Child care policy and child care burden: Policy feedback effects and distributive implications of regulatory decisions

Abstract

The policy feedback literature highlights that the design of public policies can affect recipients’ experience of those policies and programs. In this paper, we examine the largely unexplored distributional implications of market-based early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. We present the results of a quasi-behavioral conjoint survey of 606 parents in the City of Toronto. Grouping parent respondents by income and access to public subsidies, we find evidence that access to public subsidies influences the ECEC preferences of lower income parents. We explore these findings with respect to how non-subsidized lower income parents experience the market for ECEC. We find evidence that non-subsidized lower income parents are more cost-conscious; this is likely to result in their using less well-regulated ECEC that is more variable in quality. In turning to less well-regulated care, the burden of performing oversight and quality assessments falls on these parents. However, our study finds that lower income non-subsidized parents report the least engagement with learning about ECEC, suggesting that they are likely to be the least able to effectively monitor their children’s care arrangements. We explore the implications of these findings regarding the effects of policy on vulnerable children’s access to high quality ECEC services.

Policy Frameworks and Parental Choice: Using Conjoint Analysis to Understand Parental Decision Making for Child Care

“…Based on this income data, the percentage of parents reporting that they are eligible for a child care subsidy appears low; however, subsidy eligibility in Ontario is based on a mix of both family income and attachment to the labor force (and/or educational attainment). Moreover, of those we have income data on, nearly 45% of those reporting that they “Don’t Know” their eligibility status have incomes below the median income, which may suggest that informational barriers—rather than income—are impacting subsidy uptake (data not shown; Davidson et al, 2020).…”

COVID‐19 vaccine mistrust, health literacy, conspiracy theories, and racial discrimination among a representative ethnically diverse sample in Canada: The vulnerability of Arab, Asian, Black, and Indigenous peoples

“…These few studies, carried out using nonrepresentative samples and including only a few racialized and Indigenous people, showed that the latter were more hesitant about the COVID-19 vaccine. [14][15][16] In addition, studies have considered racialized people as a homogeneous group, often referred to as "visible minorities," and do not provide disaggregated analyses by ethnicity. Moreover, there are only a few studies, mostly qualitative and descriptive, that have conducted disaggregated analysis by race and ethnicity.…”