Dynamic labour supply effects of childcare subsidies: Evidence from a Canadian natural experiment on low-fee universal child care

This paper shows that a temporary incentive to join the labor market or to work more can also produce substantial life-cycle labour supply effects. On September 1997, a new childcare policy was initiated by the provincial government of Québec, the second most populous province in Canada. Licensed and regulated providers of childcare services began offering day care spaces at the subsidized fee of $5/day/child for children aged 4. In successive years, the government reduced the age requirement, created new childcare facilities and spaces, and paid for the additional costs entailed by this low-fee policy. No such important policy changes for preschool (including kindergarten) children were enacted in the nine other Canadian provinces over the years 1997–2004. Using annual data drawn from Statistics Canada's Survey on Labour and Income Dynamics and a difference-in-differences quasi-experimental methodology, the paper estimates the dynamic labour supply effects of the program. The results demonstrate that the policy had long-term labour supply effects on mothers who benefited from the program when their child was less than 6. A striking feature of the results is that they are driven by changes in the labour supply of less educated mothers.     

儿童发展心理学探讨

儿童孤独感与同伴关系的研究是儿童发展心理学领域的重要课题之一。孤独感是一种消极的,弥漫性的心理状态,儿童长期处于此状态会导致适应不良。国外对孤独的研究比较多,我国对孤独的研究最近十几年来发展比较快。综合国内外的研究资料发现:研究对象年龄跨度不平衡,针对老年人的研究比较多,对青少年和儿童的研究比较少。本研究便是以儿童为研究对象展开的。     

EFFECTS OF HIV/AIDS ON CHILDREN'S EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

Over the last three decades, 35 million people have died of AIDS. As a result, HIV/AIDS has brought about a significant reduction in human capital, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Several studies have examined the effects of HIV/AIDS on human capital, in particular educational attainment. These studies have examined different countries, datasets, and educational outcomes. This systematic literature review provides a comprehensive up-to-date overview of peer-reviewed papers published in English by focusing on the main mechanisms that influence the effects of HIV/AIDS on educational outcomes. These are sickness of the child, orphanhood, and sickness of parents. The results show that educational outcomes of HIV-infected children, AIDS orphans, and children with HIV-infected parents are affected differently. HIV-infected children mainly miss school days due to illness and medical appointments, and orphans mainly face financial problems and lack motivation in their education, while children with HIV-infected parents may have to take care of their sick parents or face financial problems that affect their education. Distinguishing these groups of children could help to formulate policies that adequately improve schooling outcomes of these vulnerable children.     

Assisted Housing and the Educational Attainment of Children

This paper examines the long-term effects of assisted housing on the educational attainment of children. It is based on unique data, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)-Assisted Housing Database, in which we have matched addresses of all PSID sample members to addresses of federal and state assisted housing. Using a two-stage instrumental variable approach, the inferior educational outcomes of children who live in public housing disappear when measured characteristics are taken into account, while unmeasured characteristics have insignificant effects. We also find neither positive nor negative effects of privately owned assisted housing. These findings are similar to those on the effects of other social welfare programs.     

拥抱——幼儿教育的实践与思考

文章论述了笔者在多年的幼儿教育中所使用的拥抱幼儿的教学方法及其所取得的教学效果，并从理论上阐述了拥抱对幼儿心理的影响、对幼儿教育的促进作用和实施拥抱教学方式时的注意事项，为改革幼儿教学模式进行了初步的探索。     

School Choice and the Distributional Effects of Ability Tracking: Does Separation Increase Inequality?

Tracking programs have been criticized on the grounds that they harm disadvantaged children. The bulk of empirical research supports this view, but existing studies compare outcomes across students placed in different tracks. Track placement is likely to be endogenous with respect to student outcomes. We use a new strategy for overcoming the endogeneity of track placement and find no evidence that tracking hurts low-ability children. Previous studies have also been based on the assumption that students' enrollment decisions are unrelated to whether or not the school tracks. When we account for the possibility that tracking programs affect school choice, we find evidence that they may help low-ability children.     

Family size and child outcomes: Is there really no trade-off?

We study the impact of family size on intermediate and long-term outcomes using twin births as an exogenous source of variation in family size in an unusually rich dataset. Similar to recent studies, we find no evidence of a causal effect on long-term outcomes and show that not taking selection effects into account will likely overstate the effects. We do, however, find a small but significant negative impact of family size on grades in compulsory and secondary school among children who are likely to be vulnerable to further restrictions on parental investments.     

