Child Care

Child Care and Developmental Outcomes 7

Last Updated Oct 5, 2008 11:47 PM

Other Outcomes
We now briefly review the findings from a small set of early childhood intervention studies that look at such long-term outcomes as criminal activity, earnings, and the use of cash welfare assistance. The Syracuse Family Development Research Program was a small program that enrolled slightly more than 200 children and followed them for 5 years. It was one of the earlier programs, beginning in 1969. The intervention included infant and preschool enrollment in Syracuse University’s preschool program as well as direct provision of information on raising children, nutrition, etc. to the parents. The follow-up analysis found that by age 15, 6 percent of the experimental group had been referred to probation as compared to 22 percent of the controls. Through based on very small numbers, the very large differences provide some evidence that the combined interventions had a positive effect on the reduction of crime (Lally, Mangione and Honig, 1988).

Perhaps the best-known early intervention project is the Carolina Abecedarian Project (Campbell and Ramey, 1995; Ramey, Campbell, and Blair, 1998; Ramey et al., in press). This clinical trial began at 6 weeks postpartum and included (1) a randomized control group (n = 23) that received family support social services, pediatric care, and child nutritional supplements, (2) an experimental group (n = 25) that received the services of a high-quality center-based intervention for the first 5 years and additional educational support services from kindergarten to grade two, (3) an experimental group (n = 24) that received only the early intervention, and (4) an experimental group (n = 24) that received only the K-2 educational support. IQ scores at 8 years and 12 years were significantly higher for preschool participants than for other children. Furthermore, children who had participated in the preschool program had higher scores on tests of reading and mathematics achievement at 8 and 12 years. They were less likely to be retained a grade at ages 8, 12, and 15, and they were also less likely to be placed in special education. The most recent follow-up report from this research team (Early Learning, Later Success: the Abecedarian Study, 1999) included findings to 21 years. Intervention children were reported to be older, on average, when their first child was born and to have been more likely to attend a four-year college.

The Perry Preschool Project (Schweinhart, Barnes, Weikart, et al., 1993) involving 123 black children has reported long-term follow-up to 27 years. The experimental group consisted of 45 children who entered the preschool program at age 3 and an additional 13 who entered at age 4, attending a half-day center-based program and receiving teacher home visits. The researchers report that the experimental group had a somewhat lower probability of ever being arrested by age 27 (57 versus 69 percent), but a larger difference in the average number of lifetime arrests by age 27 (2.3 versus 4.6). Differences in the proportion receiving public assistance by age 27 were also large: 15 compared to 32 percent. Mean earnings were far higher for the experimental group than the control group at age 27: monthly reported mean earnings were $1,219 for experimentals, $766 for controls.

Participation in the Chicago Child-Parent Centers (CPC) also has been related to long-term beneficial effects (Reynolds et al., 2000). This project has followed the educational and social development of 1,539 African-American (93 percent) and Hispanic (7 percent) children as they grew up in high-poverty neighborhoods in central city Chicago. Some of the children (n = 989) participated in government-funded (Title I) early childhood programs in 1985-1986, whereas others did not (n = 550). A rich array of data, including surveys from teachers, parents, school administrative records, standardized tests, and the children themselves have been collected since that time. Children who participated in the CPC preschool programs obtained significantly higher math and reading achievement test scores at 5, 8, and 14 years, even after controlling for family risk status, child gender, and later program participation. At age 20, participants in the CPC were more likely to have completed high school and to have low rates of juvenile crime.

Even though only a few studies have followed children into adulthood, it is notable that all find some evidence of long-term gains.

Does Child Care Quality Affect Maternal Employment?
In much of the existing literature linking parental employment and child care, the primary issue is the affordability of care and the elasticity of response to child care costs. In this sense one can see the potential for a trade-off between quality of care and labor force participation, in that higher-quality care is likely to be more costly. A parent facing that higher cost may decide to forgo or limit employment or to elect lower-quality and less costly care (Scarr, 1998). Maume (1991) found that a $10 increase in the weekly cost of child care was associated with a 1.6 percent increase in the probability of exiting employment within a year. A slightly earlier study by Blau and Philip (1989) also provided evidence that an increase in the cost of care was associated with an increased probability of a mother leaving the labor force.

Quality of care may influence employment in several ways: parents may be reluctant to leave their child in a low-quality, unsafe environment or with adults who do not provide a stimulating or warm environment for their child. This may be a particular problem for lower-income families, who have more limited choices of providers. In contrast, a safe, warm, stimulating environment may encourage employment and longer hours of work. Parents may also be more effective employees if they do not have concerns about the environment in which their children spend a good part of each working day. Having well-cared-for children may also lead to employees with higher productivity than those whose children are left in less satisfactory environments. Parents may also be more likely to be on time to work and less likely to miss time from work if their children are cared for in a safe, warm and stimulating environment.

Evidence. There is limited evidence on whether higher-quality care has positive impacts on parental employment, because there have been few studies. The available evidence suggests that among low-income women, higher-quality child care may increase employment, stability of employment, and hours of work. See Table 8 for detail on these studies.

Meyers (1993) has explored how a mother’s perception of the quality of her child’s care and the convenience of the child care arrangement affected her labor market progress in the JOBS program. The results show that a mother’s perception of the safety of her child’s care arrangement and the trustworthiness of the provider were significant predictors of the mother’s continued participation in the JOBS program and in labor force participation more generally. Mothers also responded to the ratio of children to staff: those mothers who reported that the ratio of the children to adults in their care arrangement exceeded professionally recommended standards were more than twice as likely to drop out of the program than mothers who reported that their child’s care arrangement met the standard.

Additional evidence that quality plays a role in women’s labor force participation comes from another experiment: the Teenage Parent Demonstration. As reported in Ross and Paulsell (1998), among the group of first-time teenage welfare recipients whose members were randomly assigned to the program, which required employment, job training or schooling, nearly a third reported that the quality of child care was a problem that led them to stop working or to change hours and/or activities. Ross and Paulsell interpret this to mean that “Mothers who are required to work as a condition of receiving welfare benefits may try to manage with lower-quality child care than they would in the absence of such a requirement, but this low-quality care may be the reasons that mothers interrupt their employment activities.” (p. 40)

Brooks-Gunn et al. (1994) evaluated an early intervention program, the Infant Health and Development Program, in terms of its impact on mothers’ employment. This experiment focused on low-birthweight infants and used random assignment to an intervention program that provided center-based child care when the child was 2 to 3 years of age. The authors report that mothers in the intervention group were significantly more likely to be working than women in the control group. Effects were particularly pronounced for mothers with a high school degree or less schooling. Similar beneficial effects of high- quality child care on mothers’ subsequent educational achievement were evident in the high-risk sample that participated in the Abecedarian clinical trials (Ramey et al., in press). Benasich, Brooks-Gunn, and Clewell (1992) report qualitatively similar results for several other early intervention programs (pp. 41–42).

Other evidence (see Hofferth, 1999) that child care quality can influence labor market participation can be found in research studies that differentiate formal arrangements from informal arrangements. These analyses show that parents miss work more often and are late more often if they use informal arrangements. The big difference seems to be the stability of the arrangement—an element of quality.

See also Child Care 635 1 - 3