M A R C H / A P R I L R E S O L V E D : T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S O U G H T T O G U A R A N T E E U N I V E R S A L C H I L D C A R E .

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Contents

TOPIC ANALYSIS ...... 7 Introduction & Background ...... 7 Definitions & Topicality ...... 8 Researching The Resolution ...... 9 Implementation ...... 10 History of Universal Childcare ...... 12 Who Is The Actor & Who Is Affected? ...... 15 Ground (And any potential skew…) ...... 16 Framing ...... 17 Conclusion ...... 18 FRAMING ...... 19 Child Care Is A Common Good ...... 19 Childcare Should Be Viewed As A Right – Current Cost Benefit View Alienates Low Income Children ...... 20 Childcare Is A Human Right Rooted In International Conventions ...... 21 Fair Equality of Opportunity Requires Universal Child Care ...... 22 Universal Childcare Promotes Parental Autonomy And Choice ...... 23 Universal Child Care Is Key To Recognition And Rights In A Democracy ...... 24 The Kantian State Would Provide UCC – The State Must Provide Services For Those Incapable Of Maintaining Themselves, Including Children ...... 25 Less Government Intervention (Deregulation) Solves For Childcare – State Raises Costs And Oversteps ...... 28 Economic Framing Is The Best Way To Evaluate Childcare Policy ...... 29 Debate Of UCC Should Be Grounded In A Shared Conception Of Good Society, Not Utilitarian Calculus ...... 30 AFFIRMATIVE EVIDENCE ...... 31

HEALTH, COGNITIVE & DEVELOPMENT BENEFITS ...... 32 *Empirics Show Universal Childcare Improves Test Scores And Likelihood Of Passing Grades – Especially Benefits Families Most At-Risk ...... 32 *Universal Pre-K Increases Student Test Scores – Particularly Of Disadvantaged Children ...... 33 Early Childhood Education Programs Boost Educational Development - Reduces Criminal Activity, Boosts Earnings, And Long Term Employment ...... 34 Lanham Act Proves UCC Works – Children Had Better Progress Physically, Emotionally, Socially, And Mentally ...... 36 ECONOMIC BENEFITS ...... 37 Access To Childcare Reduces Employee Absenteeism, Reduces Turnover, And Increases Profits ...... 37 UCC Increases Employment, GDP And Return On Investment - Quebec Proves ...... 38 California Empirics Prove – UCC Would Generate $2.62 For Every Dollar Invested, Resulting In Billions Of Dollars In Net Value . 39 Universal Childcare Pays For Itself - UK Empirical Estimates Prove ...... 40 Universal Childcare Establishes Wage Floor For Underpaid Childcare Workers – NYC Proves ...... 41 Policies Implemented in Georgia Shows UCC Increases Childcare Employment By Over 30% ...... 42 *INCREASED INCOME MOBILITY ...... 43 Universal Childcare Boosts Income Mobility – Empirics Prove ...... 43 Universal Early Childhood Education Programs Close The Income-Based Achievement Gap ...... 44 Universal Childcare Allows Mothers To Enter Workforce, Increasing Wages And Boosting Family Income – Norway’s Model Proves ...... 45 3 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Universal Pre-K Benefits Low Income Children – US Studies Prove ...... 46 Universal Childcare Program Implemented In US Via Lanham Act Proves UCC Effective At Boosting Income Earnings ...... 47 Universal Childcare Helps Parents Work, Increasing Adult Financial Outcomes - Lanham Act Proves ...... 48 Existing Childcare Models Make It Too Difficult For Working Class Families To Evaluate And Afford Childcare ...... 49 COVID-19 Uniquely Worsens Education Gap – UCC Would Allow Families To Build Up Savings ...... 51 *FEMINISM ...... 52 UCC Is A Collective Good – Feminism Supports It As A Right, Society As A Whole Is Responsible ...... 52 Feminist Liberation Requires Separation From Motherhood As An Expectation For Women ...... 53 UCC Policies Protect Women Who Work In The Childcare Industry – Fights Social Stigma Against Devalued Childcare Work, Promotes Safer Working Condition, And Higher Wages ...... 54 Intersectional Models Of Feminism Necessitate That All People Have Access to UCC – Overlapping Obstacles, Race, And Class . 56 Broad Feminist Agenda Must Prioritize UCC To Lesson Economic Inequities ...... 57 COVID-19 Has Regressed Childcare Gender Norms – UCC Models Healthier Relationships ...... 58 Pandemic Is A Breaking Point – UCC Needed To Undo The “Girl Boss” Version Of Mainstream Feminism, And To Support Black And Low Income Families ...... 60 *ABUSE & NEGLECT ...... 62 Universal Childcare Reduces Child Abuse And Neglect By Over 20% ...... 62 Access To Quality Childcare Mitigates Risk Factors That Lead To Child Abuse ...... 63 Teachers And Caregivers Help Neglected Children Develop Better Emotional Processes ...... 64 Universal Childcare Reduces Cases Of Abuse – A 1% Increase In Childcare Placements Leads To A 1.8% Reduction In Maltreatment Cases ...... 65 Existing Child Care Structures, Requirements, And Fees Are Too Difficult And Can Trap Mothers In Abusive Relationships ...... 66 Child Maltreatment Causes A Laundry List of Psychical & Developmental Issues ...... 67 Child Maltreatment Reduces Life-Long Economic Stability ...... 68 EDUCATION ...... 69 Universal Pre-K Increases Years Of Schooling, Degree Completion And Graduation Rates – Multiple Studies Prove ...... 69 UCC Boosts College Graduation Rates And Adulthood Income – No Harms ...... 70 ECEC Increases High School Graduation Rates - Latvia Proves ...... 71 UCC Incrases Probability Of Attending College And Graduating HS – Head Start Program Proves ...... 72 POLITICAL PARTICIPATION ...... 73 UCC Is Key To Increasing Voter Turnout And Political Participation ...... 73 UCC Is The Only Way Means Through Which Women Can Gain Full Citizenship And Political Participation ...... 74 Head Start Programs Increased Political Participation ...... 75 NEGATIVE EVIDENCE ...... 76

HEALTH, COGNITIVE & DEVELOPMENT HARMS ...... 77 Empirics Prove – Universal Childcare Can Negatively Affect Test Scores, Health Outcomes, Crime Rates And Have Gendered Results ...... 77 UCC Results In Negative Social-Emotional Effects On Children ...... 79 UCC Increases Aggression And Anxiety In Children And Harms Parental-Child Relationships ...... 80 Childcare Harms Parental Interactions – Increased Hostility And Ineffective Parenting ...... 81 Universal Pre-K Is Associated With Higher Rates of Infractions ...... 82 Overall Literature Shows Pre-K Has Negative Effects On Children Long Term – Our Evidence Uses Best Research Models, Affirmative Studies Are Rare, Small, And Hard To Scale ...... 83 UNEQUAL QUALITY ...... 84 Empirics Prove – Universal Childcare Can Result In Massive Variations In Center Quality ...... 84 UCC Varies In Center Quality - Canadian Evidence Shows Funding Limits Lead To Unequal Care ...... 86

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Costs Inherently Place Universal Systems Into A Double Bind – Either They Are High Quality And Low Access Or High Access And Low Quality ...... 87 Universalizing Childcare Standards Is Too Difficult – Too High Leads To Unregulated Care And Too Low Leaves Parents Dissatisfied ...... 88 Childcare Facilities Quality Is Low - Are At High Risk Of Lead In Drinking Water ...... 89 Quality Care Is Key -- Cheap Care Is A Waste Of Money No Matter How Inexpensive And May Do Harm ...... 90 Low Quality Childcare Leads To Less School Preparedness And More Behavioral Issues ...... 92 Low Quality Childcare Decreases Women’s Participation In The Workforce ...... 93 CROWDOUT ...... 94 Universal Pre-K Leads To Crowdout And Is Associated With Lower Household Income ...... 94 Universal Child Care Crowds Out Informal Arrangements ...... 96 Universal Childcare Crowds Out Private Care - Brazil proves ...... 97 Universal Childcare Crowds Out Higher Quality Care ...... 98 Crowd Out Decreases Access To Quality Childcare ...... 99 Crowdout Reduces The Maternal Labor Market Impacts of UCC – Replaces One With The Other Causes Little To No Net Gain 100 Crowdout Increases The Net Cost Of UCC ...... 101 *STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE ...... 102 UCC Fails And Leads To Segregation Of Children By Socioeconomic Background ...... 102 Universal Pre-k Is Disproportionately Segregated; Minority Students Receive Lower Quality Care ...... 103 Early Childhood Programs Are 20% More Segregated Than High School ...... 105 Universal Systems Results In Discrimination – Germany Proves ...... 106 Childcare Facilities Lack Of Access And Training Puts People With Disabilities At Increased Risk Of Harm ...... 107 Universal Childcare Disproportionately Worsens Home Environments For Girls ...... 108 TARGETED CHILDCARE ...... 109 *Universal Child Care Doesn’t Reach Students Who Need It Most ...... 109 Data From UCC Policies Show Targeted Care Is More Effective ...... 110 *Only Low Income Children Show Positive Responses To Childcare Expansion – Suggests Universal Model Costs Outweigh The Benefits ...... 111 Most Evidence Used For Universal Programs Is Drawn From Targeted Programs - This Is A Mistake And Supports Targeted Not Universal Programs ...... 112 UNIVERSAL CHILD ALLOWANCES CP ...... 113 Child Allowance Is Preferable To Universal Child Care ...... 113 A Universal Childcare Can Be Implemented Via Conversion of CTC, On A Monthly Schedule, Using Cash Assistance ...... 114 Child Allowance Is More Effective, Interchangeable, And Leads To Large Improvements In Child Outcomes ...... 115 Child Allowance Improves The Well-Being Of Children – Increased Access To Childcare, Food, Rent, And Transportation ...... 116 Universal Child Allowance Has Multiple Advantages – Provides Income Floor & Safety Net, Eliminates Stigma, Reduces Hassle, Cuts Child Poverty By Over 40% ...... 117 *CAPITALISM KRITIK ...... 118 Discourses Of Investment In ECE Form The Basis of “Edu-Capitalism” – Shifting Views Of Education From Collective Affairs To Individualistic Ones In Favor of Capital ...... 118 Edu-Capitalism Invests In “Equality Of Opportunity” That Lets The Government Off The Hook For Continuing Injustices And Poverty While Masking The Continued Violence Of Neoliberalism ...... 120 Economic Framing Subverts The Feminist Origins Of UCC – The Business Case Abandons Marginalized Adults, Mothers, And Childcare Workers While Claiming The Problem Is Solved ...... 121 The Economic Reframing Of Childcare Overwrites Any Potential Political Ramifications – The Proponents Of Modern UCC Do Not Seek Justice, But Economic Gain ...... 122 UCC Discussions Framed By Economics Only Serves To Erase Focus On Existing Forms Of Inequality By Reinforcing The Narrative That Individual Choices Lead To Poverty ...... 123 5 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Contradictions Within Existing Proposals Betray The Biopolitical Nature Of ECEC Policy – Shaping Children For The Economy At The Expense Of Women Caregivers ...... 125

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Topic Analysis By: Matt Slencsak

Matthew Slencsak has been involved in Speech and Debate for over 10 years. He graduated from Howland HS in 2013, after competing in Lincoln Douglas debate for 4 years. After High School, Matt obtained a degree in IT. Matt has coached at multiple schools, building several LD debate programs from scratch including South Range High School and Liberty High School. Matt has coached students to making stage at both the state level and national level. He has had multiple state and national quarterfinalists, even coaching students to finals at the OSDA State Tournament and NSDA National Tournament. Matt co-founded Triumph Debate with the goal of creating a more equitable space. Resolved: The United States ought to guarantee universal child care.

Introduction & Background For most students across the country, they will be debating the March/April Lincoln Douglas topic at qualifying tournaments, like state or national qualifiers, as well as their state tournaments. Because it can be a fairly important topic for many, it’s good that debaters this year have already gotten some experience debating an economic-government program topic (i.e. federal jobs guarantee), because many of those same themes will also reoccur on this topic.

For students who may not have as much as experience on previous domestic economic/welfare-esq topics, it is important to point out that this topic asks a very similar question to many previous NSDA resolutions. That question typically is something along the lines of whether the United States government should provide some sort of common good/resource. In this case, the resolution is asking whether the United States should implement a universal childcare system. A few examples of similar NSDA resolutions from previous years include:

• November/December 2020-2021– Resolved: The United States ought to provide a federal jobs guarantee. • March/April 2017-2018 – Resolved: The United States ought to provide a universal basic income. • March/April 2016-2017 – Resolved: The United States ought to guarantee the right to housing.

Recognizing this trend is important because a.) it can help you analyze the resolution in a consistent way and b.) it grants you the opportunity to utilize framing techniques, cards and argumentation from previous (but relevant) topics. Most of these kinds of public program-

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oriented topics have an extensive literature base, and this 2021 March/April LD topic is no exception.

Definitions & Topicality

In terms of definitions and debating over what we are debating about, I think this topic is a substantial improvement from LAWs. With that said, I do think there will still be some speculation regarding what exactly Universal Childcare is. This is predominantly because there are a lot of different plans that call themselves UCC but vary greatly. We’ll discuss some of those below, but in terms of definitions, I recommend taking the resolution is to think of the concept of Universal Child Care as more of an umbrella that can include various different policy considerations, with the goal of turning childcare into some level of public service. The following card supports this conception of Universal Child Care and explains a bit about how it would work.

Swartz 2019 [Brian Swartz, CEO and Co-Founder of NeighborSchools, March 6th 2019, “What is Universal Child Care?”, https://www.neighborschools.com/blog/what-is-universal-child-care/ ] /Triumph Debate

What is Universal Child Care? In America, local governments provide schooling for children, beginning in Kindergarten. For a long time, our society’s viewed the education of children as an obvious necessity. Still, new research suggests that children would benefit from beginning structured learning at a much earlier age. Access to high-quality child care promotes strong relationships. It also supports vocabulary, early literacy skills, and healthy behaviors. Some politicians and local leaders have presented low-cost and no-cost child care plans for all children, beginning at an early age. Plans vary, but the general idea is to make child care a public service. It’s much the same as our current public school systems. Of course, this still leaves a large number of unanswered questions. For example, do subsidies and/or tax credits constitute some form of Universal Child Care? Is Universal Child Care inherently zero cost? Are sliding scale policies UCC? Generally speaking, simply expanding subsidies is not considered Universal Child Care.

Thier 2020 [Daphna Thier, Brooklyn based activist and writer, December 27th 2020, “The US Government Can Provide Universal Childcare – It’s Done So in the Past”, Jacobin, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/12/universal-childcare- lanham-act-us-government ] / Triumph Debate

Biden’s childcare plan actually calls for universal prekindergarten for three- and four-year-olds, in addition to a tax credit of up to $8,000 for families with a child under five years old (or $16,000 for two or more children) to help cover childcare expenses. The plan details: “Access to high-quality, affordable child care and offer universal preschool to three-and four-year-olds through greater investment, expanded tax credits, and sliding-scale subsidies.” Building “safe, energy-efficient, developmentally appropriate child care facilities, including in workplaces, so that parents and guardians never again have to search in vain for a suitable child care option.” And finally, “treat caregivers and early childhood educators with respect and dignity, and give them the pay and benefits they deserve, training and career ladders to higher-paying jobs, the choice to join a union and bargain collectively, and other fundamental work-related rights and protections.”All this would be a great step forward, but there are a few holes here to watch for. Expanded tax credits and sliding-scale subsidies are not a recipe for universal care; it smacks of the same patchwork of public and private entities that exists for example in New York. A universal system would, like the existing public school system, be actually universal. In other words, it would not be means-tested and would be basically free for all. And tax credits for the cost to care for children under three leaves day care inaccessible to many, since the cost varies significantly depending on location, and even a 50 percent subsidy doesn’t guarantee affordability. And it doesn’t guarantee the quality of the childcare. In part, the problem is that much of the argument for high-quality education for three- and four-year-olds rests on helping children do better in school over the long term. Thus Cecilia Rouse, tapped to chair

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the Council of Economic Advisers and senior editor of Princeton University’s Future of Children journal, has written, “estimates based on some older pre-K programs suggest that every dollar invested in prekindergarten pays off $3 to $17 in terms of benefits, both to the adult individual and to society.”

I would recommend defaulting to the literature and looking at the current plans proposed in the United States – again, they are discussed below. When evaluating evidence, I would state that when a policy is consistently referred to as Universal Child Care, it likely is Universal Child Care. This is the easiest way to get a grasp on what exactly will constitute Universal Child Care.

The other term of note is “Guarantee”, which is defined by Cambridge Dictionary as “A promise that something will be done or will happen”1. The use of the term guarantee implies that there cannot be a risk of someone not receiving child care. This opens potential negative ground in regard to discussing certain implementation such as wait times or admission requirements (ex: potty training, language barriers), that may prevent the “guarantee” from being fully realized. This could also be a strong response to affirmative implementation models that argue for expanded subsidies, as someone could lose access to subsidies, be unable to afford care, and therefore, childcare is not guaranteed to them – there is a lot of literature on this.