幼儿教师心理健康研究现状及展望

教育大计,教师为本。有好的教师,才有好的教育。当前不断发生的幼儿教师"虐童"事件警示社会应该关注幼儿教师心理健康问题。本文总结近年来幼儿教师心理健康的有关研究并做出展望,希望能促进对这一群体的研究。     

Home Ownership and School Outcomes of Children: Evidence from the PSID Child Development Supplement

Using the PSID Child Development Supplement (CDS) and the corresponding PSID main data sets, we examine whether home ownership has positive effects on the academic achievement of children after correcting for selectivity bias and controlling for home environment, neighborhood quality, residential stability, and income. While we find no independent effects of home ownership, there are positive significant effects of home environment, neighborhood quality, and residential stability on the reading and math performance of children between the ages of three and twelve. The main policy implication of our study is that improvement of a child's home environment, residential stability, and the quality of the neighborhood is more important than ownership of a home to achieve better child outcomes. Subsidized home ownership can lead to better child outcomes to the extent that it places a child in a better home environment, in a more stable residence, and in a better neighborhood.     

Sons,daughters, wives,and the labour market outcomes of West German men

We find a strong association between family status and labor market outcomes for recent cohorts of West German men in the German Socio-Economic Panel. Living with a partner and living with a child both have substantial positive effects on earnings and work hours. These effects persist in individual fixed effects models that control for correlation in time-invariant unobservables that affect both family and work outcomes, though the inclusion of length of marriage reduces the effects of children. Child gender also matters — a first son increases fathers' work hours by 100 hours per year more than a first daughter, and positive effects of sons on work hours and earnings are particularly strong for men with higher levels of education. There is evidence of son “preference” in the probability that a German man is observed to be coresiding with a son — men are more likely to remain in the same household with a male child than a female child.     

A PATCHWORK SAFETY NET: A SURVEY OF CLIOMETRIC STUDIES OF INCOME MAINTENANCE PROGRAMS IN THE UNITED STATES IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Abstract Social welfare programs in the USA are designed to serve as safety nets for people in hard times, in contrast with the universal approach found in many other developed western nations. In a survey of cliometric studies of social welfare programs in the USA, we examine the variation in the safety net in the USA across states in the 20th century, the determinants of the variation and its impact on socioeconomic outcomes. The USA has always displayed substantial variation in the extent of the safety net because the features of most public social welfare programs have been and currently are determined by local and state governments, even after the federal government became involved in the 1930s. Differences across states persist strongly for typically a decade, although the persistence weakens with time, and there are some periods when federal intervention led to a re‐ordering. The rankings of state benefits differ from program to program, and economic and political factors have different weights in determining benefit levels in panel data estimation of their effects. Variation in benefits across programs during the early 1900s had significant impact on labour markets, economic activity, family formation, death rates and crime.     

Heterogeneous effects of child disability on maternal labor supply: Evidence from the 2000 US Census

Previous research has documented a negative relationship between child disability and maternal labor supply. Because of data limitations, most studies in this literature use broad measures of disability, which may obscure important differences among children with limiting health conditions. This paper presents new evidence on the labor supply of women with disabled children, exploiting disability information provided by 2000 US Census. This large nationally representative sample allows us to test for differences across different types of disabling conditions. We find that accounting for this heterogeneity in conditions is important. Using a broad definition of disability results in small differences between women with and without a disabled child. When we use a more detailed classification, we find larger labor supply reductions for mothers of children with physical disabilities or limitations in their ability to care for themselves. There is less evidence that having a child with either mental or emotional limitations or a sensory impairment is negatively related to employment or weekly hours. We also test for heterogeneous effects related to child age and maternal education. We find no clear pattern with respect to age and some evidence that the relationship between child disability and maternal labor supply is stronger for less educated mothers.     

Successful Scientific Replication and Extension of Levitt (2008): Child Seats are Still No Safer Than Seat Belts

Using US fatality data from 1975 to 2003, Levitt (Evidence that seat belts are as effective as child safety seats in preventing death for children aged two and up, Review of Economics and Statistics 2008; 90 (1): 158–163) shows that child safety seats do not significantly reduce fatalities for children aged 2–6 years as compared to standard seat belts. Although we were unable to gain access to the original programs and dataset used, we were able to replicate Levitt's ( 2008 ) findings almost exactly. We extend Levitt ( 2008 ) by showing that the findings also hold for the years 2004–2011 despite changing driver characteristics and restraint use patterns. We fail to find evidence that SUVs provide additional safety for children. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parent employment and preschool utilisation in urban China

China's government has abolished its one‐child policy and intends to universalise access to preschool education by 2020. It has also announced plans to raise the retirement age beginning in 2022. Together, these policies risk generating a major increase in the number of parents who must balance workplace–preschool demands with little assistance from grandparents. Drawing on a mixed‐method design and a sample of parent‐workers who reside in Beijing, this article finds that most parents currently deem the need to reconcile the respective demands of their workplace and preschool to be a concern of limited significance. But we also find that sustaining this situation will require the bolstering of government and enterprise supports that can assist parents provide for the education of their preschool‐aged children with diminished assistance from grandparents.     

