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

Notes 245
27 Gordon Cleveland and Douglas Hyatt, “Subsidizing child care for low-income families: a
good bargain for Canadian governments?,” Choices: Family Policy, 4(2) (1998), p. 11.
28 Gordon Cleveland and Michael Krashinsky, “The benefits and costs of good child care,”
working paper (Toronto: University of Toronto at Scarborough, Department of Economics,
1998), p. 16, available at: www.childcarecanada.org/pubs/other/benefits/bc.pdf.
29 Friendly, supra note 2, p. 4.
30 For a recent study that links quality child care with impressive reductions in later criminal
activity, see Newman et al., America’s Child Care Crisis: A Crime Prevention Tragedy
(Washington, DC: “Fight Crime: Invest in Kids,” 2000).
31 See also Karoly et al., who performed a cost savings analysis of the Perry Preschool Project,
which was an intensive early childhood intervention experiment. It is important to note that
this analysis measures only the financial costs and savings, and disregards intangible
benefits. The program cost was US$12,148 per child. The projected savings, which
comprised reduced special education costs, increased taxes on earnings, decreased welfare
payments, and decreased criminal justice costs, totaled US$25,335. This represents an
average savings to the government of US$13,187. Found in David M.Blau, “Child care
subsidy programs” NBER Working Paper 7806 (2000), pp. 60–1, available at:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7806.
32 For a discussion of the empirical evidence supporting this assertion, see Richard Tremblay
and Christa Japel, “The long-term impact of quality early child care,” Policy Options, 18(1)
(1997).
33 Prentice, supra note 23.
34 Cleveland and Colley, supra note 2, p. 8.
35 Ibid., p. 37.
36 Ron Haskins, supra note 22, p. 20.
37 Internal Revenue Code section 129(a) 1995; see more generally, Mary L.Heen “Welfare
reform, child care costs and taxes: delivering increased work-related child care benefits to
low-income families,” Yale Law and Policy Review, 13 (1995), p. 192.
38 See Income Tax Act, Revised Status of Canada 1985, c. 1, s. 63.
39 In May of 2001, the federal government also concluded an Early Childhood Development
Initiatives agreement with all provinces and territories (except Quebec), which stipulated
increased federal funding in exchange for provincial development of child care services. In
2003 this was supplemented by an additional $1 billion in federal investment in early
childhood learning. For Ontario, this increased funding has mostly resulted in a Network of
Early Years Centres. These Centres focus almost entirely on support services for parents,
and then mostly on healthy development or special needs programs—all desperately needed
and worthy initiatives, but limited as tools for early childhood education. Cleveland and
Colley, supra note 2, pp. 23, 50–1.
40 Ibid., pp. 11, 65. Quebec also expects to more than double the number of child care spaces
available by 2005–6. In some quarters, the Quebec program has been suggested as a
potential model for Canada.
41 Ibid., pp. 74, 76–78. Finland, Sweden and Portugal all fit within this category. Norway
guarantees universal access to child care from birth to six years of age.
42 Ibid., p. 78. The United Kingdom also offers free public child care for all children aged three
to four.
43 Frances Press and Alan Hayes, “OECD thematic review of early childhood education and
care policy: Australian background report,” paper prepared for the Commonwealth
Government of Australia (2000), p. 37; OECD, supra note 2.
44 Ibid. Denmark also uses demand-side subsidies, as will be discussed in more detail below.
45 Rachel Connolly, “The importance of child care costs to women’s decision making,” in
David Blau (ed.) The Economics of Child Care (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1991),
p. 87.