Lastly, debaters should be prepared to engage with Pre-K as a valid argument on this topic. According to government classifications, preschool is considered a form of childcare, and the vast majority of topic literature fails to make a distinction between universal pre-k programs and universal childcare. This means affirmatives can specifically talk about preschool in an advantage/contention, or just use literature testing preschool as compelling evidence for the affirmative/negative.

Overall, while there are vastly different systems for implementing Universal Childcare, the core concept of UCC is that of a low-cost public service. If you take UCC as a more umbrella term/concept, as opposed to a very particular policy proposal, you’ll have an easier time finding literature on this topic and will focus on more substantial clash in the debate.

Researching The Resolution

Now that we have discussed what terms included in the resolution are and mean, it is important you know key terms while researching. Doing a quick Google search of a universal childcare will yield you some results. But, you can maximize your research output by including key terms that the literature base uses, including:

1 https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/guarantee 9 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

• Universal Childcare Care (UCC) • Child Care Assistance • Early Childhood Education (ECE) • Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) • Early Learning Programs (ELP) • Universal Pre-Kindergarten Program (VPK) or (UPK) • Center Based Child Care • Center Based Pre-School • Informal Child Care • Grey Market Care

This list is a really roundabout way of searching different ways that the literature base on this topic defines, characterizes or calls what we would generally universal childcare. Of course, what you search with these terms is entirely up to you!

Implementation

The implementation of a universal childcare system is one of the most discussed areas of the topic. In particular, many authors in favor of a UCC policy have highly specific proposals and mechanisms for enacting universal childcare. Similarly, many of those opposed to UCC are against the policy in large part because of issues with implementation that they believe are unavoidable.

There are a few universal childcare plans that debaters should be aware of. First, several political figures have put forth plans, including Senators Elizabeth Warren2, Patty Murray3, and Bernie Sanders4. Warren’s plan consists of utilizing existing childcare options, boosting pay for childcare workers, and providing free childcare for families under 200% of the poverty line. Many folks have critiqued this plan, however, stating that it is a targeted care system, and not universal, despite Warren calling it “Universal”. Murray’s plan focuses very specifically on the numbers. Her plan would cap fees at 7% for families under 150% of state median income. Families under 75% of the state median income would pay no fee. The bill Murray put forth (Child Care for Working Families Act) also specifies universal access to preschool programs for children ages 3-4. Sanders plan is entirely free and specifies both universal childcare as well as universal pre-kindergarten. His plan would provide a minimum of at least 10 hours a day work of childcare, build off existing federal childcare programs, be federally funded and locally

2 Elizabeth Warren’s Policy Proposal: https://medium.com/@teamwarren/my-plan-for-universal-child-care-762535e6c20a 3 Patty Murray’s Policy Proposal: https://www.murray.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/newsreleases?ContentRecord_id=49A24A0F- B7C7-4A0E-80D4-86F6E961AE8E 4 Bernie Sanders’ Policy Proposal: https://berniesanders.com/issues/free-child-care-and-pre-k-all/ 10 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

administered. Out of all three of the plans, it is clear that Senator Bernie Sanders plan is the closest to a full “universal” childcare system.

Beyond proposals presented by Senators, the two main policies that debaters should be aware of are Matt Bruenig’s “Family Fun Pack”5 and the Brookings Institute proposal presented by Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst6. Bruenig’s proposal consists of seven subsets ranging from free school lunches to parental leave. Of importance for debaters are the two sections regarding free childcare and universal pre-kindergarten. The proposal advocates that the federal government will fund the program through grants, and that local school districts will administer it. It is paid for via increased taxes (what Bruenig describes as “tax transfers”) on wealthier Americans. Additionally, parents can choose to receive a home childcare benefit paid through SSA. The proposal also establishes federally administered standards for childcare. The proposal presented by the Brookings Institute is an important policy for debaters to know, because it is one of the most prevalent papers on subsidization. Many negative debaters can argue that rather than implementing a potentially risky UCC system, the United States can instead bolster its existing subsidizations for needy working families. The Brookings Institute is an ideal proposal to begin reviewing for debaters interested in subsidization CP ground.

Outside of formalized policy proposals, there are a few ways in which debaters can argue that a universal childcare system (UCC) would be implemented. The first, and most prominent in the literature base, is a system similar to K-12 education. In fact, many authors directly advocate for localized childcare programs to be hosted in existing school facilities. In this mechanism, it would likely be administered locally but funded federally, with the government directly hiring on childcare employees and making the program free to the public (or a very small negligible fee to cover costs). Some authors advocate that the government directly create new facilities, which would also solve the issue of childcare deserts – where many American families simply don’t have access to decent quality and/or affordable childcare because there are no nearby facilities.

A less “hands on” approach to a universal childcare system would be a universalized tax credit/subsidization system. This allows families to utilize existing childcare structures and may offer more choice. There are a lot of logistical questions associated with approach to implementing UCC. On top of that, many authors in favor of a universal childcare system directly stand in opposition to subsidies, arguing they have intrinsic problems and don’t go far enough.

5 Matt Bruenig’s Policy Proposal: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/family-fun-pack/ 6 Brookings Institute Policy Proposal: https://www.brookings.edu/wp- content/uploads/2017/03/es_20170309_whitehurst_evidence_speaks3.pdf 11 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

In terms of implementation, debaters may also rehash the universal vs targeted debate that happens on almost any universal-policy topic (ex: UBI). I do believe that there is a very, very strong literature base for both sides. Dozens of authors have explicitly argued why universal is key and targeted doesn’t solve, and vice versa. If you are interested in understanding the arguments for both sides, I highly recommend reading a paper of the arguments presented in a debate over Universal Pre-School vs Targeted Pre-School between W. Steven Barnett and Bruce Fuller7 - it is included in the footnote on this page.

One of the other factors of this topic debaters should keep in mind is the distinction between formalized child care and informal child care systems, as well as how a UCC policy would affect both. Currently, unregulated care is the most common childcare arrangement in the United States.

Durana 2016 [Alieza Durana, Policy Analyst in the Better Life Lab at New America, October 3rd 2016, “Why Parents Are Being Forced to Find Childcare Underground”, The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/10/the-childcare-gray- market/502640/ ] /Triumph Debate

In the patchwork childcare system in the United States, regulated care is sometimes broken to the point of being dangerous for children. In Mississippi, state inspectors found one adult in a regulated day care watching 59 children, ages 1 to 4, in one room. The owner was fined $1,000. And if care can be that bad in a regulated setting, no one knows exactly how children fare in unregulated care. Other reports have found higher-than-expected infant death rates in both regulated and unregulated child care. What is clear is that this unregulated gray market is the most common childcare arrangement for all children under 5 in the nation, according to a 2011 report from the National Center for Children in Poverty.

All in all, there are various proposals for UCC, all with different percentages of income, requirements, funding mechanisms, and implementation. Debaters should be prepared to answer basic policy-oriented questions like how the program will be funded, will there be any minimal fees, who has access to the program, and how will it be implemented. The proposals I have outlined all do a great job at answering these questions.

History of Universal Childcare

Unlike the January/February 2021 LD topic, which centered on a military weapon that was still in its development stage – a lot of countries (and even states in the US) have implemented various forms of Universal Childcare. This makes for both a rich history of UCC, as well as a densely packed literature base with a litany of studies reviewing all of these countries’ programs and their success. While I will discuss a brief review of much of the history of universal childcare – both in the US and in other countries – because there is so much depth, it is important for debaters to do a significant amount of research on their own regarding countries that have implemented UCC.

7 https://www.air.org/sites/default/files/publications/Preschool%20Debate_0.pdf 12 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

First, let’s talk about the history of universal childcare in the United States. In the past, the United States has actually implemented some level of UCC. Specifically, during World War 2, the United States passed the Lanham Act, which provided affordable child care so mothers could work while their husbands fought the war. This act was both successful and popular.

Thier 2020 [Daphna Their, Brooklyn based activist and writer, December 27th 2020, “The US Government Can Provide Universal Childcare – It’s Done So in the Past”, Jacobin, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/12/universal-childcare-lanham-act-us-government ] / Triumph Debate

The United States distinguishes itself as one of the few wealthy countries in the world that does not have a robust public childcare program. But there’s no reason we can’t have one that’s wildly popular and provides high-quality care — in fact, during World War II, we did. Government funding of childcare is almost as popular in the United States as Tina Turner. A bipartisan majority of Americans believe that every child (and every parent), regardless of income, deserves high-quality preschool education. A whole swath of liberals have argued that the economy would benefit from greater numbers of mothers in the workforce, and by improving the employability of millions of children in the future. They’re right. The proof? It’s already been done. In 1942, the US government passed the Lanham Act. The law was designed to assist communities with water, housing, schools, and other local needs connected to industry expansion during the World War II war effort. One of those provisions was a universal childcare plan for any community that proved they had absent fathers and working mothers — the only instance in American history of a federally administered program that served children regardless of family income. The centers were required to meet very high standards. The teachers were well-trained and provided fully funded university-level education. They were well-compensated. The number of children per teacher was limited to ten, a number that is lower than the limit in many states today. Centers were clean. They had a clinic with a nurse and doctor for daily checkups before children entered the space. They offered meals. Center staff bought a mother’s grocery list while she worked to pick up at the end of the day. Center cafeteria workers prepared dinner for mothers to take home at night. The cost: around $3–4 a week ($50–60 in today’s money), or half the actual cost per child. The rest was covered by the government, which overall spent $1 billion on the program. At its peak, the Lanham Act provided for over 635 communities in every state but New Mexico, caring for over half a million children. And while some centers in this pre–Civil Rights Movement era inexcusably provided for white families only, some were desegregated, and an additional 269 centers accommodated black families only. In contrast to most other well-paid sectors at the time, women of color were hired as well. The program was discontinued in 1946 after only three years. The government argued that with the end of the war, women would leave the workforce and resume their traditional roles. They were wrong: women wanted (or needed) to stay working, and they required childcare to do so. The program was extended a full year after the war ended because of its popularity. As the New York Times reported at the time, protests across the country continued well into 1947 to try to save it. In some places, multiracial grassroots mobilizations and unions applied pressure and won some federal support for childcare, but failed to win a universal policy. In 1947, Ruth Pearson Kushok surveyed the developmental records of five hundred children who attended a federal center. And she interviewed parents and teachers to find out how successful they thought the Lanham centers were. She found that 80 percent of the children had made good or excellent progress physically, emotionally, socially, and mentally, according to the program’s metrics — and overwhelming approval rates among all participants. In fact, in one group she surveyed of 173 parents, 100 percent said that their children enjoyed the nursery. Parents and teachers especially noted that children learned to play better with each other. And, in contrast to the argument of the day that day care centers and working mothers would weaken family relationships, the program was found to have a net positive impact on home life and family relations. Imagine that: give people more resources to raise their children and earn a living, and everyone seems happier. A 2017 study in the Journal of Labor Economics by Chris Herbst found that the program had long-lasting positive outcomes, especially for poor families. Mothers who participated in the program were more likely to have improved their economic conditions. And people who participated in the program as children were found to have reached higher levels of education, had better employment opportunities, and had children later in life. Of course, after the war the program was cancelled, and despite numerous attempts at passing universal child care (the most notable being vetoed by President Nixon). Despite not currently having a federalized universal childcare program, UCC has remained fairly popular with Americans.

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Halpin Et al. 2020 [John Halpin, Karl Agne, and Nisha Jain, September 25th 2020, “What Do Voters Want on Child Care Ahead of the 2020 Elections?”, Center for American Progress, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early- childhood/reports/2020/09/25/490772/voters-want-child-care-ahead-2020-elections/ ] / Triumph Debate

Likewise, 61 percent of voters overall support a more far-reaching proposal for “universal free child care from birth to age 5, similar to public school,” including 80 percent of Democrats; 55 percent of independents; and 44 percent of Republicans

Aside from the Lanham Act, the United States has also implemented a targeted childcare policy known as the Head Start Program. It was created in 1965 and has since served almost 40 million children and families8. Head Start is a federally funded program that offers early learning (among other resources) to children between the ages 3 and 5 that are living in poverty. There is a lot of research on this topic that analyzed the effects and success of Head Start, so it is a very important program to be familiar with. Though it is not universal (because it specifically focuses on children in poverty), it is a federal childcare program that is quite broad in scope, and certainly is informative in the debate over UCC.

Outside of Lanham and Head Start, many states as well as cities in the United States have proposed or implemented versions of universal childcare. Some of these include North Carolina, that implemented the Abecedarian Project and a city in Michigan, Ypsilanti, that implemented The Perry Pre-school Project. Additional states that have implemented UCC policies (or tested the waters) includes Florida, New York, Oklahoma, Georgia, and more. Be sure to do a good amount of background research on what these programs looked like, who they service, and how successful they are, because they will be important to the debate.

Now that we have analyzed the history of universal childcare within the United States, it is important to discuss other countries and how they have implemented UCC. By far, the most common country you will see cited on this topic is Canada. In particular, a specific policy implemented in Quebec. It is one of the oldest policies to date, first introduced in 1996, so there is a lot of long-and-short-term research analyzing the effects of UCC on children and the economy. We have included much of that research in this brief.

Additionally, other countries that have implemented a universal childcare include Sweden, Norway, France, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Japan, Mexico, and many more. There are dozens of variations of how it is implemented, the degree to which enrollment exists varies, there are massive differences in both quality and requirements to enroll in the UCC program, and each country assess potential fees differently. But, because there is such a different in how each nation has implemented UCC, it also gives a really good idea of the different avenues an affirmative can advocate for a UCC system.

8 https://www.ffyf.org/a-brief-history-and-overview-of-the-head-start-program/ 14 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

A great resource for debaters interested in understanding a brief overview of the programs in many of these countries is a paper published in 2008 by UNICEF9. Even so, due to this being a US-specific topic, I find the history of UCC and various childcare programs in the United States of more importanc.

Overall, debaters should be informed about policies within the United States (locally, state- wide and federally) on the issue of universal childcare, as well as the programs implemented by other countries. Specifically knowing the details of when it occurred, how it was implemented, and the outcomes discovered via research are key. In either case, we have some reading recommendations:

• Williams, Conor P. “The History of the United States' Nearly-Universal Child Care Program.” New America, 24 Jan. 2014, www.newamerica.org/education- policy/edcentral/history-united-states-nearly-universal-child-care-program/. • Lewis, Jacqueline Hernandez. “This Is What Daycare Looks Like Around The World.” Working Mother, 9 Nov. 2017, www.workingmother.com/this-is-what-day-care-looks- like-around-world. • Kenny, Ciara. “Childcare around the World: How Other Countries Do It Better.” The Irish Times, 13 Sept. 2018, www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/childcare-around-the- world-how-other-countries-do-it-better-1.3626710.

Reading and analyzing these sources, among others, should give debaters a detailed understanding of the background of Universal Childcare.

Who Is The Actor & Who Is Affected?

The most obvious thing to note here is that the resolution specifically says “United States”. This phrasing denotes the United States as the actor. With the exception of perhaps some federalism/states CP ground, I believe the resolution is fairly straightforward in who the actor is, and who would be, ultimately, passing the policy of UCC. Specific agents are unlikely to be a fruitful area of exploration, because the literature tends to be consistent in federal funding (i.e. through congressional legislation), and local administration. Most authors tend to mirror an approach similar to K-12 education.

9 “The child care transition A league table of early childhood education and care in economically advanced countries”, https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc8_eng.pdf

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One thing to keep in mind is to be cautious of using a lot of evidence from other countries models. Of course, that evidence is statistically significant as well as compelling. But that doesn’t change that a lot of debaters may insist there are substantial differences in each nations’ market economy as well as education system that may influence how a UCC looks from, say, Norway to the United States. Because of this, one of the strongest approaches the affirmative can take, I believe, is diversifying the UCC systems your sources study. Preparing your positions to have multiple analyses from 4 different countries can make a more compelling case than coming really prepared to debate Canada’s UCC system, because you can point out consistent trends/results that exist regardless of which country implemented the childcare policy.

In terms of who is affected by the resolution, the answer is families, parents, and children. But, it also certainly affected the economy at large, childcare works and educators as a whole, and may more broadly affect any person who is considering becoming a parent, but who isn’t yet one, since a UCC system can reduce many of the challenges that may make a person reluctant to start a family. Because of this, debaters can talk about tons of different impact scenarios – from economic impacts, to structural violence. The scope of who this topic affects is so broad that it leaves the specific scenarios up to each individual debater.

Ground (And any potential skew…)

This topic, at first, can seem to be heavily skewed, in terms of topic literature distribution, towards the affirmative. I won’t lie, it is. There is a lot more research that promotes positive outcomes/benefits for Universal Childcare (or just childcare in general) than those who are against it. If you dig deep, and are strategic with your Google searches (i.e. use some of the recommended search terms above), then you will be able to find really solid negative evidence. This topic also has a ton of interesting ways to frame the debate that open up a ton of different impacts.

With that being said, there are some arguments that just simply are really strong for either side. Of course, the affirmative has a very solid claim to economic impacts and feminist literature. Surprisingly (and counter to what many may think), the debate over workforce participation actually has evidence on both sides. On the flip side, one of the most strongly argued for points in the negative topic literature base is regarding childcare harming child development. One author in particular, Michael Baker, has co-authored multiple studies on this issue. On top of that, debaters can argue for a targeted version of childcare, similar to what exists in the status quo (or a CP with specific improvements). In fact, I believe this topic has a lot of viable counterplan ground for the negative.

