Gordon Cleveland

Child Care Costs and the Employment Decision of Women: Canadian Evidence

The authors estimate the joint decision for women with preschool children to engage in paid employment and to purchase market forms of child care. The results confirm those found in most U.S. studies, indicating that child care costs exert a significant negative effect on the labor supply of women with children and on their decision to purchase child care. As well, the expected wage of the mother exerts a significant positive impact on both the decision to purchase market forms of child care and the decision to engage in paid unemployment.

Child Care Subsidies, Welfare Reforms, and Lone Mothers

Recent social assistance reforms appear to have reduced welfare rolls, but the effects on the well-being of those families and their children are less clear. Using simulations based on Canadian data, we find that some currently favored alternatives turn out to be effective in encouraging employment but punitive to families. Increased subsidization of market child care combined with income support for families appears to deliver a number of family-supportive outcomes.

Variations in the Availability and Quality of Early Childhood Education and Care by Socioeconomic Status of Neighborhoods

Abstract Research Findings: This article provides Australian evidence of the availability and quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services in low–socioeconomic status (SES) neighborhoods. There is less availability of ECEC in low-SES areas in Australia, and these programs provide a lower average quality of care than in more advantaged neighborhoods. Families tend to travel short distances to ECEC programs (Mdn = 2.9 km), and therefore families in low-SES areas are limited in the programs they can choose or are faced with higher transport costs than families in more advantaged neighborhoods. This study uses government licensing data from a population of 6,937 ECEC services together with a sample of 2,494 children enrolled in 421 ECEC classrooms. Practice or Policy: Established measures of the local ECEC market tend to overestimate its size and in turn the availability of ECEC. Measures of ECEC market density should be tested for sensitivity to reductions in size. SES gradients are observed within local ECEC markets, meaning that attempts to lift supply and quality in low-SES areas require specific and targeted policy intervention.

UNION EFFECTS IN LOW-WAGE SERVICES: EVIDENCE FROM CANADIAN CHILDCARE

Empirical evidence presented in this paper, based on survey data for Canadian childcare workers in 1991, contradicts most stereotypes of the childcare labor market. Although childcare labor was low-wage, the authors find that the union impact on wages (15%) and fringe benefits was in line with union effects found in other, better-compensated work, and they find substantial returns to education, occupational level, and firm-specific experience. The returns to the skill-related attributes were blunted somewhat in the union sector, except where such returns stood to benefit the median union voter. The findings suggest that monetary incentives can be used to encourage improvements in the education, experience, and skill acquisition of childcare workers. Unions can improve wages and benefits for childcare workers just as they can for most other workers, suggesting the viability of union organizing in this sector despite the traditional barriers to organizing low-wage service sector workers in small firms.