There is a basic assumption that people aren't questioning: that older children are useless in helping teach and supervise younger children.<p>This flies in the face of historical experience, and it robs everyone involved of opportunities for learning and growth. It is <i>nuts</i> that we segregate children by birth year, all the way from preschool until college.<p>In a mixed-age setting, the older kids can do enough teaching, entertaining, and watching to significantly amplify a single adult's capabilities. To the point where much higher kid-to-adult ratios work just fine.<p>And far from taking something away from older kids by engaging them in this work, you actually give them valuable learning opportunities. You give them real responsibility to be proud of, an immediate motivation to master the things they'll be asked to teach, and a longer-term perspective on their own growth and life trajectory.
Taxes. A person staying home looking after the kids and cleaning after them is not taxed. If that person goes to work instead and leaves their kids with a carer, the person has to pay income taxes, the carer will also have to pay income tax, the business have to pay sales tax, the premise the business is staying at will also pay tax on the collected rent. As soon as you outsource caring kids there are 3-4 more sets of taxes to pay. 20% from the person, 20% from the carer, 10% for the business sales tax and perhaps an additional 5% on the tax on rent. Every dollar spent on childcare, 50% goes to the government. The benefit of going to work has to be twice as good as staying home with the kids, as determined by economics. I haven't even begun to mention the intrinsic benefits of spending time with your children...
Is childcare in fact expensive? According to the article it "can top 15 percent of the median income for a married couple". But considering that taking care of children used to be a full-time job for a housewife, isn't it actually surprisingly cheap relative to historical standards?<p>In general, if there isn't increased productivity because of technology, we shouldn't expect lower costs in terms of labor-hours consumed. See "Baumol's cost disease" (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease</a>)
In Norway, there is a max price on child care which makes it affordable and the best option for most people. The government subsidizes somewhere around two thirds of the costs. I guess labour costs are 70%+ in most cases. There are both public and privately run child care centers/kindergardens. The privately run are subsidized on more or less equal terms as the publicly run, and the norms for employee density and other minimum quality requirements are the same. About one third of the employees are pre-school teachers (three years of higher ed), the rest are either skilled (there is a child worker professional vocation ed you can take) or unskilled. I don't think there are many cases where employees can not afford to have their own kids in child care. In my municipality parents of all children in child care are surveyed every year and the reports from the survey are public. My guess is that the whole thing is more or less funded by the increased taxes paid by keeping a larger part of the population working. (I could also mention that parents share about a year of paid leave for each birth so most kids are around one year old when they start in child care.)
Would have been more interesting if they just broke down the expenses of a childcare center, like that one described in the article with 19 kids and 3 teachers making $9/hr that the owner says is just scraping by.
Being a parent of a young child myself, I can very much empathize with this article, and the plight of child care workers. The conclusions are only logical that this is an area where government support and intervention can reap vast societal benefits. There is an increasing body of research indicating that the quality of the care a child receives from birth, as well as the safety of socio-cultural environment a child is born into (which can be controlled by high quality child care), are strongly correlated with how productive a member of society the child grows up to be. Why wouldn't the government want to maximize that? If we can pay for elder care via social security, how can we afford not to pay for child care? Some countries are ahead in this regard.
Did you expect the business owner to brag about how much she's banking? Her customers and employees would love that. Maybe the article is accurate, but I don't see any attempt to prove it.<p>Each family spends 10% of income.<p>Average household income is X.<p>3 teachers per 19 kids<p>=<p>Each teacher generates revenue of 0.63X. Considering each parent is making 0.5X in a two parent household, that's cutting it a bit close.<p>Edit: I originally commented with an incorrect 6.3X. Fixed.
19 kids * 10% * X / 3 teachers = 0.63X
Nearly any living human being can do "child care" (if you think about it for a minute, there is an excellent reason why this should be the case). Half of them are probably even above average at it.<p>Thus, high supply and limited demand -> low wages.
Child care is cheap. We pay $1,100 for full time care in Baltimore per month. That works out to $5/hour. 8 kids per class. That's $40/hour, and pays for two teachers plus overhead.
As a thought experiment, can anyone think of something that is expensive, where the direct employees <i>are</i> well paid?<p>I feel like that no longer happens in the world, with profits being pushed ever higher.
As a father of a one year old, soon to be starting childcare, and husband to a trained & registered Early Childhood Educator in Ontario, I can relate to a lot in this article. Care for my daughter nearly approaches my monthly rent, and more than exceeds the monthly income of a childcare worker in Ontario. It almost feels like a better plan to have mom not go back to work, but then she'll fall behind professionally, and the baby will lose our on many social development opportunities.
Daycare should really receive government subsidy - the extra income tax they earn can be used to cover the gap.<p>In The Netherlands we have a 33/33/33 model - parents pay 33% of the costs, the state pays 33% and the parent's employers pay 33% (which is an extra charge split over all workers).<p>In recent years they've tweaked the model: parents with 2 x modal income pay 100% of the costs (and their employers also pay 33%). Only the lowest incomes hit 33/33/33.<p>For the 2nd+ children the subsidy is much higher for all income groups.<p>We send our son to daycare for 2 days a week, costing ~700 EUR/month. My wife works 36hrs (4x9) and I work 40hrs (4x9,1x4 at home). Grandma/pa do one day (the other grandparents live in the UK). I really like this mix - he gets 4/days week of parents, 2/days a week playing with other kids and 1 day of being spoilt by grandparents.
This article is terrible.<p>For all the numbers and percentages it throws around it just doesn't do the sums on the basics. From the article's facts:<p>- 3 teacher for 19 children - 6.3 children per carer.<p>- Cost = 15% of median income<p>- lets assume 1.5 children per family.<p>- 6.3/1.5 =4.2 child carers per family.<p>- 4.2 carers X 15% of median family income = a revenue of 63% of family income per child care worker.<p>Assuming overheads, profits, etc., .... you get the point. Child care is expensive and low paying for similar reasons. It takes a lot of teachers per student. This isn't a government conspiracy or a corporate one, it's just the reality of the requirements of caring for children.
Both of my kids go to in home daycares in the neighborhood. The caregivers take care of 4-6 kids per day, and make 60/day per kid, and they get paid vacations. Financially, it seems like they make significantly more than they would teaching in a large center. I like the homey feel of the daycares, that it's a little cheaper, and walking distance. They also both provide snacks and lunch, which is nearly impossible to find in a large center.<p>They have to live in homes that are set up as daycares though, and it's very hard for them to take a sick day.
My theory is that due to their young age, two teachers can only manage ~10 kids on average, assuming each one is paying 1000/month on average, that's 10000 per month, after admin/rent/tax/insurance there are not much left to split between two staffs. Daycares are very local and can not be too large in size, all in all there is not much economy of scale.
> For example, with basic income<p>Oh a UBI communist again. Sooner or later every problem discussed leads to someone suggesting the good ole "tax the rich".<p>> paying people to stay home to care for their kids.<p>Why should I pay somebody else to stay home with _their_ kids?<p>What you and other UBIs are suggesting is nothing else than "redistribute other peoples wealth" communism.<p>It _only_ works if you take (by force) from one guy and give it to the other guy. It is not a _solution_ in any form, it is simply mugging.