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One strategy for the negative to combat the initial literature-bias is to emphasize the quality of evidence in round. We have a specific piece of evidence in the negative portion of the brief that explains this argument. In short, the author explains how literature that seems to be anti- UCC typically has stronger research methodology and may be more compelling for that reason. This may be a strong way for debaters to explain in round to their judge why their evidence specifically is more accurate/reliable, when evidence debates inevitably arise.

Framing

As far as framing goes, this topic is amazing. There are numerous ways to set up framing to take advantage of the same impacts, and a lot of the strategy on this topic is going to be based in framing. Of course, you have your standard economic/welfare topic frameworks of utilitarianism, cost benefit analysis, libertarianism, structural violence, and so on. But you also gain access to framing specific to children such as ethics of care, some interesting Kantian works, and literature about the rights of children. There are also many cards discussing the best way to frame the debate around child care. I’ll go into a bit more detail of each side:

The affirmative has strong claims to economic framing. This is based on the topic literature and the arguments regarding GDP, increased workforce participation, higher employment, etc. The affirmative also likely has a fairly strong claim to utilitarian framing. This is, of course, based off the economic impacts, benefits to health, education, political participation, and more.

Besides the standard consequentialist arguments, the affirmative has the best claims to politics of recognition frame works, rights-based frame works, and republicanism. These framings function off of either the welfare benefits of UCC, or off the respect for the rights of children. You can also frame the rights argument through a parent’s right standpoint.

The negative can still access the consequential framing that the affirmative may try to use through generic disads/CPs. The negative can also attempt to hijack frameworks that focus on children first by arguing childcare is harmful to children. In addition, negative debaters also have a strong case for structural violence, through segregation and some other arguments mentioned in this brief.

Finally, the negative, of course, will have access to libertarianism and anti-welfare framing ground. There’s some literature out there that calls for the deregulation of childcare, or just leaving childcare up to each state to decide for themselves. This is certainly the most absolute/categorical framework for the negative on this topic.

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Regardless of what side you end up on, there are interesting ways to approach framing. I recommend reading up on Politics of Recognition, Libertarianism, Rights, Rawls, and Communitarianism for some more philosophy focused cases.

Conclusion

This analysis was a tad long, I understand, but we try to be thorough and provide one solid approach so debaters do not have to read a dozen essays to get a holistic view of the topic. In summary, I recommend doing a lot of deep research, strategically utilizing key search terms, coming prepared with your own definitions and interpretations, and recognizing (as well as appropriately accounting for) the potential literature skew that exists, and giving both sides the time necessary to produce good quality arguments. Often times, debaters will actually under-prep the side of the resolution that comes more naturally, because they’re more focused on strengthening their more difficult positions. Be aware of this common issue, and don’t fall into this trap. Take the time to develop strong positions on both sides – and I hope that the evidence presented in this brief helps get you started in doing so.

Lastly, if you have any questions about the evidence presented in this brief, or about our topic analysis, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] and we would be happy to discuss further. Good luck and happy debating!

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Framing

Child Care Is A Common Good

Haspel 2019 [Elliot Haspel, Former teacher and author of “Crawling Behind: Americas Childcare Crisis and How to Fix it.”, October 30th 2019, ““Affordable” Child Care Is a Failure of Imagination”, The Soapbox, https://newrepublic.com/article/155536/democrats-affordable-child-care-plans ] /Triumph Debate

This is not an imaginary situation; it’s a reality for many families today, because child care is not a right. Yet even as this crisis has become national news, and Democratic candidates for president are offering competing solutions, the conversation still suffers from a lack of imagination. Even the boldest plans to address the problem don’t acknowledge what’s obvious to many Americans: Child care should not be simply “affordable.” It should be free and universal—a common good just like K-12 schooling. The difference between a common good and a public assistance program is the difference between the nearly $700 billion a year America spends on universal K-12 education and the roughly $10 billion a year America spends on subsidizing child care for lower-income families (and still only reaching less than 15 percent of that population). Common goods—public schools, fire departments, roads, national defense—are those items which are so socially beneficial we don’t make the end user pay a dollar beyond their taxes. They are, instead, worthy recipients of what Thomas Jefferson called the “common expense.” While recent proposals like the Child Care For Working Families Act and those put forth by candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Julian Castro are welcome, they all implicitly keep child care in the realm of public assistance. These proposals utilize the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ line of 7 percent of family income to define “affordable” child care (albeit with a sliding scale, so some lower-income families would pay nothing). Yet no one pays a maximum of 7 percent of their income to send their child to fourth grade, nor are there sliding scale fees for getting the fire department to come to one’s house. Accepting the premise that child care is ultimately a private burden keeps the sector stuck where it’s been for far too long—in what historian Sonya Michel calls “the shadows of charity.” It’s perhaps understandable why child care was not considered a common good a half-century ago, when more than half of mothers didn’t work. But today, two-thirds of children have all available parents in the workforce, meaning they require some amount of outside care. For all but the most affluent, modern families cannot sustainably absorb the costs of care without major disruption to their ability to contribute economically. Our grasp of early childhood development has taken a quantum leap, and we now know the extent to which brain development is influenced by high-quality early experiences as well as family financial stability. Most importantly, our society’s ideas about mothers getting to choose whether they work outside the home—though still a source of ambivalence—have undeniably evolved. While some may caution a stepwise approach, the philosophical shift in the way we talk and think about the birth-to-five years is a necessary precursor to any major policy moves. Last year’s doubling of federal subsidization of child care was hailed as historic, which is true, yet that increase was a mere $5.8 billion over two years. What’s more, being a public assistance program leads to hard-fought gains becoming precarious; already, there’s concern that the increased federal funding may be clawed back by the Senate. The type of public money required to craft a universal, free, high-quality early childhood system—one that pays practitioners middle-class salaries and also compensates stay-at-home parents—is going to run in the hundreds of billions per year. As a question of funding charity or welfare, that figure sounds absurd. As a question of funding a common good akin to K-12 education, the absurdity is that we spend a dismal fraction on the childhood years that may matter the most for educational outcomes. (The universality of this child care proposal is critical: Even though the wealthy benefit from services they could easily afford, the lack of a means test is the engine of a common good.) There is plenty to debate regarding the best design for America’s child care system. Early childhood is a developmentally distinct period from middle childhood and adolescence, and research is clear that the setting in which early care is delivered matters far less than the quality of caregiver-child interactions. There are no easy answers in a sector where care is variously delivered by parents, relatives, home-based providers, religious providers, center-based providers, and school districts, to say nothing of state and federal programs and regulations. The question of how to pay for a new right to early care and education also looms large. There’s no lack of progressive options on the table, ranging from Warren’s wealth tax to a financial transaction tax to taxing corporations. Whatever the right mix of revenue streams, the larger point is that when America decides something is a common good, we find the funding. What’s more, places from Quebec to Washington, D.C. have shown that policies similar to universal child care have a near-immediate return on investment due to spikes in parental employment.

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Childcare Should Be Viewed As A Right – Current Cost Benefit View Alienates Low Income Children

Polakow 2011 [Valerie Polakow, Eastern Michigan University, 2011, “Child Poverty, Child Care, and Children’s Rights”, http://www.newbooks-services.de/MediaFiles/Texts/2/9789400705692_Excerpt_002.pdf ] /Triumph Debate The dominant discourse in the United States about early childhood education is instrumentalist, constructing poor young children as “at-risk”—for educational failure, for later teen pregnancy, and/or criminality and violence, with ultimate costs to the nation. The prevailing arguments for early intervention are embedded in deficit, racialized assumptions about poor families and premised on a cost-benefit analysis of why investing now pays dividends in the future. Heckman and the Committee for Economic Development argue for a redirection of educational investments from public schools (which are already underfunded) to early childhood to redress the assumed “constellation of pathologies” in poor children’s homes, calculating that early intervention provides better long-term returns (Heckman and Masterov 2004, p. 17). However, this instrumentalist, “invest-now-or-pay-later” discourse obscures a language of rights, and constructs children as the sometime “deserving poor” focusing on the family as the dominant risk-inducing system; whereas poverty, itself, should be seen as a systemic pathology that corrodes family viability. Means-tested and segregated early childhood intervention programs construct poor, young children and their parents as post-modern beggars; such programs are also the first to be cut or eliminated when deficits loom large and when there is competition for scarce resources. Reframing persistent child poverty and the absence of child care in terms of human rights violations, and anchoring social policy in the frameworks of international conventions, creates another plane for the discourse about children’s lives and their rights. If we view children as possessing fundamental rights to care and education that are grounded in international conventions, then it becomes an affirmative obligation of government to address child poverty alleviation and the provision of universal child care (Davis and Powell 2003; Polakow 2007).

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Childcare Is A Human Right Rooted In International Conventions

Polakow 2011 [Valerie Polakow, Eastern Michigan University, 2011, “Child Poverty, Child Care, and Children’s Rights”, http://www.newbooks-services.de/MediaFiles/Texts/2/9789400705692_Excerpt_002.pdf ] /Triumph Debate

The International Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC 1989) was adopted in 1989 and has been ratified by 194 countries; yet the United States has not joined the community of nations in affirming children’s human rights. In the CRC children, for the first time, are recognized as “rights bearers,” as citizens and as social actors (Kilbourne 1999). The CRC addresses children’s rights to receive care and protection, and the promotion of their best interests for “full and harmonious development.” Article 18 emphasizes that State Parties must provide “appropriate assistance to parents…” and take “all appropriate measures to ensure that children of working parents have the right to benefit from child-care services.” Other key articles of the CRC affirm children’s economic, social, and cultural rights (Article 4), the establishment of institutions, facilities, and social programs for support of children (Articles 18 and 19), rights and access to services for disabled children (Article 23), access to and quality of health care (Article 24), and rights to social insurance and social security (Article 26). The CRC in affirming children’s inherent rights to social citizenship, and emphasizing the special interests and needs of children and their working parents closely aligns with Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which emphasizes that “Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, Article 2). While Eleanor Roosevelt was a key figure in promoting the establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we, in the United States, now routinely violate its key precepts in relation to the health, welfare, and child care of young children. Other international conventions such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discriminations against Women (CEDAW), which has been ratified by 169 countries excluding the United States, affirm the rights of women to work, to maternity leave, and to child care. The 27 countries of the European Union have not only committed to combating child poverty and social exclusion by expanding child care and paid maternity and parental provisions, but have also promoted wage guarantees and flexible working patterns (European Commission 2004). Child care is viewed as a human right and poverty and social exclusion are viewed as clear violations of children’s human rights. European Commissioner Franco Frattini, speaking at the Second European Forum on the Rights of the Child, urged member countries to commit further resources to poverty alleviation and the care of children, stating “It is a violation of fundamental rights when children are denied food, or housing, or education” (Frattini 2008). Yet children’s rights are not even part of the growing conversation about early childhood education in the United States, and, as Kamerman points out, the absence of paid parental leave and universal child care “exists in dramatic contrast to the policies that exist around the world and especially in our peer countries” (Kamerman 2000, p. 13). In Europe, the CRC forms the basis for social policy formation about children’s welfare, well-being, education, and child care. Such rights are embedded in a notion of public care and public responsibility that supports children’s human capabilities and makes possible the fundamental prerequisites for early growth and development and participation in child life in a modern democracy.

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Fair Equality of Opportunity Requires Universal Child Care

Freeman 2020 [Samuel Freeman, Avalon Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Philosophy and Law, PHD Harvard University, 2020, “Replies to Critics”, Luiss University Press, http://fqp.luiss.it/files/2020/09/PPI_01_2020.-7.-Samuel- Freeman_Replies-to-Critics.pdf ] /Triumph Debate

Rawls is also clear that the just savings principle conditions the social minimum required by the difference principle, (TJ 266 rev.) as apparently does the duty of assistance of burdened peoples (LP 106-113). But Kaufman puts his greatest emphasis on the principle of fair equality of opportunity (FEO) as a distributive principle of justice. Kaufman, like Scanlon and others (including myself in chapter 3) contend that: given that FEO aims to even out the effects of the social class individuals are born into, then in order to give those born with similar natural talents the same chances of education and culture and to compete for social and economic positions (TJ 245 rev.), FEO requires fair distribution of not simply educational and job training resources throughout citizens’ careers, but also prenatal care, universal child care and development benefits to less advantaged families; a universal health care system, and other resources, to enable all citizens to develop and exercise their capacities so that they can take fair advantage of the educational, employment and cultural opportunities available to them throughout their lifetimes.I agree with all this, as I think chapters 3-4 and elsewhere in my book make clear.87 Kaufman’s striking thesis however is that these requirements of the fair equal opportunity principle are so substantial that they significantly delimit the difference principle’s role in the ultimate determination of the fair distribution of income and wealth in a democratic society. This is where Kaufman distinguishes his position from mine. He contends that I overemphasize the role of the difference principle, and underestimate the significant distributive requirements of the basic-needs principle and fair equality of opportunity. As Kaufman says: Freeman in some instances treats the requirements of a social minimum and fair equality of opportunity as mere preconditions to the application of the difference principle to questions of justice. To the extent that he isolates his analysis of the institutional requirements of the difference principle from his discussion of the other two requirements of distributive justice, Freeman slights the integrated character of Rawls’s approach to reasoning about justice. In addition, I will argue, Freeman underestimates the scope of the requirements of fair equality of opportunity (Kaufman 2020, 109). Later Kaufman says that, though I endorse the many requirements of fair equality of opportunity, still I regard is as merely a supplement to the difference principle. By contrast, Kaufman says of the fair equality of opportunity principle: “This principle does not set out requirements of justice supplementary to the difference principle. Rather the equal opportunity principle sets out the primary requirements of distributive justice in institutions.” Here I disagree. Fair equality of opportunity gains a secure footing only once the economic system required by the difference principle is determined and in place.

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Universal Childcare Promotes Parental Autonomy And Choice

Chaudry et al 2011 [Ajay Chaudry, Juan Manuel Pedroza, Heather Sandstrom, Anna Danziger, Michel Grosz, Molly Scott, Sarah Ting, January 2011, “Child Care Choices of Low-Income Working Families”, The Urban Institute, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED578676.pdf ] /Triumph Debate

Our goal in this chapter was to examine what factors most directly influence parents’ decisions regarding the child care they select for their children. Looking at the current care arrangements of 86 families, and exploring with them how and why they made these care arrangements, this chapter identifies what parents’ preferences for child care were and what key factors most influenced their care decisions. It was possible to explore and describe with qualitative detail the parents’ decision making process for their child care choices, as well as what parents thought about their care choices, and the constraints they face in making care arrangements. The findings reveal some of the complexities that low-income working families face when arranging care for their young children that meets both their needs and their preferences. Parents generally viewed child care as an opportunity for children to learn and socialize with peers, and they considered the best providers those who were caring and trustworthy and who spoke their language. Over a third of parents preferred having a family member provide child care—often because they did not trust anyone outside the family with their children or thought a relative could provide better care than a stranger. In other cases, families discussed the importance of having convenient and affordable care, with an ideal arrangement being close to work or home and either free or subsidized. In addition to language, the theme of culture was quite evident, such that families desired a caregiver who shared their culture and who provided cultural-specific food for their children. Some parents also preferred small group sizes with children separated by ages as well as providers who served children of multiple ages. In this chapter, we integrate analysis of what factors most influenced parents’ decisions when arranging their current care with what parents stated as their preferences for child care choices. This integration offers important new insights and depth to the existing understanding of child care decision making. Many families selected arrangements that aligned with their preferences, but others faced barriers in the affordability of care, accessibility to transportation, availability of care hours, and flexibility in relation to their work schedules. Parents’ stated preferences for child care were not always apparent in their choices for care, and the care characteristics described as most important were not always strong factors in parents’ decisions. Most significant, opportunities for learning were very important to parents, yet the presence of learning activities was a secondary factor in their actual care decisions, typically considered after the cost, schedule, and flexibility of the provider. This discrepancy highlights the complexity of understanding the child care choices of low-income working families, which are often ultimately shaped by a narrow set of factors applied to an often narrower set of available options because of the contexts in which they make their care decisions. The contexts for child care decisions will be discussed in further detail in the subsequent two chapters. We will then discuss these factors in relation to the decision making process for specific subpopulations of interest, such as immigrant families, English language learners, and families with children with special needs.

