parental childcare and early childhood education. It is to this third area of controversy that we now turn.
Cost-Benefit Analyses
Public initiatives such as childcare are often subjected to cost-benefit analysis. The essence of the technique is to evaluate all costs and all benefits in each year for the duration of the initiative, keeping in mind the willingness of people to pay for the benefits or to avoid the costs. Then benefits and costs are summed over the lifetime of the initiative (discounting, such that costs and benefits far in the future are weighted less than those arising sooner). Finally, if the sum of benefits exceeds the sum of costs (both benefits and costs discounted), the initiative is deemed worthwhile. Gordon Cleveland and Michael Krashinsky (1998) have conducted the major cost-benefit study of a national childcare program in Canada. For their base case, they estimated annual benefits of $10.2 billion and costs of $7.9 billion, and hence concluded such a program makes sense.
The technique has the virtue of forcing us to think clearly about the impacts of public initiatives that can be readily evaluated, and to decide whether the hard-to-measure benefits and costs tip the balance in favour or against. Cost-benefit analysis does not eliminate discretion; it concentrates judgment on the dimensions of real uncertainty.
In the conduct of cost-benefit analyses, childcare programs generate two major categories of benefits:
Value of incremental income generated by parents who, due to childcare, choose to work outside the home. Studies consistently show that childcare programs induce more mothers to enter the labour force. The income earned by these additional workers is a benefit. Admittedly, in...
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