Where’s that MIT guy? His scaffold needs fitting....
Dr. Jonathan Gruber referred inquiries to his legal team of Dewey, Cheatam, and Howe.
Jonathan Gruber’s latest research undercuts Hillary Clinton’s policy agenda
MAY 27, 2016
MIT economist Jonathan Gruber (yes, that Jonathan Gruber) is the co-author of a paper which finds there were long-term negative effects for some children after the introduction of a universal child care program in Quebec. The Christian Post reports:
In a paper recently published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Gruber et al. studied increased childcare access in Quebec and found it to be detrimental to child development.
“We first confirm earlier findings showing reduced contemporaneous non-cognitive development following the program introduction in Quebec, with little impact on cognitive test scores,” reads the abstract for the study.
“We then show these non-cognitive deficits persisted to school ages, and also that cohorts with increased child care access subsequently had worse health, lower life satisfaction, and higher crime rates later in life. The impacts on criminal activity are concentrated in boys.”
The National Bureau of Economic Research described the results of a previous paper (by the same three authors covering the same general topic) this way [emphasis added]:
In Universal Childcare, Maternal Labor Supply, and Family Well-Being (NBER Working Paper No. 11832), authors Michael Baker, Jonathan Gruber, and Kevin Milligan measure the implications of universal childcare by studying the effects of the Quebec Family Policy. Beginning in 1997, the Canadian province of Quebec extended full-time kindergarten to all 5-year olds and included the provision of childcare at an out-of-pocket price of $5 per day to all 4-year olds. This $5 per day policy was extended to all 3-year olds in 1998, all 2-year olds in 1999, and finally to all children younger than 2 years old in 2000. Since welfare reform and other changes were occurring for single mothers over this time period, the authors focus on the effects of this policy on the married and cohabiting women and their children who received most of the new subsidies under this policy. They use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Canadian Youth (NLSCY), a large longitudinal survey of children inside and outside of Quebec, to develop the first comprehensive analysis of a universal subsidized childcare program, following its impact from childcare use through employment and finally to children’s and parent’s outcomes.
[…]
Disturbingly, the authors report that children’s outcomes have worsened since the program was introduced along a variety of behavioral and health dimensions. The NLSCY contains a host of measures of child well being developed by social scientists, ranging from aggression and hyperactivity, to motor-social skills, to illness. Along virtually every one of these dimensions, children in Quebec see their outcomes deteriorate relative to children in the rest of the nation over this time period. Their results imply that this policy resulted in a rise of anxiety of children exposed to this new program of between 60 percent and 150 percent, and a decline in motor/social skills of between 8 percent and 20 percent. These findings represent a sharp break from previous trends in Quebec and the rest of the nation, and there are no such effects found for older children who were not subject to this policy change.