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Universal Child Care Is Key To Recognition And Rights In A Democracy

Michel 2000 [Sonya Michel, Professor at University of Maryland and taught at Brown, Harvard, Brandeis, Princeton, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at Chicago, where she was Director of the Gender and Women's Studies Program, 2000, “Children’s Interests/Mothers’ Rights: The Shaping of America’s Child Care Policy”, Yale University Press, https://www.amazon.com/Childrens-Interests-Mothers-Rights-America%60s/dp/0300085516 ] /Triumph Debate

In the United States today, most mothers of preschool and school-age children are gainfully employed. 1 Yet the nation has no comprehensive system of child care. Unlike many other democratic market societies, it has failed to develop universal, state- sponsored child care provisions. 2 Children from poor and low-income families are currently eligible for a limited number of federally subsidized child care slots, whereas middle- and upper-income families can take advantage of indirect support in the form of tax write-offs or pretax rebates for child care expenses. One purpose of this book is to discover why the United States has this peculiar distinction. That is, why, despite a long history of mothers entering the workforce accompanied by an equally long history of public concern over the welfare of children, does universal child care, organized and supported by the government, remain an elusive social good in the United States? In societies where universal child care has been established, it tends to neutralize the discriminatory effect of motherhood on women, enabling them to pursue education and training and enter the labor force on a (relatively) equal footing with men, whether or not they have children. 3 Access to child care affords women a degree of economic independence that in turns empowers them within households and families or gives them the option of setting up households on their own. 4 It also assures them that their children are receiving adequate care, protection, and developmental encouragement. For women in such societies, child care might be said to constitute part of what political theorist T. H. Marshall called “social citizenship”. Marshall introduced this term in his famous 1950 essay “Citizenship and Social Class’. 5 In market-based democracies, he pointed out, wage earning is essential if individuals are to avail themselves of their full political and civil rights; those who have only restricted access to economic participation are implicitly denied a portion of their rights as citizens. In her gloss of Marshall, political theorist Carole Pateman explains, “Citizens thrown into poverty lack both the means for self- respect and the means to be recognized by fellow citizens as of equal worth to themselves, a recognition basic to democracy. Poverty-stricken individuals are not andunless the outcome of participation in the market I offset in some way, cannot befull citizens”. 6 The purpose of the modern welfare state is, in Marshall’s view, to compensate for the inequalities of the market by providing the resources for social participation. 7 Marshall did not have women in mind when he traced the evolution of modern citizenship and the emergence of the welfare state’ his economically disenfranchised citizen, though “genderless,” was implicitly figured as male. Thus Marshall did not consider the sorts of resources a female worker might need to achieve equality. 8 As Pateman and other feminist theorists have argued, the key to women’s disadvantaged position in liberal polities and market economies lies in their cultural and social assignment to the family, specifically to the role of mother. Whether or not women actually become mothers, “compulsory motherhood,” to vary the phrase by poet Adrienne Rich, 10 affects the way they are perceived and channeled within the employment market. Women either are or will become mothers (neither single women nor lesbians are exempt from this expectation any longer), and once they have children, they will, presumably, take primary responsibility for nurturing and rearing them. Unless adequate alternatives for a mother’s care can be provided (for few women want to abandon the role entirely), women who are mothers cannot embark on educational or training programs or look for jobs, much less compete equally with men, even those who are fathers. To ensure equal citizenship, social rights for women must, therefore, take into account their assignment to motherhood.

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The Kantian State Would Provide UCC – The State Must Provide Services For Those Incapable Of Maintaining Themselves, Including Children

Ramaswamy 2018 [Kavana Ramaswamy, Assistant Professor at Jindal Global Law School, 2018, “The Right to Education: An Analysis through the Lens of the Deontological Method of Immanuel Kant”, Northwestern Journal of Human Rights, https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1210&context=njihr ] /Triumph Debate

Kant, in his various works on state and right, provides a model of childcare, which may be used to determine a system for the right to education within the regime of the categorical imperatives.68 According to Kant, children are brought into this world by their parents without their consent, placing the primary responsibility of care of children upon their parents.69 They therefore, “incur the obligation to make the child content with his condition so far as they can.” 70 The duty imposed is absolute and would not violate any of the imperatives primarily because the original choice to procreate was (assumedly) a voluntary decision made in the exercise of one’s natural autonomy.. Despite the comparisons to property that Kant later draws to the children to elucidate the manner of rights available to parents in relation to their children, Kant explicitly states that the children themselves cannot be abandoned to luck or fate by their parents simply because they are in the unique position of being right-holders themselves despite their previous non-existence. The circumstance of being human entitles them to an equal claim to the rights derived from the categorical imperatives.71 Later on in the discourse, Kant describes the rights of parents in respect of the child corresponding with the duty of care imposed upon them: they have the right to educate the child in the manner that they deem fit for the purposes of the child’s development, with the caveat that this be aimed minimally at ensuring the capacity of the children to eventually look after themselves.72 Varden, in her analysis of the model proposed by Kant for the purposes of childcare, draws comparisons between the child in the childcare model and people in need of aid due to their incapacity to care for themselves in order to support the idea that the Kantian system may be compatible with a limited ethics of care model without actually destroying its foundation on individual autonomy.73 Varden posits that if such caregiver models are actual contracts entered into by consenting adults with no regulation whatsoever, it would be tantamount to a master-slave relationship.74 The care-receiver contracts away decision-making to the caregiver.75 Due to the assumed incapacity of the care-receivers, they become bound to accept whatever decision the caregiver makes for them. Varden argues that such an absolute submission of will is intuitively against the liberal ideology otherwise espoused in the Kantian regime.76 Here, the state’s role in regulating and enforcing such fiduciary relationships provides the necessary limitation: the care-giver cannot be arbitrary in decisions made that affect the person cared for and must take actions only in the best interests of the care-receiver.77 Where a state regulates such fiduciary relationships, and is effective in enforcing good faith therein, Varden argues, the nature of these contracts is no longer slavish and unacceptable.78 This is the basis of justifying the establishment of a public authority to regulate the way care is provided to individuals who require it. Moving on, while the State is required to ensure good faith in childcare, the primary responsibility of it, as mentioned earlier, rests with the parents.79 One may assume that indulging in the act of procreation when one does not have the funds to care for the child and raise the child until the child can take care of itself could be equivalent to borrowing a sum of money on the false promise that the debt can be repaid.80 While borrowing with no intention to repay the debt, per Kant, is against the categorical imperatives,81 there remains the problem of persons who, due to unforeseen circumstances become incapable of taking care of children that they have brought into the world. This could also be stretched to include those who are incapable of taking care of themselves because of unforeseen circumstances and therefore, require either the help of voluntary philanthropists or the help of a state that taxes individuals to provide for these situations.82 Furthermore, even if parents who procreate, knowing that they do not have the means of fulfilling their obligations of childcare, are to be held responsible for the same does not solve the problem of there being children who have been brought to the world without their consent and are incapable of looking after or raising themselves.83 Since the private philanthropist model works solely on voluntary acts or contributions toward the cause, there may or may not be sufficient funds or manpower to cover the total costs of childcare for every child without access to care and education. Universalizing the maxim of the act of not providing for such children would violate the fourth categorical imperative as far as the children are concerned– the autonomy of their will has been violated since they have not consented to their own existence and are nevertheless forced to attempt survival (considering suicide to alleviate one of one’s painful circumstances was forbidden in the first place) with neither the means nor the knowledge of how to survive in society. While the establishment of the authority to govern private care relations has already been justified in this paper, the role of such an authority thus far has been primarily regulatory. It is required to ensure that private contracts for care are not abused. There has been no argument for the establishment of a publicly funded or maintained care system to provide care to those who cannot afford it. The establishment of relations of fiduciary care, where such relations do not already exist or are not freely contracted into by the individual agents themselves is not yet accounted for. Libertarianism abhors the creation of such relationships: it states that caregivers should not be required to bear personal responsibility for the circumstances of those in need of care by the state.84 Thus, the problem of there being people in need of care due to no fault of their own simultaneously with there being no people who personally owe such a duty of care to them remains to be addressed. An analysis of the role of the State in the Kantian framework can provide the necessary theoretical justifications for these obligations being imposed upon the State. In Kant’s theories, the ideal state is largely envisaged as a regulator of human behaviour limited to the bare extent necessary to preserve personal autonomy and private 25 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

transactions. For Kant, the state is the ultimate arbiter of human actions and makes regulations in accordance with the categorical imperatives and enforces prohibitions against acts that are contrary to the dictates of the imperatives.85 Since the imperatives themselves are largely liberal in their ideology, the state conceived in this form is also similarly focused on maximizing the available autonomy for every individual on an equal basis – Kant rejects the idea of a paternalistic state as being extremely despotic in its treatment of all its subjects as children as opposed to moral agents with the ability to reason and the autonomous right to act thereupon. The state, in Kant’s conceptualization, is as much a moral agent as an individual.86 In such a scenario, the state (and all its agents acting under its authority) would also be bound by the categorical imperatives. It would be counterintuitive if the imperatives were to be followed by all individuals but could be bypassed by agents of a state. Such agents are ultimately individuals themselves. The primary aim of every state is to pursue its own wellbeing. The “well-being” of a state here is not so much the welfare and happiness of its citizens, but a self-sustaining status or region of a constituted community where the principles of right are fully respected and maintained among the populace in accordance with the categorical imperatives.87 This supports the idea that a state, as an entity that seeks to sustain itself, may be considered a moral agent. In pursuit of these objectives, the state is fully entitled to tax citizens (in the form of taxes on ownership of land, excise or trade duties and in the form of mandatory services such as conscription) under the Kantian framework.88 The only condition on such an imposition of by the state is that the taxes are imposed by the people or those deputized by the people in order to ensure compliance with the second imperative.89 When the people are considered to be taxing themselves, the nature of the act of paying taxes to fund the activities of the state may be considered to be voluntary. The principle here is quite straightforward: the state provides services that enable the exercise of individual freedom and autonomy and facilitate private trade (through the regulation of private transactions by enforcing contracts, for instance, or by providing the conditions under which trade (both within the community and with other states) is safe and unhindered), but these functions require resources that are to be rendered by those benefited in a civil society. Taxation for the purposes of facilitating care or welfare options for persons unable to care for themselves, on the other hand, is a little more problematic. Here, the people taxed are not necessarily those who are to benefit from the regime: if a person has enough resources to pay taxes to a state, the same resources could be used to fund self-care. The only people who require the state to fund their care are those who have so little in terms of resources that requiring them to pay taxes would be futile. Thus, the people taxed in such a scheme are necessarily those who do not (or may not) directly benefit from the services provided from the funds raised. While it is true that the taxation may serve as a form of insurance against future contingencies that the taxpayer may face (the state would then cover for the needs of the person under such circumstances), it is quite possible that such a contingency never actually arrives and the taxpayer never receives a direct benefit from the proceeds forwarded for the purposes of state-funded welfare schemes. There is no motivation then, for such a taxpayer (comfortable in the availability of private resources to cover for contingencies) to submit to or endorse a taxation scheme that funds public welfare schemes. Varden again suggests a solution from within the Kantian framework: the nature of the Kantian state as a maintainer of individual freedom would be self- contradictory if the social, economic and political system of the state allowed for the creation of individuals incapable of exercising their freedom to the same extent as others in the system owing to no fault or choice of their own.90 While the categorical imperatives aim to maintain autonomy and restrict undue interference, an incapacity to maintain oneself creates a different sort of problem: the autonomy of a person has been interfered with despite there being no direct agent for such interference.91 However, the state is charged with the duty to prevent any form of interference in autonomy, as opposed to just preventing interference by individual actors. On the nature of the state’s obligation, Varden states: Kant’s basic claim is that, once the state establishes its monopoly on coercion, it must reconcile this monopoly with each citizen’s right to freedom. To accomplish this, it must establish certain public, systemic measures that ensure that all citizens’ freedom is subject to public law and not to each other’s arbitrary private choices…. In so doing, the state ensures that private dependency relations inconsistent with each citizen’s innate right to freedom do not arise…. the state must ensure that the larger systems within which people exercise their private rights, such as the economy, the financial systems, the educational system and the healthcare system, are reconcilable with each citizen’s right to freedom… For example, each citizen’s freedom and equality is inconsistent with conditions in which poor persons’ legal access to means is fundamentally dependent upon rich persons’ choices to hire them or to help them with charity.92 Varden asserts that the duty arises due to the exercise of coercion.93 Coercion is implicitly an interference in autonomy. Anyone exercising any form of coercion would be responsible here. If the state has a monopoly on coercion, the state bears a high level of responsibility towards those who have been coerced. Like the example of poor people’s access to means, one could draw a similar parallel with the right of children to access education; indeed, the right of children is probably more justifiable given their innate incapacity to act as independent moral agents. Both due to their incomplete knowledge of the world’s inner-workings and their incomplete development into their full potential (both in terms of mental and physical faculties), children cannot be prima facie assumed to be able to look after their own needs and therefore, must be provided for by the state to become fully independent moral agents of their own accord. To this end, the education of these children is an inherent part of the duties owed to children. Furthermore, where adults have not been provided with the opportunity to enjoy their rights to autonomy in the same manner as everyone else due to their not having received any formal education, the state would be duty bound to provide opportunities for such adults to avail of an equivalent education and therefore attain a more equitable access to the enjoyment of their autonomy. Taking this one step further, there are different levels at which children may be provided for by their parents. It is possible that the children of those less capable of providing for them could be considered in a similar bracket as those whose parents are entirely incapable of doing so, for the purposes of determining the obligation of the state to provide childcare. Thus, the obligation of the state would extend to ensuring parity in the quality of education

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received by people, in addition to securing the right to education for those deprived of access. 94 While this reasoning justifies a state’s provision of welfare services, taxation of citizens unaffected by the needs of care-receivers thus far, can only be justified as a corollary to the state’s obligation to provide welfare. The argument may be summarized as such: Those incapable of maintaining themselves have an inherent right to receive welfare from the state. The state is, therefore, obligated to provide these services. The state requires a source of funding for the services provided. Those receiving it are ipso facto unable to fund the state for the services provided and ergo, the state will necessarily have to tax other people for the provision of these services.

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Less Government Intervention (Deregulation) Solves For Childcare – State Raises Costs And Oversteps

Weissmann 2020 [Shoshana Weissmann, Senior manager of digital media and policy fellow at the R Street Institute, May 24th 2020, “It’s Going To Be Hard Enough To Get Kids Back to Day Care After COVID-19”, Reason, https://reason.com/2020/05/24/its-going-to-be-hard-enough-to-get-kids-back-to-day-care-after-covid-19/ ] /Triumph Debate

Senseless regulations can reach even further into home-based businesses, preventing people from working from home even when doing so has no impact on the neighborhood. The most absurd case might be the Georgia blogger who was shut down for uploading YouTube videos from his house, but there are plenty of other examples. Many localities prevent salons from operating out of their homes, while many state licensing laws prevent cosmetologists from practicing in the client's home (or almost anywhere outside of a salon). This may have made sense during the coronavirus lockdowns, but as businesses reopen it makes no sense to maintain such rules. Indeed, allowing more people to work from home will give businesses and workers more flexibility during the reopening—and will be valuable for the many people who continue to socially distance themselves for health reasons. Those restrictions on supply will surely raise the cost of child care, exacerbating trends that were already underway before the COVID-19 pandemic. As of 2018, a study from the Economic Policy Institute put the average cost of day care in D.C. at $24,243 per infant each year. Despite those already staggering numbers, the nation's capital decided to require college degrees for day care workers, increasing costs further. Those considering more informal arrangements had to tread carefully: D.C. has been known to crack down on large, semi-formal playdate groups. Day care regulations don't always make sense. It's crucial to keep kids safe, of course, but some jurisdictions impose rules that have little or no rational connection to safety. Wisconsin, for example, imposes more than 400 requirements on licensed family child care providers, some of them as trivial as ensuring children not use "trampolines and inflatable bounce surfaces." Oklahoma's mandates specify the number of puppets that must be available per child. Is it any wonder that the number of small family child care providers declined by 35 percent from 2011 to 2017? Such vague and strange regulations hardly make the trade enticing, especially when child care providers already earn so little. Senseless regulations can reach even further into home-based businesses, preventing people from working from home even when doing so has no impact on the neighborhood. The most absurd case might be the Georgia blogger who was shut down for uploading YouTube videos from his house, but there are plenty of other examples. Many localities prevent salons from operating out of their homes, while many state licensing laws prevent cosmetologists from practicing in the client's home (or almost anywhere outside of a salon). This may have made sense during the coronavirus lockdowns, but as businesses reopen it makes no sense to maintain such rules. Indeed, allowing more people to work from home will give businesses and workers more flexibility during the reopening—and will be valuable for the many people who continue to socially distance themselves for health reasons.