激发幼儿学习数学兴趣的有效途径——情感教学

人的认识活动与人的情感是紧密联系的,在幼儿园的一日活动中,幼儿的感知、想象、思维等心理活动都受到自身和教师情感因素的影响。近几年来重点强调把情感教育作为早期教育的重要领域,从理论到实践确立情感教育在早期教育中的特殊地位,这无疑是幼儿教育价值观的又一次重大发展。心理学家研究证明:情绪、情感对学前儿童的心理活动和行为的动机作用非常明显。情绪、情感直接指导着学前儿童的行为,愉悦的情感往往使他们愿意学习,不愉悦的情感就会导致他们做出各种消极行为。因此,情感和认知是密切联系的,情感对儿童的认知活动及其发展起着激发、促进作用或抑制、延缓作用。     

Targeting fertility and female participation through the income tax

We evaluate the effect of a 2003 reform in the Spanish income tax on fertility and the employment of mothers with small children. The reform introduced a tax credit for working mothers with children under the age of three, while also increasing child deductions for all households with children. Theoretically, given the interplay of these two components, the expected effect of the reform is ambiguous on both outcomes. We find that the combined reforms significantly increased both fertility (by almost 5%) and the employment rate of mothers with children under three (by 2%). These effects were more pronounced among less-educated women. In addition, to disentangle the impact of the two reform components, we use an earlier reform that increased child deductions in 1999. We find that the child deductions affect mothers' employment negatively, which implies that the 2003 tax credit would have increased employment even more (up to 5%) in the absence of the change in child deductions.     

A meta‐analysis of the non‐monetary effects of employee health management programs

This study was undertaken to review the literature on employee health management programs (EHMPs). We explored the history and characteristics of systematic organizational efforts to improve workforce health and well‐being. We believe that a historical perspective provides some insight into the economic, political, and social factors that have influenced the trend toward organizationally sanctioned health‐promotion efforts. Further, we investigated the likely effects of these programs on valued‐behavioral organizational outcomes such as employee performance, employee satisfaction, absenteeism, and voluntary turnover. Our findings show that voluntary general‐focus programs are unrelated to job performance, and voluntary programs are negatively related to absenteeism, but effects on absenteeism wane when the program is not voluntary. Moreover, EHMPs are minimally related to job satisfaction and slightly related to turnover. These results, examining behavioral outcomes of EHMPs, question the ability of EHMPs to provide desired behavioral changes in employees, changes that organizations seek to maximize such as increased performance. Are EHMPs more than just socially acceptable programs that help individuals with health problems? © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Unintended consequences of child care regulations

The effects of regulations governing staff-child ratio, group size, and staff qualifications in child care centers are estimated, using data on a sample of centers. The data contain measures of staff characteristics and wages, price of the service, and the developmental quality of the child care provided. Regulations vary across states, but may be endogenous to these outcomes. Estimates with state fixed effects are feasible because regulations vary within states by age group of children and job title of staff. Estimates with state fixed effects show that tougher regulations have some impact on input use, but have little or no impact on price and quality. The most striking finding is that tougher regulations reduce staff wages, suggesting that the incidence of child care regulations is on employees of day care centers.     

Breaking the link between poverty and low student achievement: An evaluation of Title I

This study provides an evaluation of the impact of Title I funding of compensatory education programs on school finance and student performance in New York City public schools during the 1993, 1997 and 2001 school years. Estimates based on a regression-discontinuity approach indicate that the program was unsuccessful in improving student outcomes in high-poverty schools in New York City during this period, and may in fact have had adverse effects during the earlier years in our sample. Less evidence of a negative effect is found for the 2001 school year. These findings are related to the way in which the federal funds were spent.     

Does state preschool crowd-out private provision? The impact of universal preschool on the childcare sector in Oklahoma and Georgia

Universal preschool policies introduced in Georgia and Oklahoma offer an opportunity to investigate the impact of government intervention on provision of childcare. Since Georgia used a voucher-like program and Oklahoma utilized its existing public schools, the two states offer a case study of how government provision compares to government subsidization alone. Using a synthetic control group difference-in-difference estimation framework, we examine the effects of universal preschool on childcare providers. In both states there is an increase in the number of formal childcare centers. With the voucher-like program in Georgia, the overall increase in care is partly driven by an increase in the supply of formal childcare in the private sector and partly driven by new publicly-provided preschools. However, there is substantial crowd-out of private consumption of preschool. In Oklahoma, where universal preschool is publicly provided, the increase in the number of childcare providers occurred only in the public sector. The expansion of publicly-provided care seems to be driven largely by movement of employees from private centers to public settings. As such, this case-study comparison suggests that government subsidization through funding was more effective at expanding preschool than government provision.