New RAND Study Recommends Use of Economics to Steer Early Childhood Policy: A new study by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, could prompt a reorganization of child and human services away from the current system that "treats" problems after the fact in favor of investment and prevention. Using the economic concepts of human capital theory and monetary "payoffs" from investments in early childhood services, a host of experts that includes business CEOs, Federal Reserve analysts, and Nobel Prize-winning economists has called for greater public spending on early childhood programs. Programs evaluated according to these economic concepts show, for example, that increased investment in early childhood results in government savings by leading to less need for social services later in life and increased earnings by individuals - which in turn leads to greater tax revenue for the government. The Economics of Early Childhood: What the Dismal Science Has to Say About Investing in Children aims to serve as a primer for policy-makers in the use of cost/benefits/rate-of-return analysis in making early childhood policy.
[1] http://rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/OP227/
States Differ Widely in Child Care Use by Low-Income Families: Many low-income parents need child care in order to work -- yet their children are less likely to participate in non-parental child care than children from higher income families, according to a new Child Trends research brief.
Child Care Use by Low-Income Families: Variations Across States [2] http://www.childtrends.org/Files//Child_Trends-2008_07_02_RB_ChildCareLowIncome.pdf includes state-by-state data on the use of non-parental child care for children ages 0-4 among low-income families.
The brief also describes differences in the types of child care used, and parents' experiences with child care problems that interfere with their work schedules across states.
Nationally, 53 percent of children ages 0-4 living in a low-income family were in non-parental care. However, the use of child care by low-income families varies greatly across the states, from 38 percent of
0-4 year-olds in Nevada, to 76 percent in Louisiana.
* Among children in any type of child care arrangement, low-income
children were more likely to be in a home-based arrangement rather than a center-based arrangement.
* Lower rates of child care participation among low-income
children (38 to 50 percent) occurred in states primarily located in the western and north central regions of the country.
* Delaware, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South
Dakota, Vermont and the District of Columbia had the highest child care participation rates among low-income children (from 64 to 76 percent).
The brief, which is based on data from the National Survey of Children's Health, concludes with a discussion of possible reasons for these patterns across states.
Designing Quality Rating Systems Inclusive of Infants and Toddlers: The National Infant and Toddler Child Care Initiative at ZERO TO THREE has released new information on the design of Quality Rating Systems in states. Quality Rating Systems are being implemented in States, Tribes and Territories to establish a means to both define and promote quality in child care settings. Given the developmental needs of very young children, this new document offers suggestions for the intentional inclusion of quality indicators for infants and toddlers within Quality Rating Systems.
[3] http://nccic.org/itcc/publications/qrsdesignelements.htm
[1]: http://rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/OP227/
[2]: http://www.childtrends.org/Files//Child_Trends-2008_07_02_RB_ChildCareLowIncome.pdf
[3]: http://nccic.org/itcc/publications/qrsdesignelements.htm