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Economic Framing Is The Best Way To Evaluate Childcare Policy

Warner & Prentice 2012 [Mildred E. Warner Cornell University and Susan Prentice University of Manitoba, July 2nd 2012, “Regional Economic Development and Child Care: Toward Social Rights”, Journal of Urban Affairs, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9906.2012.00622.x ] /Triumph Debate

Historically, child care advocacy was rooted in charity and benevolence, then later in women’s rights organizing. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, arguments appealed to women’s and children’s interests and needs (Michel, 1999), yet the frame for child care today is changing. The economic case is now a key driver (Friendly, 2006) and is reshaping the field of child care policy and advocacy, one of the signals of how much “ideas matter” when it comes to early learning and care (White, 2002). Today, advocates in both the United States and Canada are promoting early care and education services as economic development, often in alliances with business leaders (Coffey, 2003; Committee for Economic Development, 2006; Warner, 2006). This new frame is very similar to what Peter Hall calls a policy paradigm—namely an overarching set of ideas that specify how the problems are to be perceived, which goals might be attained through policy and what sorts of techniques can be used to reach those goals (Hall, 1993). The economic frame foregrounds the contributions that the child care sector can make to local economic development, as well as the costs to a local economy when services are underdeveloped. The economic frame not only diagnoses the problem, it also implies solutions—economic development policy tools. The economic paradigm marks an important new approach and refocusing of child care promoters. The language of social movements matters; when movements alter their discourse, analysts from linguistics to political science recognize this as significant. Political change actors make choices about how they “speak about” their issues, and these choices are consequential (Lakoff, 2004; Lakoff & Grady, 1998; Snow & Benford, 1992). Social movements attempt to create as well as respond to political opportunities, and we propose this is the context in which to understand the rise of economic-based arguments and organizing on behalf of child care services. In positioning child care in an economic frame and creating business alliances based on economic logic, child care campaigns are deploying new discursive and organizational tools (Adriance, Marshall, Markeson, Stoney, & Warner, 2009; Prentice, 2009; Warner, 2009). New tools include regional economic impact analysis, cost–benefit analysis, and return on investment. Similar economic development logics and tools have been used to promote investment in historic preservation (Listokin, Listokin, & Lahr 1998), immigrant incorporation (Myers, 2007), and local environmental management (Svara, Read, & Moulder, 2011). This approach is also reflected in the new social impact bond initiative in the United States and the United Kingdom (Liebman, 2001). The core idea is that investment in social programs saves money in the long term and these savings can attract private sector investment and support. The power of social movements depends in great part on their ability to broadcast their message in resonant terms. Hobson & Lindholm (1997, p. 483) claim that how groups convert their issues into policies is “a narrative about the politics of recognition.” Recognizable narratives rely on frames that ring true to constituents, antagonists, and bystanders or observers (Snow & Benford, 1992, p. 136). In the case of child care, actors today anchor their campaigns in the authority of economic evidence and the business case (Adriance et al., 2009). The movement strategically draws on a discourse that conforms to the key priorities of the liberal welfare state, namely the imperative of economic growth (Nagle & Terrell, 2005; Pratt & Kay, 2006; Shellenback, 2004). This frame tying economics and child care is both cause and consequence of new logics, new partnerships, and new strategic uses of research (Warner, 2006;White, 2004). As we show later, the economic frame, as both discourse and practice, creates new political opportunities to shift policy.

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Debate Of UCC Should Be Grounded In A Shared Conception Of Good Society, Not Utilitarian Calculus

Doron & Tinker 2012 [Natan Doron & Robert Tinker, Researchers at the Fabian Society, October 2012, “Childcare: winning the public argument”, The Fabian Society – Fabiana, https://fabians.org.uk/childcare-winning-the-public- argument/ ] /Triumph Debate

Conscious of the need to revive this current, a number of arguments in support of expanded childcare provision have been made in recent years. Among the strongest, a widely cited report by the IPPR demonstrated that the returns to the exchequer of implementing a free universal childcare policy could be considerable. According to this view – widely held in Labour circles – that is precisely the policy a credible centre-left programme should encompass during a period of budgetary tightening: one that combines a strong sense of justice with fiscal realism. Similarly, perhaps in attempt to rescue David Cameron’s promise to lead the most family friendly government in Europe, the coalition too has established its own commission on childcare. Defenders of equal life chances and gender equality should be heartened by the political debate on childcare – but where is the public in this? The question is a pertinent one if we hope to see state investment in childcare grow. Recent polling by the Fabian Society indicates that in spite of Labour’s achievements, the public remain unconvinced of this area of expenditure. In our poll, almost half of people think ‘the current balance is about right’ in childcare provision. Interestingly, these figures contrast with provision at the end of life which is marked by consensus: across Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat 44 per cent, 56 per cent, and 49 per cent believe ‘tax rates should rise, to pay for greater provision of services’ in elderly care (see figure 2). Have our parties got their priorities wrong? Not necessarily, but the centre-left may need to re-think the arguments by which it approaches childcare in order for the public to share its vision. This is not to suggest that the argument from tax receipts in favour of increased childcare spending is unappealing: the economic case is a necessary component of the argument. But by focusing only on utilitarian reasons, we may surrender the opportunity to engage in a deeper conversation about the society we choose to live in. The centre-left should take this opportunity to develop a narrative around childcare spending grounded in a shared conception of the good society. This more far-reaching narrative can be guided by a number of simple questions, inextricably related to the issue of childcare. Do we want to live in a society where the nature of work imposes a choice for women between a career and spending more time with their children? Do we want to live in a society where women who want to return to work after childbirth are often made to feel guilty for neglecting their ‘natural’ parenting responsibilities? Do we want to live in a society where the role of the community in raising a child goes unrecognised? If a community takes more care of people at the beginning and end of their lives, might people in turn take more care of their community over the life course? In themselves these questions are important, but equally the centre-left should recognise the good pragmatic reasons for attending to them. The more our commitment to childcare is also motivated by this wider set of issues the stronger the resilience of this social institution may become. This involves making a case which unites citizens around the social significance of early years’ provision. Further, an extended commitment to childcare could act as the policy choice which illustrates the principles and values underpinning today’s Labour party: responsibility, mutual dependence, and the justice of giving every child the right to a more equal chance.

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Affirmative Evidence

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Health, Cognitive & Development Benefits

*Empirics Show Universal Childcare Improves Test Scores And Likelihood Of Passing Grades – Especially Benefits Families Most At-Risk

Felfe et. al 12 [Christina Felfe, Natalia Nollenberger, and Núria Rodríguez-Planas. All authors are researchers for The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), November 2012, “Can’t Buy Mommy’s Love? Universal Childcare and Children’s Long-Term Cognitive Development”, http://ftp.iza.org/dp7053.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Effects on Children Cognitive Development Table 3 shows the impact of expanding public childcare on all children living in the treatment area – the so called intention to treat effect (ITT) - and on the average child placed in public childcare following the expansion of public childcare – denoted by the treatment effect on the treated (TT). The latter estimate is obtained by dividing the ITT estimates by the probability of treatment - shown in Table 2 in Panel A. 24 Table 3 displays the results for four alternative outcome variables: test scores in reading and math, as well as the likelihood of falling behind one grade in primary and secondary school. All regressions are estimated first without any control variables and then controlling for pre- reform individual and state characteristics. If the underlying assumption is correct - there are no individual or regional particularities that drive the expansion in childcare - additional controls should only improve the efficiency of the estimates by reducing the standard errors of the regression but they should not generate a sizeable change in the policy coefficient. Comparing the respective estimates in Table 3 reveals no significant differences and thus provides a robustness check for the underlying assumption. We therefore focus our discussion on this last specification. Notice that we have also estimated a specification in which instead of controlling for pre-reform state characteristics we include state FE (see Table 3). Doing so allows for pre-treatment heterogeneity across states. Focusing first on the effects of the reform on children’s standardized reading test scores at age 15, the effect of the expansion in public childcare for 3-year olds is positive and statistically significant at any conventional significance level. The expansion of public childcare places leads to an increase in reading test scores by 0.13 sd and 0.10 sd for the 1990 and 1993 cohorts living in one of the treated states, respectively. In terms of children who actually attended public childcare following the reform, the effects are substantial: the TT estimates indicate that the reform implied an improvement in reading scores of 0.48 sd and 0.37 sd for the children born in 1990 and 1993 who attended public childcare, respectively. The reform also improved children’s math performance, yet to a slightly lower extent. Children who were born in 1990 and lived in one of the treated states outperformed children who lived in one of the control states in the math test by 0.07 sd - the effect is, however, only significant at the 90 percent significance level. This translates into an improvement among children who actually attended childcare by 0.24 sd. Yet, among the 1993 cohort the estimate is considerably smaller and no longer statistically significant. How do these effects compare to the established evidence? The existing studies evaluating the impact of universal childcare provision find effects of similar direction and size although measured at an earlier age. In the case of an Argentinean reform, Berlinski, Galiani and Gertler (2009), find a substantial improvement of cognitive skills (the ITT estimates amounts to 0.23 sd) among children in third grade. Analyzing the consequences of the introduction of universal childcare in Georgia (USA) on the reading and math skills among children in fourth grade, Fitzpatrick (2008) finds slightly lower effects and only for the population of disadvantaged children, defined as those living in rural areas. More specifically, she finds gains from the childcare reform ranging between 0.07 and 0.12 sd on reading scores, and between 0.06 and 0.09 sd on math scores. Studies that have investigated the effects of individual childcare attendance, in contrast to the overall effects of childcare expansions, support the findings for the improvements in reading and math skills among primary school age children (Loeb, et al. 2007), that may, however, dissipate over time (Magnuson, Ruhm and Waldfogel 2007). Moving to the effects of the reform on the likelihood of falling behind a grade, we also find beneficial effects of the reform. More specifically, we observe that the reform reduced the incidence of falling behind a grade by 2.4 percentage points in primary school and 3.2 percentage points in secondary school (these effects are significant at the 95 and 90 percent level, respectively). Given the initial likelihood of falling behind a grade among children in the treated states of 5 percent in primary school and 23 percent in secondary school, the effect of the reform represents a substantial decrease in the incidence of retention (50 percent in primary school and 13 percent in secondary school). The large effects of the reform on falling behind a grade for the treated is suggestive that the policy was particularly effective for those at highest-risk. Indeed, in the heterogeneity analysis we find that children from less advantaged families benefit the most. The two existing studies that look at the consequences of universal childcare provision on this outcome are US studies: Fitzpatrick (2008) and Cascio (2009). Our results are similar to those found by Fitzpatrick (2008) for disadvantaged children. In fact, analyzing universal Pre-Kindergarten in Georgia, she finds that the probability of being on-grade for their age increases by 7 percentage points (about 10 percent) among black children. In contrast, Cascio (2009) did not find any significant improvements on grade retention.

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*Universal Pre-K Increases Student Test Scores – Particularly Of Disadvantaged Children

Fitzpatrick 08 [Maria Donovan Fitzpatrick, Standford Institute for Economic Policy Research, 2008, “Starting School at Four: The Effect of Universal Pre-Kindergarten on Children's Academic Achevement”. Advances in Economic Analysis & Policy, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maria_Fitzpatrick/publication/24015360_Starting_School_at_Four_The_Effect_o f_Universal_Pre-Kindergarten_on_Children's_Academic_Achievement/links/02e7e525035839bd64000000/Starting- School-at-Four-The-Effect-of-Universal-Pre-Kindergarten-on-Childrens-Academic-Achievement.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Before concluding, it is of interest to consider a cost-benefit analysis of the state’s investment in Universal Pre-K. Such a calculation is difficult because the long-term impacts of the program on wages are not yet known. However, a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation can be done by extrapolating from the combination of estimates of the program’s effects on test scores from this analysis with estimates from other research linking increases in test scores to increases in wages. Murnane et al. (1995) estimate that a standard deviation increase in math scores of high school graduates in 1980 led to increases in wages of between $0.99 and $1.28 (when translated to 2007 dollars). Assuming high school math scores of students in Georgia maintain the same increases seen for fourth graders and the wage differential estimated for 1980 holds for the students in Georgia in the past decade, this implies an increase in wages of less than $0.11 (0.09*$1.28) for each student whose scores increase. I generously assume this group consists of 40 percent of a cohort (including most of those in rural areas and some in urban fringe areas). I further assume this increase in wages continues for 50 years (until the cohort retires) and the discount rate is 0.03. If the future income of exposed students is taxed at a rate of 30 percent, the value today of the future gains in tax revenue would be about $56 million. The costs of the program today ($302 million in 2007-2008) greatly outweigh the benefits in terms of potential increased taxable revenue. This is a very simple cost benefit analysis and should therefore be interpreted with caution. However, it is at least suggestive that the government’s scare resources would be better spent on more targeted early childhood interventions that have been shown to be more cost efficient, particularly if the goal is to increase wages through test scores. Estimates presented show Universal Pre-K in Georgia led to lasting benefits on the academic achievement of children. Most notably, Universal Pre-K availability increased the test scores of disadvantaged (school-lunch-eligible) children living in areas with relatively low levels of population density by as much as 12 percent of a standard deviation. Since the group of disadvantaged children in rural or urban fringe areas makes up about 19 percent of the student population in Georgia, these results are non-trivial. The probability of being on-grade for their age of these children also increased by as much as 7 percentage points. The findings that Universal Pre-K availability increased the academic achievement of children in urban fringe and rural areas corresponds with other research showing that these areas see the largest increases in preschool enrollment because of the program’s availability. Statistically significant gains for other groups of children are also seen on some of the measures of academic achievement but not all, which leads me to be cautious in making any conclusions about the effects of the program for these groups. These first estimates of the longer-term effects of Universal Pre-K support the findings in the literature that gains from Universal Pre-K programs are not universal, but are “targeted” within certain groups. The results of the study and its cost benefit analysis indicate scarce public funds may be used more efficiently by implementing targeted strategies in the design of Pre-K programs, perhaps by using observable characteristics like the income of families or the population density in school districts.

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Early Childhood Education Programs Boost Educational Development - Reduces Criminal Activity, Boosts Earnings, And Long Term Employment

Elango 16 [Sneha Elango. Research Professional at the University of Chicago. 1/12/2016, "Early childhood education and social mobility," VOX EU, https://voxeu.org/article/early-childhood-education-and-social-mobility] /Triumph Debate

Substantial gaps between the environments of advantaged and disadvantaged children raise serious concerns about the state of social mobility in America (Putnam 2015). The effects of adverse early childhood environments persist over a lifetime (Knudsen et al. 2006). High-quality early childhood education programmes enrich the nurturing and learning environments of disadvantaged children. An accumulating body of evidence shows their beneficial effects. The effects of early childhood programmes on disadvantaged children The evidence from a variety of high-quality early childhood programmes, for which reported results can be replicated by objective analysts, tells a consistent story. They have substantial effects on life outcomes beyond IQ or achievement test scores that are the focus of attention in popular discussions of public policy. They promote physical and mental health, reduce criminal activity, and boost earnings and social engagement. The economic and social rates of return are high – comparable to returns on equity investment. The evidence from a broad range of studies using rigorous causal methodologies shows agreement across them. There is a strong case for high-quality early childhood education for disadvantaged children. It improves the early-life environments of disadvantaged children, which in turn boost a variety of early-life skills and later-life achievements. They have substantial economic and social rates of return. On average, the children of affluent families do not benefit from the public provision of early childhood education aimed at disadvantaged populations. Any benefit to affluent families comes from receipt of childcare, which subsidises the employment of parents, sometimes at the expense of child quality.1 The evidence supports public subsidy of high-quality programmes targeted to disadvantaged populations. At current quality levels and costs, their social benefits greatly exceed their social costs. The economic and social case for universal early programmes for promoting childhood development is weak. Evaluating programmes on a multitude of outcomes Early childhood programmes should be evaluated using a full range of skills that enable children to become more productive adults. Many analysts equate programme effectiveness with performance on short-term measures of cognition that poorly predict life success (Borghans et al. 2015). Socio- emotional skills – such as attentiveness, impulse control, sociability, and conscientiousness – are primary drivers of achievement, health, and increased social and economic productivity. Unfortunately, these skills often go unmeasured. Demonstration programmes, such as the Perry Preschool Project and the Carolina Abecedarian Project, provide valuable information on the effects of early education, because they measure socio-emotional skills in youth and collect data on education, employment, health, and criminal activity through adulthood. Evaluations of these programmes show favourable effects on high school graduation, long-term employment, and reduced criminal activity.2 There are also beneficial effects on health and healthy behaviours. Both programmes have high rates of return.3 The Perry Preschool Project measures life outcomes through age 40. It has a benefit-cost ratio of 6.6 and an annual rate of return per dollar invested of 7.7%. Analysis of adult outcomes at age 35 for the Abecedarian Project shows substantial benefits on health and rates of return above those of the Perry Programme (Elango et al. 2015b). These long-term impacts persist despite fadeout of childhood IQ and scores of cognition that receive so much attention in public policy debates. Socio-emotional skills explain a substantial part of these impacts – much more so than cognitive skills.4 Evaluating a programme’s effectiveness Programme effectiveness depends strongly on programme quality, the characteristics of those being served, and the access of their children to alternative programmes. Programmes that provide disadvantaged families with access to high-quality early childcare on average are better and more effective than the home care they receive. Head Start has positive impacts on long-term outcomes As the supply and quality of public and private early childhood education programmes has grown, evaluations of contemporary programmes face a serious problem: participation of control children in alternative programmes (Heckman et al. 2000, Kline and Walters 2014). Evaluations of programmes using control groups that participate in alternative programmes do not accurately measure the effectiveness of programmes in improving child outcomes compared to staying at home, although they are often interpreted as doing so. Head Start is the most prominent federal early childhood investment in the US. It is often held up as the litmus test for whether governments can successfully scale programmes. Unfortunately, the reported effects of a recent influential experimental evaluation of Head Start are widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. The Head Start Impact Study (HSIS) randomly assigned children into two groups: Head Start and a control group.5 The control group includes children who attend other preschools – often a neighbouring Head Start programme. This amounts to comparing two identical programmes and finding no programme effect. The HSIS experiment badly underestimated the impact of Head Start compared to home care. Evaluations of Head Start that account for the contamination of the control group show positive effects of Head Start on cognition and school achievement compared to what would be achieved if children stay at home. Studies of Head Start that examine long-term impacts find favourable results on college attendance, criminal activity, and health outcomes including reductions in obesity and depression. This research adds to the body of evidence that supports the effectiveness of early education for disadvantaged children. Provision of early childhood education is both socially fair and economically efficient Methodologically strong evidence from programmes that serve disadvantaged children presents a compelling case for funding targeted programmes. The evidence is less compelling of any benefit of publically funding early childhood education at the level currently targeted to disadvantaged children on the lives of advantaged children. The available evidence indicates that universal programmes positively affect disadvantaged children. The evidence is mixed for advantaged children because many affluent families primarily use early childhood programmes to provide childcare for working parents and not to boost child development.6 A proper measure of disadvantage Disadvantage in early childhood is not just a matter of financial income flows, but also depends on the quality of time parents can spend with their children and the parenting resources they can allocate for early development. Single parenting greatly diminishes the time and resources that can be devoted to early childhood development. Today’s economic pressures force poor and middle-income parents alike to spend time away from their children to make ends meet. The demand for quality early childhood education is intensifying, the costs are increasing, and many more parents will find themselves without the means to provide it. Those most in need should

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receive help. Investing in the early lives of disadvantaged children promotes social mobility and is economically productive.

