Day Care: A Spectrum of Issues and Policy Options

Currently, debates about the merits of one form or another of day care frequently miss some significant issues and hence some of the important policy options may be ruled out or in for the wrong reasons. Here, child day care is layed on a spectrum one end of which offers maximum market freedom in the form of income redistribution, a negative income tax, children's allowance, or other transfer assistance, to be spent on the market if so desired for day care services, and on the other end of the spectrum a system of comprehensive child day care centers. In between are various mixtures of the two and various special blends like voucher systems. Hopefully, by so arraying the issues and discussing them certain similarities between antipoverty and child care policy become evident and certain problems of transfers in cash or provision in kind can be clarified. Various day care policy options are discussed in relationship to assumptions that they make about cost, theories of child development, definitions of universality, the preference of parents, returns to scale, economic rationality, market responsiveness, quality, consumer democracy, and citizen control. Finally three central issues which lie outside of this analysis, freedom, political environment, and the target group to whom day care should be directed are discussed. In this discussion the point is made that day care is best conceived of as directed toward mothers not toward children or families. It is the mother who is most in need of the benefit of day care policy most of the time and to whom reasonable policy of day care should be directed. This consideration quite alters what seem fairly reasonable conclusions in favor of market day care in favor of day care by voucher or by direct service. At first blush day care appears simple: provide care for the day for pre-school children. This simplicity is deceptive; here I hope to illuminate some issues around day care. In fact, day care is not univocally directed toward the welfare of children but has many goals. In some uncertain measure it is directed toward the welfare of families, the welfare of women, and the welfare of society. And like most policies, it is redistributive, frequently explicitly so. To help in organizing some reflections on day care, I shall consider not what is but what might be on a spectrum whose colors are different degrees of market freedom or political voice or, to use a slightly different language, of increasing/decreasing degrees of market control and of decreasing/increasing degrees of political control.** Two models of national policies for child care can be thought of as anchoring down the ends of this spectrum of the ideal. These are a comprehensive system of universal child care centers and a children's allowance. Code words like "day care", "child care", "developmental day care", ituniversal day care", "compensatory day care", "Head Start" tell little. Slogans like "equality of opportunity" or "Sovietizing of American families" tell less. Child care has many labels and slogans which tell little about the proposed program if much about the advocate. Mapping programs on a spectrum provide one first step through labels and slogans into cost, effect, benefits, and structures useful in thinking about any future child care policy. The level at which any day care policy is funded current level, modest level, high level is a crucial variable lying orthogonal to the variables of market freedom and political control. It gives the *Talking about what might be is both easier and harder than talking about what is. It is surely easier to talk about ideas uncluttered by facts. This temptation is to be resisted. But that a policy does not exist in the realm of fact may make it a sort of natural theoretical ideal type offering analysis even though we realize the impending