Rethinking the Welfare State: The prospects for ... - e-Library

7
Early childhood education
Introduction
In recent years, concern over the scope and quality of child care services has become
salient primarily as a consequence of the growing participation of women in the paid
labour force and the need to ensure appropriate and stimulating care for pre-school
children. 1 Interestingly, whereas virtually every continental European country has
implemented a broad program for the funding (and in many cases, the provision) of child
care in order to respond to this challenge, to date this has not been the case in either
Canada or the United States. 2
This chapter explores whether the introduction of a voucher instrument is an
appropriate form of intervention for government in the provision of child care, and if so,
how a child care voucher instrument should be designed. We first examine the desired
ends of child care and canvass rationales for government intervention in this area. From
the rationales for intervention we then proceed to investigate the problems that currently
exist with the provision of child care. Finally, we examine how a voucher scheme might
operate so as to provide a stronger efficiency-equity trade-off than is currently manifest
in government-provided child care programs.
The ends of child care and the rationales for government intervention
The term early childhood education and care (“child care”) has a wide ambit. Often
understood as “all arrangements providing for care and education of children under
compulsory school age, regardless of setting, funding, opening hours, or program
content,” child care can include parental leave benefits, regulated and unregulated care,
and care provided by both public and private agents. 3 We understand child care more
rigorously as containing some component of early childhood education—necessarily so,
in order to encompass aspects of the ends and rationales we see as valid arenas for
government policy. The literature identifies many ends of such child care, including:
increasing the labour market participation of mothers; promoting equal opportunities for
education among both children (through child care) and parents (through the opportunity
to pursue employment or human capital investments); fostering the overall development
of children; and “maintaining social integration and cohesion.” 4 Because child care has
the potential to alter such a broad range of potentially competing inputs and outcomes,
child care policy is complex. 5 The result is often highly variegated systems of design:
“One person’s well-designed policy is another’s worst nightmare; typically the origin of
these different perspectives lies in the different underlying policy objectives being
pursued.” 6