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Lanham Act Proves UCC Works – Children Had Better Progress Physically, Emotionally, Socially, And Mentally

Thier 2020 [Daphna Their. Brooklyn based activist and writer, December 27th 2020, “The US Government Can Provide Universal Childcare – It’s Done So in the Past”, Jacobin, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/12/universal-childcare- lanham-act-us-government ] / Triumph Debate

The United States distinguishes itself as one of the few wealthy countries in the world that does not have a robust public childcare program. But there’s no reason we can’t have one that’s wildly popular and provides high-quality care — in fact, during World War II, we did. Government funding of childcare is almost as popular in the United States as Tina Turner. A bipartisan majority of Americans believe that every child (and every parent), regardless of income, deserves high-quality preschool education. A whole swath of liberals have argued that the economy would benefit from greater numbers of mothers in the workforce, and by improving the employability of millions of children in the future. They’re right. The proof? It’s already been done. In 1942, the US government passed the Lanham Act. The law was designed to assist communities with water, housing, schools, and other local needs connected to industry expansion during the World War II war effort. One of those provisions was a universal childcare plan for any community that proved they had absent fathers and working mothers — the only instance in American history of a federally administered program that served children regardless of family income. The centers were required to meet very high standards. The teachers were well-trained and provided fully funded university-level education. They were well-compensated. The number of children per teacher was limited to ten, a number that is lower than the limit in many states today. Centers were clean. They had a clinic with a nurse and doctor for daily checkups before children entered the space. They offered meals. Center staff bought a mother’s grocery list while she worked to pick up at the end of the day. Center cafeteria workers prepared dinner for mothers to take home at night. The cost: around $3–4 a week ($50–60 in today’s money), or half the actual cost per child. The rest was covered by the government, which overall spent $1 billion on the program. At its peak, the Lanham Act provided for over 635 communities in every state but New Mexico, caring for over half a million children. And while some centers in this pre–Civil Rights Movement era inexcusably provided for white families only, some were desegregated, and an additional 269 centers accommodated black families only. In contrast to most other well-paid sectors at the time, women of color were hired as well. The program was discontinued in 1946 after only three years. The government argued that with the end of the war, women would leave the workforce and resume their traditional roles. They were wrong: women wanted (or needed) to stay working, and they required childcare to do so. The program was extended a full year after the war ended because of its popularity. As the New York Times reported at the time, protests across the country continued well into 1947 to try to save it. In some places, multiracial grassroots mobilizations and unions applied pressure and won some federal support for childcare, but failed to win a universal policy. In 1947, Ruth Pearson Kushok surveyed the developmental records of five hundred children who attended a federal center. And she interviewed parents and teachers to find out how successful they thought the Lanham centers were. She found that 80 percent of the children had made good or excellent progress physically, emotionally, socially, and mentally, according to the program’s metrics — and overwhelming approval rates among all participants. In fact, in one group she surveyed of 173 parents, 100 percent said that their children enjoyed the nursery. Parents and teachers especially noted that children learned to play better with each other. And, in contrast to the argument of the day that day care centers and working mothers would weaken family relationships, the program was found to have a net positive impact on home life and family relations. Imagine that: give people more resources to raise their children and earn a living, and everyone seems happier. A 2017 study in the Journal of Labor Economics by Chris Herbst found that the program had long-lasting positive outcomes, especially for poor families. Mothers who participated in the program were more likely to have improved their economic conditions. And people who participated in the program as children were found to have reached higher levels of education, had better employment opportunities, and had children later in life.

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Economic Benefits

Access To Childcare Reduces Employee Absenteeism, Reduces Turnover, And Increases Profits

Shellenback et al. 04 [Karen Shellenback, Global Products Leader, Analytics and Research, Mercer, December 2004, “Child Care & Parent Productivity: Making the Business Case”, Cornell University, http://s3.amazonaws.com/mildredwarner.org/attachments/000/000/074/original/154-21008542.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Twenty nine percent of employed parents experienced some kind of child care breakdown in the past three months, and those child care breakdowns were associated with absenteeism, tardiness, and reduced concentration at work (Bond et al., 1998). The average American working parent misses nine days of work per year (Carillo, 2004). As children move through daycare and into elementary school, the number of days missed increases to thirteen. These absences are costly for employers, as is turnover, estimated at one and half times annual salary for an exempt employee and three-quarters of annual wages for hourly workers (Phillips and Resiman 1992). Child care breakdowns leading to employee absences cost businesses $3 billion annually in the United States. Fifty-four percent of employers report that child care services had a positive impact on employee absenteeism, reducing missed workdays by as much as 20% to 30% (Friedman, 1986). Furthermore, a child care program can reduce turnover by 37% to 60% (Ransom & Burud, 1988). Employee retention is a key driver of customer retention, which in turn is a key driver of company growth and profits. One study showed that a 7% decrease in employee turnover led to increases of more than $27,000 in sales per employee and almost $4,000 in profits per employee (Huselid and Becker, 1995). Companies with childcare programs or who are considering them need to be able to measure the value of these programs as a return on their investment. Measurement is the key to successful business practices... and key business impacts are measured every day. Sensitive corporate measurements are tracked and managed daily, monthly, quarterly, yearly ... in fact, whole industries have been built around such metrics: measuring market share, shareholder value, return on investment (ROI) of new business investments, break even point of a new product line, costs of benefit plans (particularly healthcare insurance), marketing and advertising costs. However, the most important measurements in business have remained elusive, measuring the impact of human capital. While there has been a strong intuitive link between effective personnel management practices and increased business outcomes, the link has remained tentative, most likely because of the assumption that,“what really counts can’t be counted” – the human factor is much too complex to simplify into financial calculations

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UCC Increases Employment, GDP And Return On Investment - Quebec Proves

Fortin et. al 12 [Pierre Fortin, Luc Godbout, Suzie St-Cerny. Fortin is a Professor of Economics at the University of Montreal, Quebec. Former President of the Canadian Economics Association, Godbout is a Professor at the University de Sherbrooke, St-Cerny is a Research Associate at the University de Sherbrooke. May 2012, “Impact of Quebec's Universal Low-Fee Childcare Program on Female Labour Force Participation, Domestic Income, and Government Budgets”, https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/atkinson/UserFiles/File/News/Fortin-Godbout-St_Cerny_eng.pdf/Triumph Debate

In September 1997, the Quebec government launched a universal low-fee childcare program that initially targeted the 4 year olds and was gradually expanded to cover all preschool-age children (birth to 4 years) by September 2000. Over the past 15 years, there has been a spectacular jump in the proportion of Quebec children in this age group who attend regulated daycare. The percentage has shot up to 53% in 2011 from 18% in 1998. This trend has been unique to Quebec among Canadian provinces. Elsewhere in the country, the attendance rate in regulated daycare has not changed much. From 1998 to 2008, it hovered around 20% for children 0 to 5. The labour force participation of Quebec women has also followed a different trend. In 1996, the labour force participation rate of mothers was 4 percentage points lower in Quebec than in other parts of Canada. In the last 15 years it has increased more rapidly than elsewhere and is now higher than the national average. The increase in women employment in Quebec has been particularly marked among mothers of children under the age of 15 and among heads of single-parent families. Based on our review of existing studies, we have calculated that the low-fee childcare program was responsible for about 70,000 additional Quebec mothers being at work in 2008. We have then estimated that this influx of women in Quebec’s labour force led to a $5.1 billion increase in provincial domestic (GDP) in that year. More employed women and increased domestic income have had a significant positive impact on government fiscal balances, generating more income and other taxes and lower transfers. We have estimated that that the tax-transfer return to the federal and provincial administrations from the childcare program ranged from $500 million to $2.4 billion in 2008, depending on whether the particular impact considered was direct or global, and whether only the program’s static effect was considered or is dynamic effect was taken into account as well. Finally, we have compared the $2.4 billion overall budgetary return against the program’s cost in 2008. We have taken into account that the lower use of the Quebec refundable tax credit for daycare expenses was subtracting some $150 million from the out-of-pocket cost of the childcare program for the Quebec government. Our resulting estimate has been that the net cost of the program was just over $1.6 billion in 2008. One implication is that the direct budgetary impact arising from the program’s static effect and benefitting the two governments covered of 31% of its net cost. Adding the dynamic effect and extending estimation to the global budgetary impact, we have found that the program did much better than just pay for itself. Quebec’s net expenditure of $1.6 billion generated a favorable budgetary impact of $2.4 billion for the federal and Quebec administrations taken together. The breakdown was $1.7 billion for Quebec and $0.7 billion for Ottawa. One way to sum it up is that in 2008 each $100 of daycare subsidy paid out by the Quebec government generated a return of $104 for itself and a windfall of $43 for the federal government. Quebec’s low-fee childcare program has been financially “profitable” for the two levels of government. This in itself is interesting and reassuring. However, this is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for it to qualify as a “good” program. There is no doubt that the program makes it easier for parents to better balance work and family. But it needs to be recognized that its rapid growth has given rise to various problems. Above all, the demand for subsidized spaces still considerably exceeds the supply. Moreover, the development of new facilities, place assignment rules, the flexibility of operating hours, the quality of educational services (particularly for children from low-income backgrounds), short- and long-term effects on child development, the rate of investment in staff training, and the universal nature of the program are regular topics of debate. Nevertheless, the program is extremely popular with young families, so that it is definitely there to stay. Consequently, these problems must be viewed as challenges to growth that must be met rather than as threats to the program’s survival.

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California Empirics Prove – UCC Would Generate $2.62 For Every Dollar Invested, Resulting In Billions Of Dollars In Net Value

Karoly and Bigelow 05 [Lynn A. Karoly, James H. Bigelow. Karoly is a senior economics at the RAND Corporation and she received her Ph.D. in economics from Yale University. Bigelow is a published author and researcher, with over fifty years of publications. 2005, “The Economics of Investing in Universal Preschool Education in California”, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG349.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Research has shown that well-designed early education programs serving disadvantaged children in the year or so prior to kindergarten entry can generate benefits to government and the rest of society that outweigh the costs of the program services. As a result of this evidence and the conviction that children benefit from structured programs preparing them for school entry, enthusiasm for public-sector investment in preschool education has been growing among business leaders, policymakers, and the public. Within this context, there is growing interest in universal preschool education in California. In considering such a program, policymakers and the public focus on the potential benefits from a universal preschool program, as well as the estimated costs. This study aims to inform such deliberations by conducting an analysis of the economic returns from investing in preschool education in California. In particular, we focus on two questions: • What are the expected direct costs and benefits for the public sector and society as a whole of implementing a high-quality universal preschool program in California? • What are the other potential indirect economic and noneconomic benefits for California that may be associated with such a program? We summarize our analysis here. After a brief overview of the status of preschool education in the United States, we review the research on the benefits of preschool education so that we can infer potential benefits a high-quality universal program would generate in California. We then present our benefit-cost analysis and consider other economic benefits, as well as noneconomic benefits, from such a program. We conclude with the implications for policy. With respect to our two questions above, our key findings are as follows: • Using our preferred assumptions, a one-year high-quality universal preschool program in California is estimated to generate about $7,000 in net present value benefits per child for California society (public and private sectors) using a 3 percent discount rate. This equals a return of $2.62 for every dollar invested, or an annual rate of return of about 10 percent over a 60-year horizon. • Assuming a 70 percent participation rate in the universal preschool program, each annual cohort of California children served generates $2.7 billion in net present value benefits to California society (using a 3 percent discount rate). • These estimates from our benefit-cost model are sensitive to assumptions about the distribution of benefits that accrue to moreand less-disadvantaged children from participating in a highquality preschool program. When we consider a range of assumptions from the more conservative to the less conservative (where our baseline results above fall in between), we find that California is estimated to gain at least two dollars for every dollar invested and possibly more than four dollars. • Our estimates of benefits to society are likely understated because we do not account for some potential benefits due to data limitations. These include reductions in the intangible costs experienced by victims of child maltreatment and crime, improved health and well- being of preschool participants, and the potential intergenerational transmission of favorable benefits. When we incorporate the best available estimates of intangible victim costs, net present value benefits increase nearly 50 percent for California society and 36 percent for U.S. society, and the rate of return increases about 3 percentage points. • Other potential economic and noneconomic benefits to California are not incorporated in the benefit-cost analysis. Broader benefits from investing in a universal preschool program include near-term labor force benefits for California businesses in terms of labor force recruitment, participation rates, and workforce performance, as well as longer-term benefits for the state in terms of economic growth and competitiveness and economic and social equality.

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Universal Childcare Pays For Itself - UK Empirical Estimates Prove

De Henau 19 [Jerome De Henau. Senior Lecturer in Economics, The Open University. March 2019, “Employment and fiscal effects of investing in universal childcare: a macro-micro simulation analysis for the UK”, http://www.open.ac.uk/ikd/sites/www.open.ac.uk.ikd/files/files/working-papers/DeHenau_costingchildcareUK.pdf] /Triumph Debate

While current childcare policy and future plans remain vastly inadequate to address the challenges of quality, accessibility and affordability of childcare in the UK, arguments around lack of funding were often the prime reason for opposing increased investment in the sector. The aim of this paper was to examine such claims and in doing so make a positive fiscal case. As the costings results show, investing in free universal childcare of the highest quality requires significant amount of annual spending, about ten times the amount of public spending on childcare committed by the government for the foreseeable future. Our results show that funding an ambitious childcare investment programme and sustaining it year on year is by no means unaffordable, even within the existing fiscal structure of the UK. Taking account of the tax revenue and reduced social security spending stemming from the many direct and indirect jobs created in the economy, only around £2.50 for every £10 spent would require additional funding on a year-on-year basis. The net funding requirement of up to £14bn a year remains below the tax give-aways afforded by the government since 2010 despite an era of austerity, with effects on earnings and employment far less clear than those stemming from direct investment in social infrastructure. In any case results also show that over the longer-term fiscal benefits are likely to recoup the total investment in childcare, based on simulations of typical families (mothers with two children on average earnings). With different benchmarks of earning potential, our calculations have shown that again within the existing fiscal structure, the investment can reach break-even point in between 8 and 13 years, well within the range of common working lives after child birth. Such reduction in gender earning gaps is also another policy objective in its own right, improving women’s economic independence. Maternal employment could be greatly improved if the right incentives are provided and there is a genuine system of affordable, accessible and high-quality childcare. Moreover employment created in childcare and in the wider economy could disproportionately benefit women. Our calculations show that this would reduce overall gender employment gaps by almost half. However the main benefit of childcare remains that of investing in children’s well-being and social and cognitive development. There is also an economic case for this in that it would raise productivity in the future through better education, social skills and greater ability to adapt to fast-changing technology-driven labour markets. It would also reduce inequalities in life chances and offer opportunities to improve everyone’s quality of life as well as social cohesion. Both of these arguments justify public spending as these benefits have a public good element, the social infrastructure aspect of childcare. Quantifying long-term benefits for children and society more widely is more complicated but not impossible as Garcia et al. (2016) have shown. It is however beyond the scope of this study. Instead further more immediate research could focus on refining the job-matching model and the interaction of tax-benefits with labour supply decisions. It could also extend the modelling to examine changes in the means-tested social security benefits system to improve work incentives even within a new system of free childcare.

