The same authors saw some evidence of development problems among the children in the same cohort. https://www.nber.org/papers/w21571

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CincinnatiMan an hour ago | parent | next [-]

So is the takeaway that universal child care has a positive impact on GDP of the parents, but a negative impact on the overall life of the child?

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TheOtherHobbes 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

No, the takeaway is that Quebec's universal child care provision correlates with life issues, but there's no information about the causes of those correlations - which could be in the details of how care is provided and its quality, or some socioeconomic issues specific to Quebec, or for some other reason.

	▲	gruez 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>which could be in the details of how care is provided and its quality This has "true communism has never been tried" vibes. When enacting a policy, you can't guarantee it will come out optimally, so it makes sense to factor in any potential negative effects, even you think you're not going to make them. After all, I doubt the people campaigning for childcare in quebec were expecting the results to be negative.

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zmgsabst an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Of course it has positive GDP on the parents: if two women each care for each others children rather than their own, GDP goes up even though the impact on both families is negative (due to lost travel time, as the mothers swap roles).

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bluGill an hour ago | parent [-]

The more likely case is one person (most often women, but men do childcare as well) is taking care of the kids of at least 3 couples (6 people), and could be up over 10 couples (which happens though often isn't legal or a good idea). That is per year, the kids grow out of daycare in 12-15 years, but a person typically works for 40 years.

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dmitrygr 17 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

12-15?

I walked home from school and calmly did homework util my parents arrived from work since age 8. This was the norm in Russia. Y'all's kids need daycare till 15?

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kwarcode 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

daycare at say 14 sounds suboptimal

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bluGill 30 minutes ago | parent [-]

Each culture is a little different. What are you going to do with your kids when the parents are working is a problem? At what time do you trust them to stay home by themself?

	▲	fpoling a few seconds ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In Soviet Union times in eighties in Belarus it was considered ok that a child could stay alone at home from age of 7 when they started a school. Some parents opted for after-school programs and some relied on grandmothers like it was for me but some of my schoolmates stayed at home alone for few hours until their mothers would be back from work (fathers typically worked longer and further away from home). And from the age of 9 there was no after-school options at least in my school.
	▲	2 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
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	▲	brailsafe 4 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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Aurornis an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

This study was limited to the program in Quebec, but this discovery is alarming

> and also that cohorts with increased child care access subsequently had worse health, lower life satisfaction, and higher crime rates later in life.

There are a lot of early childhood studies that can find differences for early school years that later disappear as kids get older. It’s different when the correlations continue to older ages and even start correlating with health outcomes.

There could be some major selection bias effects, but that’s just as true for the positive fiscal outcomes noted in the submitted study.