TY  - JOUR
AU  - Kottelenberg,Michael J.
AU  - Lehrer,Steven F.
TI  - New Evidence on the Impacts of Access to and Attending Universal Childcare in Canada
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 18785
PY  - 2013
Y2  - February 2013
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18785
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18785.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Michael Kottelenberg
Department of Economics, Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6
Canada
E-Mail: kottelen@econ.queensu.ca

Steven F. Lehrer
School of Policy Studies
and Department of Economics
Queen's University
Kingston, ON K7L 3N6
CANADA
Tel: 613/533-6692
Fax: 613/533-2135
E-Mail: lehrers@post.queensu.ca
AB  - In Canada, advocates of universal child care often point to policies implemented in Quebec as providing a model for early education and care policies in other provinces. While these policies have proven to be incredibly popular among citizens, initial evaluations of access to these programs indicated they led to a multitude of undesirable child developmental, health and family outcomes. These research findings ignited substantial controversy and criticism. In this study, we show the robustness of the initial analyses to i) concerns over whether negative outcomes would vanish over time as suppliers gained experience providing child care, ii) concerns regarding multiple testing, and iii) concerns that the original test measured the causal impact of childcare availability and not child care attendance. A notable exception is that despite estimated effects stemming from the policy indicating declines in motor-social development scores in Quebec relative to the rest of Canada, our analyses imply that on average attending childcare in Canada leads to a significant increase in this test score. However, our analysis reveals substantial heterogeneity in program impacts that occur in response to the Quebec policies and indicates that most of the negative impacts reported in earlier research are driven by children from families who only attended childcare in response to the implementation of this policy.
ER  -