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Universal Childcare Establishes Wage Floor For Underpaid Childcare Workers – NYC Proves

Thomason et al. 18 [Sarah Thomason, research and policy associate at the Labor Center, UC Berkeley, May 22, 2018, “At the Wage Floor”, UC Berkeley Labor Center, https://cscce.berkeley.edu/at-the-wage-floor/] /Triumph Debate

New York City provides an example of local government simultaneously expanding publicly subsidized ECE programs and investing in higher wages for workers. In 2014, NYC expanded on the existing state-funded preschool program to create Pre-K for All, a universal, full-day Pre-K program that is open to all four-year-olds, regardless of family income. While this program was not a wage initiative per se, it added additional Pre-K classrooms, and thus a demand for Pre-K teachers, in public schools and community-based programs. In public elementary schools, Pre-K teachers are paid on the same salary scale as other public school teachers, starting at about $56,000 a year for bachelor’s degree level teachers (United Federation of Teachers n.d.). Many preschool teachers who had been working in lower-paying positions at private child care centers were hired for the newly created Pre-K classrooms in public elementary schools, resulting in a large increase in their annual salaries. Community-based programs were essential to accommodating the demand for services created by the NYC Pre- K expansion, but staff in these programs are not paid according to the public school salary scale. In response to concerns about the substantial wage gaps between equally qualified Pre-K teachers in the community-based and public school settings, NYC allocated additional funds and established higher starting salaries for these Pre-K teachers. This move reduced, but did not eliminate, the gap between universal Pre-K teacher salaries in community-based child care centers and public elementary schools. At the same time, once salaries for teachers in the Pre-K classrooms increased, disparities between them and other teachers working with younger children arose. The union representing teaching staff in these programs negotiated with NYC to increase wages of represented teachers in non- Pre-K city-funded programs. The expansion of universal Pre-K and new starting wage standards, accompanied by public funds, led to significant wage increases for many ECE workers. NYC has plans to expand universal Pre-K to three- year-olds, which will open up more opportunities for better jobs in the field. The NYC example further illustrates the complexity and disparities that exist within the current ECE system, and highlights the importance of coordinating policy changes with broader systems reform. Much more will need to be done in order to address these problems across the NYC child care system, but city leaders have the opportunity to employ lessons learned and address these challenges as they seek to expand and strengthen ECE services.

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Policies Implemented in Georgia Shows UCC Increases Childcare Employment By Over 30%

Bassok et. al 14 [Daphna Bassok, Maria Fitzpatrick, Susanna Loeb. Bassok is a Researcher at the University of Virginia, Fitzpatrick works in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell Universit, Loeb is a Researcher at Stanford University. September 2014, “Does State Preschool Crowd-Out Private Provision? The Impact of Universal Preschool on the Childcare Sector in Oklahoma and Georgia”, https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Preschool%20Crowdout.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Universal Preschool in Georgia A visual inspection of childcare supply measures over the period suggests that universal preschool had a positive effect on the amount of childcare being provided in Georgia. Figure 2 plots the total number of childcare centers (Panel A), number of employees working at childcare centers (Panel B), the total number of private childcare centers (Panel C), number of employees working at private childcare centers (Panel D), and the amount of pay per employee (in thousands of $2010, Panel E) over the period studied. The solid black lines in each panel measure the outcome for Georgia, while the dashed black lines plot the outcome for the synthetic control group.20 The vertical line in each figure represents the first year in which universal preschool was implemented in Georgia, 1996. Panels A and B, suggest that the introduction of universal preschool increased the overall formal childcare sector both in terms of the number of centers and employees in Georgia relative to the number of centers and employees in the synthetic control group. The former increased by about 25 percent, while the latter increased by about 33 percent. The increase in the private sector, meanwhile, was less dramatic (Panels C and D). The number of private childcare centers hardly increased, but the number of childcare workers in private centers increased by 25 percent. Finally, the annual earnings per childcare worker remain similar in Georgia and the synthetic control group over the period. These results suggest that universal preschool in Georgia increased the amount of formal childcare taking place in the state by increasing the amount of both publicly and privately provided care. Of importance, however, is whether these estimated effects of universal preschool introduction are statistically different from zero. In Table 2, we present results, first for a set of traditional difference-in-difference specifications, then using the synthetic control group methods. In column (1), we present the results from equation (1) using the 48 other states as a control group. In column (2), we repeat the estimation using only the other states in the Census Bureau-defined South as the comparison group. The synthetic control group estimates of the effects of universal preschool in Georgia are presented in column (3) of Table 2. Since the synthetic control group method renders the closest match between pre-treatment outcomes and other characteristics in the treatment and synthetic comparison states, it is our preferred specification. For this reason, and because the pattern of results is largely consistent across the three columns, we discuss the results in column (3). The results show that the universal preschool policy increased the overall formal sector by 374 establishments and 5,443 employees (or 23 and 35 percent, respectively). Both of these estimates are statistically significant at the 5 percent level and are close to the traditional difference-in-difference estimates reported in the previous columns. The total number of employees at private childcare centers increased by 4,059, an estimate that is statistically significant at the 5 percent level, while the total number of private childcare centers hardly changed. (Note, however, that the confidence interval on the number of private providers is wide.) Therefore, it appears that universal preschool increased the overall amount of formal childcare in Georgia by increasing the total number of public childcare providers (by 374 centers, or 260 percent) and by increasing employment in both public and private childcare centers, by about 1,400 and 4,000 workers (or 1000 and 25 percent), respectively.21 Though the number of government funded pre-k providers in Georgia was about 1,700 in 2005 (Figure 1), our estimates suggest the introduction of the universal preschool policy increased the overall number of childcare centers in the state by just 374. Therefore, universal preschool expanded the formal childcare sector, but the majority of the publicly funded preschool took place in schools and centers that either existed before the introduction of universal preschool took place (and the source of funds switched from parents to the state) or are new publicly funded centers that forced out the previously existing centers.

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*Increased Income Mobility

Universal Childcare Boosts Income Mobility – Empirics Prove

Havnes and Mogstad 14 [Tarjei Havnes and Magne Mogstad. Havnes works for the Department of Economics, University of Oslo, Norway, Mogstad is a Professor in the Department of Economics, University of Chicago. April 2014, “Is universal child care leveling the playing field?”, https://faculty.smu.edu/millimet/classes/eco7377/papers/havnes%20mogstad%202015.pdf] /Triumph Debate

5. Empirical results 5.1. Main findings The first row of Panel (a) in Table 2 shows the standard DiD estimates for the population of children as a whole. The mean impact estimate of NOK 333 implies an increase in average earnings of $ 0.05 for every dollar spent on subsidized child care (or $ 311 per child care slot). In contrast to this small and insignificant estimate of the mean impact, the QTE estimates suggest substantial effects of the reform. Fig. 6 graphs the QTE estimates from the RIF- DiD estimator. The point estimates are zero or positive for all percentiles until the 82nd percentile. The effect peaks at the 11th percentile, suggesting an impact of about NOK 9000 from the universal child care program. This estimate translates into a $ 1.27 increase in earnings per dollar spent (or $ 8403 per child care slot). Between the 15th and the 60th percentile estimates remain positive, at about half the size, but then fade out and turn negative in the upper part of the distribution.21 Taken together, the QTE estimates suggest that the introduction of subsidized care equalized the outcome distribution of children, in line with our simple model of parental investments. In order to quantify the equalizing effect of the child care reform, we compute the Gini coefficient in the counterfactual (ℱ1(y)RIF) and the actual (F1(y)) earnings distribution of the post-reform cohorts from the treatment municipalities. We find that the child care reform reduced the Gini coefficient by 2.9%. Put into perspective, this reduction in the Gini coefficient corresponds to introducing a 2.9 percent proportional tax on earnings and then redistributing the derived tax revenue as equal sized amounts to the individuals (Aaberge, 1997). This indicates that the child care reform has been an important equalizer for the distribution of earnings of exposed children as adults. Another prediction from the simple model is that the benefits of subsidized care should be negatively correlated with family income (insofar as child care quality is a normal good). To assess this prediction, we examine how the impact of the child care reform varies with family income. The third row of Panel (a) in Table 2 shows subgroup DiD estimates by family income. These estimates suggest that upper-class children suffer a mean loss of $ 1.15 for every dollar spent on subsidized child care (or $ 7558 per child care slot), whereas children of low income parents experience an average gain of $ 1.31 for every dollar spent (or $8671 per child care slot). By comparison, there is no evidence of differential effects by child gender, as shown in the second row in Panel (a) of Table 2. 22 Panel (a) of Fig. 7 graphs the results from local linear regressions of children's earnings on (log) family income. We run the local linear regression separately for pre- and post-reform cohorts in the treatment and the comparison municipalities. We can then map out the DiD effect of the child care expansion by family income as the difference in earnings between the pre- and post-reform cohorts in the treatment municipalities as compared to the comparison municipalities. In Panel (b), we graph these DiD estimates by family income alongside the density of family income in treatment municipalities before the reform. We see that the gains in earnings associated with the reform are steadily declining in family income. The differential effects by parental income suggest that the child care reform could be improving social mobility. To quantify the effect on intergenerational income persistence, we extend the standard DiD-model with a full set of interactions between family income (Faminc) and dummy variables for post-reform cohort (P), treatment municipalities (T), and their interaction: yit ¼ γt þ α1Ti þ α2Ti Pt þ β0 þ β1Pt þ β2Ti þ β3Ti Pt ð ÞFamincit þ ϵit where yit represents the average earnings in 2006–2009 of child i born in year t, γt denotes the birth cohort fixed effect, and ϵ is the error term. Our estimates suggest that the child care reform reduced the intergenerational income elasticity by 2.5 percentage points. This reduction corresponds to a decrease in intergenerational persistence of just over 9%.

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Universal Early Childhood Education Programs Close The Income-Based Achievement Gap

Jacobs 17 [Elisabeth Jacobs. Jacobs is the former Senior Director for Family Economic Security at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. 03/13/2017, "Does targeted or universal pre-Kindergarten better serve low-income kids?," Equitable Growth, https://equitablegrowth.org/does-targeted-or-universal-pre-kindergarten-better-serve-low-income- kids/] /Triumph Debate Investing in early childhood education is a research-backed, cost-effective strategy for boosting long-term U.S. economic growth. For instance, economics Nobel Laureate James Heckman’s analyses of two comprehensive early childhood programs suggest a 7 percent to 13 percent annual return on investment in improved school and labor-market outcomes, as well as reduced public costs in remedial education, health, and criminal justice spending. While the imperfect consensus is that early childhood education is a solid investment, we know far less about how best to ensure efficient spending of public dollars. The readiness gap between lower- and higher-income children shows up on the very first day of kindergarten, suggesting a persistent need for effective investment in low-income children. Indeed, this gap was part of the impetus behind the federally funded and means-tested Head Start program, which began in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and today serves about 1 million poor 3- and 4-year-olds annually. Yet the federal Head Start program serves fewer than half of all eligible children due to chronic underfunding of the program. Moreover, millions more working families with incomes above the federal poverty level ($20,090 for a family of three in 2015) face severe economic pressure from high and rising childcare costs. In the absence of federal action, state experimentation with public pre-Kindergarten has blossomed over the past decade. Forty-two states plus the District of Columbia offer some version of publicly funded pre-K, but the allocation of funds varies dramatically across programs. State programs can be roughly divided into three categories. One is universal, low-standard programs, which provide universal access to age-eligible children regardless of income but with few and/or low standards—Florida’s pre-K program exemplifies this approach. Another is targeted programs, which are means-tested or targeted to address other risk factors, with stringent state standards—Tennessee is a prime example of this approach. And the third category is universal, high- standard programs, which provide universal access and have stringent state standards for quality. Georgia and Oklahoma have such pre-K programs in place. Which type of program best achieves the goal of boosting achievement for low-income children? New research from Dartmouth University economist Elizabeth Cascio provides compelling evidence for the efficacy of high-quality universal pre-K as compared to high-quality programs targeted at disadvantaged children. Using a large, nationally representative dataset that allows her to track outcomes for a cohort of children born in 2001, Cascio isolates the causal impact of pre-K attendance on a range of academic and social-emotional outcomes for low- and high-income children across different types of programs. In general, she concludes that “state-funded pre-K appears to be more effective for low-income children when programs are universal rather than targeted.” Specifically, Cascio’s new research demonstrates that universal state-funded pre-K programs generate statistically significant and substantial positive improvements in early reading scores for low-income 4-year-olds. State-funded programs targeted to disadvantaged children do not. The same findings hold for improvements in early math scores and noncognitive social-emotional skills such as engagement and negativity, though the findings are less definitive on these two metrics. Cascio also finds that universal pre-K boosts the performance of low-income children more than it increases the performance of higher-income students, thereby playing a significant role in closing the income-based achievement gap in kindergarten school readiness. Indeed, her estimates suggest that universal pre-K attendance can more than close the income-based test score gaps that exist prior to pre-K entry. The differences between universal and targeted programs cannot be explained away by program requirements or by the demographics of the children and their families. Nor can they be explained away by the alternative preschool programming available to parents. Together, Cascio’s findings suggest that universal pre-K programs offer relatively high-quality learning environments as compared to targeted programs. Importantly, this research suggests that the quality of universal and targeted pre-K programs differ in important ways that are not reflected in typical measures of school or program quality or state standards. So why do universal pre-K programs do a better job serving low-income students than programs specifically targeting poor kids? Universal programs may be of higher quality, even if they have the same formal quality standards as targeted programs. Peer effects also may explain much of this quality differential. Lower-income children may benefit from direct interaction with higher-income peers. If higher-income children enter pre-K more prepared, as suggested by the income achievement gaps of incoming pre-K students in Cascio’s data, then universal programs may attract and retain better teachers—for instance, teachers with warmer, more engaged, more creative, and more positive interactions with students. In short, the presence of higher-income students in the classroom may change the expectations of what all children should learn, which can accelerate learnings gains for all students. Teachers and programs may be under more parental pressure to perform, especially if the engaged parent body includes higher-income, highly educated parents. They may also have access to a range of informal resources, including parental human capital. While Cascio’s research provides some suggestive findings regarding the mechanisms through which universal pre-K programs are able to deliver for disadvantaged kids, more research remains to be done in this space. What we do know is that universal programs simply reach more kids, including many low-income students who are not quite poor enough for means-tested programs and thus would otherwise lack a quality preschool experience. In 2013, just 54.9 percent of all 3- and 4-year-olds were enrolled in any pre-primary school program, suggesting considerable room to increase preschool attendance. Cascio’s evidence suggests that low-income kids are better served by universal programs. The arithmetic seems to be adding up in favor of high-quality universal pre- K.

44 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Universal Childcare Allows Mothers To Enter Workforce, Increasing Wages And Boosting Family Income – Norway’s Model Proves

McGrew 18 [Will McGrew. McGrew is a former Research Assistant at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and prior to joining Equitable Growth, he worked as a Research Assistant at Yale Law School and the Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies. 08/13/2018, "Universal childcare’s benefits might cover much of its costs," Equitable Growth, https://equitablegrowth.org/universal-childcares-benefits-might-cover-much-of-its-costs/] /Triumph Debate

Several decades of research in economics and psychology show that childcare boasts substantial positive effects on human capital development and labor market outcomes—for both parents and kids. A critical question for policymakers, then, is how these benefits affect the net fiscal impact of a publicly financed, comprehensive childcare system that ensures access for all families in the United States. A new study on Norway’s universal childcare program sheds light on at least one way in which such a program’s benefits might cover part of its costs. With the goal of making quality, affordable childcare available to all children, a bipartisan reform enacted by the Norwegian Parliament in 2002 dramatically increased state subsidies for childcare enrollment, lowered parental fees, and upped public investment in the construction of new childcare facilities. Exploiting differences between municipalities in the rate of childcare expansion in the aftermath of this reform, authors Martin Eckhoff Andresen, research economist at Statistics Norway, and Tarjei Havnes, associate professor of economics at the University of Oslo, estimate the effects of childcare use on labor supply, earnings, and tax payments for parents of 2-year-old children. Disaggregating the effects of the expansion in childcare availability on mothers by relationship status, Andresen and Havnes find large and statistically significant labor-supply responses for all mothers. Specifically, three co-habiting or married mothers entered the labor force—largely into full-time employment—for every 10 2-year-old kids enrolled in childcare. The results for single mothers were somewhat weaker: One single mother entered part-time employment for every five toddlers enrolled in childcare. These effects translated into higher annual earnings for mothers. On average, co-habiting and married mothers saw their wages increase by $6,000, and single mothers saw their wages increase by $2,400. In contrast to the strong impact on maternal labor supply and earnings, the expansion of childcare had little empirical effect on fathers. This nonresult probably reflects persistent social norms that assign mothers a disproportionate responsibility for child rearing, particularly when children are toddlers. Andresen and Havnes use their labor supply and earnings estimates to calculate the fiscal impact of Norway’s universal childcare program. Specifically, the authors find that at least 13 percent of the cost of expanding childcare for co-habiting mothers is offset by increased tax revenue generated through the additional employment of mothers in the 2 years following the program’s expansion. Additionally, the authors argue that the actual responses and budgetary savings may in fact be larger than their estimates, as initial take-up of public formal childcare may be incomplete. In conjunction with other recent empirical studies, Andresen and Havnes’s findings provide suggestive evidence that the fiscal impact of universal childcare may grow stronger over time. Their data show that the increase in mothers’ attachment to the labor market persists and remains significant for at least 4 years following the parliamentary expansion. According to contemporary research into the gender wage gap, this increase in long-run labor force participation should allow mothers’ wages to avoid the wage penalties associated with prolonged absences from the labor force and instead increase gradually over time. The authors argue that as a result of these labor market changes, expanding access to childcare in Norway produced an enduring increase in the nation’s tax base. While the social welfare system, childcare infrastructure, and tax system in Norway are different than those in the United States, there is nevertheless strong reason to believe that childcare expansion might have similar (if not larger) impacts in the U.S. context. First, the results of this study are consistent with others conducted in Quebec, Spain, Belgium, and elsewhere, which also found boosts in mother’s labor supply and government tax revenue from universal childcare. Additionally, Andresen and Havnes’s findings are similar to those in several other studies conducted in the United States, which verify positive effects on mothers’ employment from public childcare subsidies. Finally, in the context of the United States, where both childcare access and women’s labor force participation levels are significantly lower than those in Norway, there may even be more room to increase women’s labor force participation and wages, thereby driving up tax revenues over the long-term despite potentially larger short-term costs due to more robust uptake. In the United States today, the underprovision of childcare services has substantial negative effects, depressing earnings and labor force participation for parents and driving suboptimal social and economic outcomes for children. Andresen and Havnes’s new paper illustrates that expanded childcare may come with substantial positive effects both for parents’ employment and aggregate tax revenues. Beyond these effects on parents, research documents that childcare expansion can also produce dramatic improvements in children’s health, cognitive and social skills, educational outcomes, and labor market opportunities. In light of Andresen and Havnes’s findings, the implications of these improved outcomes for aggregate economic growth and additional tax revenues in the United States could be an exciting topic for future empirical research.

45 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Universal Pre-K Benefits Low Income Children – US Studies Prove

Blau 2020 [David M. Blau, Professor of Economics at The Ohio State University, October 31st 2020, “The Effects of Universal Preschool on Child and Adult Outcomes: A Review of Recent Evidence from Europe with Implications for the United States”, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2020.10.009 ] /Triumph Debate

Another approach, sometimes combined with the birthdate eligibility cutoff, is a more traditional DD design, comparing outcomes of children in states with and without state-funded preschools, before and after the implementation of the state program. However, there is considerable heterogeneity across states in preschool program quality standards (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2019). Thus the treatment effect estimated from cross-state comparisons is difficult to interpret, as it reflects the weighted average quality of state programs in the sample, rather than the quality of a specific state program. This issue can be avoided by using only one or two states known to have high-quality standards as the treatment group. This is the approach used by Cascio and Schanzenbach (2013), with Georgia and Oklahoma as the treatment states. However, the problem reappears in another guise when choosing a group of comparison states: should they be states with no preschool program or all other states, including those with lower-quality programs and targeted programs? The same problem of interpretation arises depending on the choice of comparison states. Cascio and Schanzenbach (2013) provide the most credible estimates using this approach, and it is useful to compare their results to those from the European studies. They use all states other than GA and OK as a comparison group in a DD analysis comparing outcomes of children in GA and OK before and after the introduction of public preschool to pre-post outcomes for the same birth cohorts in other states. Outcomes are measured by fourth and eighth grade scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). They estimate effects separately for low-income (eligible for free or reduced-price lunch) and other children. Their main findings are reproduced in Table 4, in the form of ITT effects. They show positive and statistically significant effects on reading and math test scores for low-income children in fourth grade, which partially or fully fade out by eighth grade. There are no positive and statistically significant effects for higher-income children, and three of the four estimated effects are actually negative. Translating the fourth and eighth grade effects on math for low- income children into SD units yields effect sizes of .09 and .06, respectively. There is no universal nationwide preschool program in the US, but during World War II the Lanham Act made federal subsidies available to all states to facilitate employment of mothers of children aged 0-12. Herbst (2017) used a DD approach to exploit variation across states in federal funding per child to identify the impact of subsidized child care. This is a methodologically sound approach, similar to several of the European studies. The results showed long run beneficial ITT effects on earnings and education, with the earnings effects concentrated in the lower part of the earnings distribution. However, anecdotal evidence suggested that the quality of care was highly variable across states (Herbst, 2017, p.527), so it is not clear how relevant these findings are for understanding the impact of universal care. The Lanham Act was intended first and foremost to provide care while mothers worked, with child development a secondary concern. In sum, the best evidence on the effects of universal preschool programs in the US is consistent with the evidence from Europe: generally beneficial effects for children from low-income families and much smaller or no effects for children from higher-income families.

46 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Universal Childcare Program Implemented In US Via Lanham Act Proves UCC Effective At Boosting Income Earnings

Herbst 17 [Chris M. Herbst. Herbst is a Professor at Arizona State University. January 2017, “Universal Child Care, Maternal Employment, and Children’s Long-Run Outcomes: Evidence from the US Lanham Act of 1940”, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/689478] /Triumph Debate

The goal of this paper is to provide the first comprehensive analysis of the Lanham Act—a near-universal child care program operating throughout the United States during World War II. Although results from this analysis are likely to be of interest to a broad group of historians and economists as well as child care analysts, such results may also shed light on the contemporary policy push to enact universal child care programs. Indeed, missing from the debate, especially in the United States context, is credible evidence on the long-run impact of scaled-up, publicly funded, and universally accessible early care and education programs. The Lanham Act provides a potentially useful laboratory for assessing the promise of such programs. Several noteworthy results stem from this analysis. First, I find that the Lanham Act increased maternal employment several years after the program was dismantled. Importantly, it generated approximately equal-sized increases in employment across a heterogeneous group of mothers. The second noteworthy result is that the Lanham Act had positive long-run effects on outcomes related to labor market behavior and program participation. Specifically, children exposed to the program were more likely to be employed, to have higher earnings, and to be less likely to receive cash assistance as adults. In addition, the benefits of the program accrued largely to the most economically disadvantaged individuals; in contrast, the program had neutral or even small negative effects on more advantaged adults. Finally, I show that the impacts operated through early-life increases in household income and long-run improvements in educational attainment and health. On the one hand, it may be wise to interpret these results cautiously. As previously discussed, the Lanham Act was implemented during a unique period—amid a national emergency—in which traditional views about women’s work and institutional child care were challenged and ultimately toppled. Such profound cultural shifts likely aided in sustaining the longrun employment effect of the program. This interpretation is consistent with the historical record on the Lanham Act (e.g., Fousekis 2011), and it accords with the characterization of the war as a “watershed” event for American women (Goldin and Olivetti 2013). One concern, then, is that the Lanham Act’s antiquity and distinctive circumstances make it an inappropriate policy laboratory for considering the long- run impact of contemporary child care programs. However, by definition, universal child care programs—including modern ones—are the product of unique political forces that, in turn, reshape the cultural and economic landscape.26 Thus, the relevant question is, which characteristics of the Lanham Act account for its apparent success? In other words, are there lessons to be drawn from this experience that may inform the design of contemporary child care programs? The first lesson is that while the program’s primary aim was to increase women’s employment, it did not come at the expense of lower child care quality or poorer outcomes for children. For example, the program’s recommended child-to-teacher ratio (10∶1) was more stringent than that in many states today. In addition, that the centers hired professional teachers and provided a university education to nonteachers suggests that the Lanham Act workforce was well prepared to handle children’s developmental needs. Second, that the program had its largest impact on disadvantaged adults suggests that universal programs may be as effective as targeted ones. Indeed, one of the hypothesized mechanisms through which universal pre-K programs influence poor children is the social and intellectual engagement with their wealthy peers. However, as this and other studies show, such gains from universalism may come at a cost of worse outcomes for advantaged children. Third, the program generally shied away from serving infants and toddlers, for whom there were concerns about the consequences of prolonged separation from the mother. This may have been a fortuitous design feature in light of the empirical evidence that very young children in nonparental arrangements have worse outcomes in the short run than their peers in maternal care (Bernal and Keane 2011; Herbst 2013). Finally, the Lanham Act was a success because it received support from a broad coalition of parents, education and women’s rights advocates, and employers. Each group was committed to its success because something larger was at stake: the nation’s involvement in the war. Indeed, the rhetoric surrounding the Lanham Act—that expanding child care was a “patriotic” and “win-the-war” strategy—explicitly linked the need for child care with the nation’s success on the battlefield.

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Universal Childcare Helps Parents Work, Increasing Adult Financial Outcomes - Lanham Act Proves

Stevenson 15 [Betsey Stevenson. Stevenson is a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. She is on leave from the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and the Economics Department where she is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Economics. 1/22/2015, "An "Experiment" in Universal Child Care in the United States: Lessons from the Lanham Act," whitehouse.gov, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/01/22/experiment-universal-child-care-united-states-lessons- lanham-act] /Triumph Debate

In Richmond, California in 1943, approximately 35 nursery school units opened up as part of a city-wide child care program. The country was mobilizing around World War II and increasing employment, particularly among women, had become a national priority. In the case of Richmond, the centers opened to help provide care for the children of women working in the nearby Kaiser shipyards. And here’s how they were funded: Congress had passed the Defense Housing and Community Facilities and Services Act of 1940 -- popularly known as the Lanham Act. The law was passed in order to fund public works, including child care, in communities with defense industries. Under it, all families (regardless of income) were eligible for child care for up to six days a week, including summers and holidays, and parents paid the equivalent of just $9-$10 a day in today’s dollars. In addition to being affordable, this care was also high-quality. Many centers had low student-teacher ratios, served meals and snacks, and taught children arts and educational enrichment activities. So, put quite simply: Most people don’t realize it, but we’ve done this before. And, it worked. At a time when 60 percent of households with children do not have a stay-at-home parent -- and center-based child care for an infant in three out of five states costs more than tuition and fees at four-year public universities -- we’ve got to act again. In his 2015 State of the Union address, recognizing that child care is an economic imperative for families and for our economic future, President Obama announced a proposal to help working families make ends meet while investing more in our nation’s next generation. It’s a plan he elaborated on today with his remarks in Lawrence, Kansas. The President’s proposal includes a landmark investment in the Child Care Development Fund that guarantees every single low- and moderate-income family with young children can access care. In addition, this proposal would simplify and triple existing child care tax credits to $3,000 a year for young children and ensure that most middle class families are eligible for the full benefit. In addition, he is proposing a new innovation fund that would enable states to better serve families who face unique challenges in securing access to child care. Combined, these proposals would serve more than 9 million children. Looking at the past experiences of the United States, as well as more modern experiences in other countries, these proposals would help parents work, while improving children’s long-term outcomes. But, let’s go back to the Lanham Act for a minute, because its outcome, and its long-term effects in particular, are telling. Research finds that the Lanham Act’s provision of high-quality child care provided immediate benefits to parents, children, and families, and also improved outcomes for children in the long-run. In a 1947 study of two centers in Bellflower, California, all surveyed mothers responded that their child enjoyed child care, and 81 percent reported generally favorable opinions of the program. Mothers were particularly likely to note improvements in their children’s social behaviors, and researchers noted the program strengthened family bonds. A recent study by Chris Herbst (2014) shows that the benefits of the Lanham Act for parents and children were much broader. The study compares young children and mothers who lived in states that received generous amounts of federal funding during the program with mothers and children in states that received relatively little funding, or with children who were older than 12 and therefore ineligible. Access to child care increased mothers’ employment, while also increasing the average work week for those already employed. Moreover, the program also improved children’s long-term outcomes through their working years: an additional $100 in Lanham Act funding increased high school graduation rates by 1.8 percentage points, college graduation rates by 1.9 percentage points, and employment at ages 44-59 by 0.7 percentage point. Overall, the Lanham Act increased participants’ annual earnings by an average of 1.8 percent. Using a summary index of adult outcomes, the per-dollar long-term benefits to children from the Lanham Act are comparable in magnitude to more recent early childhood investments, including Head Start and universal preschool in Georgia. The Lanham Act is just one example of how high-quality child care can benefit families and children. The Council of Economic Advisers' report on early childhood investments highlights other work showing that affordable child care has increased maternal employment. Moreover, other studies echo the results of the Lanham Act and show that high-quality care can increase children’s educational attainment, labor force participation, and earnings as adults. The President’s actions and proposals to make high-quality child care affordable and accessible to all low- and middle-income families aim to realize the success of the Lanham Act for a new generation. Research shows that the early years are particularly important to developing reasoning, language acquisition, and problem solving skills, and that a child’s environment can dramatically influence the degree and pace of these advances. By supporting development when children are very young, early childhood education programs can complement parental investments and produce large benefits to children, parents, and society. The experience of the Lanham Act suggests that while these investments can boost parental employment today, they can also increase children’s educational attainment and earnings in the future.

48 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Existing Childcare Models Make It Too Difficult For Working Class Families To Evaluate And Afford Childcare

Chaudry et al. 11 [Ajay Chaudry, Juan Manuel Pedroza, Heather Sandstrom, Anna Danziger, Michel Grosz, Molly Scott, Sarah Ting, January 2011, “Child Care Choices of Low-Income Working Families”, The Urban Institute, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED578676.pdf ] /Triumph Debate

In general, logistical considerations—such as the convenience of the location of the care setting and transportation, the cost of care, and the availability and hours of care—were driving factors for many families’ decisions because of constraints that parents faced, not because they were associated with what parents wanted for their children’s care. Characteristics of the care setting and the caregiver were most often described as important to parents but were generally less important factors in their decisions—or did not play a significant role at all. The most significant example was that of parents’ preference for activities and learning opportunities within their child care setting. This theme was the most evident in many parents’ stated preferences, but a considerably smaller number of parents described opportunities for learning as a significant reason for selecting their current arrangement. While important to parents, learning opportunities often became secondary to finding an available arrangement that met their work schedules and that they could afford. As Grace, a white mother from Seattle who chose family child care for her infant daughter, captured it, The main thing is to find somebody with the hours that you need, the days that you need, a place that you can call in an emergency, that you can afford, and it’s sad that you’ve gotta choose your day care by a place that you can afford, but that’s kinda what we went through, what hours are going to work, who’s going to be close. While convenient and flexible schedules were generally described together as a preference, the availability and flexibility of providers appeared as two separate themes in parents’ decisions. Both served as important decision factors for many families. Parents described how they searched for and selected providers who were open for business or were available (in the case of informal providers) when they needed child care. As described in greater detail in chapter 3, other parents selected their providers because they offered flexibility in relation to the parents’ job schedules. This was most evident among parents working nonstandard or shifting hours. Relatedly, some parents also discussed difficulties accessing the type of care that they desired because of age restrictions, waiting lists, or toilet training requirements they could not meet. They often settled for alternative arrangements because of the lack of availability of child care or other barriers to access. Chapter 4 addresses availability and access within the context of the early childhood programs available in the study communities. Affordability of care was another prominent theme across families. Parents preferred affordable care options, and about half of both the Providence and the Seattle families discussed affordability as a significant factor in their care decision, particularly for infants. Many of these respondents described the high costs of private child care and being unable to afford this option. Affordability was a factor for nearly two-thirds of respondents with children under 2 years old in the sample as a whole, but only for about a quarter of the respondents with children age 3 and older. Center- based care for infants was described as more difficult to find, and those programs were often described as too expensive for families. Head Start and publicly funded prekindergarten programs were described as attractive options for parents but were generally limited to preschoolers. Families that either did not know about public programs, such as Head Start and child care subsidies, or did not qualify for these programs often chose their current arrangement because they could not afford something else. For example, Suchin described how the high costs of center-based care influenced her decision to select informal relative care for her toddler and young infant. Although she preferred center care, she decided she could not use it given the difference in price: No, [I don’t use center-based care] just because I work part time and the other thing is too that it’s so expensive. And if I put him in day care it would kind of just take away my checks. So what’s the point in working? It just didn’t work, and with my mom working second shift we really didn’t have to. Our hands weren’t tied like he has to go to day care. So at least we have help between my mother and my mother-in- law. We decided that financially it wasn’t worth it and we didn’t have to. In both sites, parents were more likely to discuss child care costs as a factor in their decisions (35 percent overall) than they were to cite the availability (or lack thereof) of a child care subsidy (17 percent overall). Subsidy use is discussed in greater detail in chapter 4 on the early childhood context, but about 34 percent of respondents were using a child care subsidy at their first interview. Families who mentioned the availability of subsidies as a factor included current subsidy users as well as former users who had difficulties with obtaining or retaining their subsidies. Specifically, some families mentioned that they wanted to avoid repeating past experiences in which problems during recertification or a change in employment or education status had caused them to lose their subsidies, forcing them to change from one child care arrangement to another. Udele, a mother in Providence who used a family child care provider, described how a subsidy had allowed her to use her current arrangement, which she otherwise could not afford. However, the situation left her concerned about the insecurity that came with needing something for her child’s care that might easily be lost, especially given talks of cutbacks in the state’s child care program and eligibility rules: If they do cut it, if you think about it, if I was to pay for my kids to be in 49 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

day care full time, they charge about a hundred and something each. So that would be my whole paycheck just to pay the day care. Makes no sense. Might as well not work and get on welfare, which is not an option for me, but if there wasn’t a subsidy I wouldn’t have any options, I mean, what would I do? I can’t pay three hundred and something dollars a week for day care.

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COVID-19 Uniquely Worsens Education Gap – UCC Would Allow Families To Build Up Savings

Davey 20 [Edward Davey. Davey is a British politician. Davey previously served in the Cameron–Clegg coalition as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. 07/14/2020, "Universal Childcare Is Key To Tackling Social Injustice," Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate, https://leftfootforward.org/2020/07/ed-davey-universal- childcare-is-key-to-tackling-social-injustice/] /Triumph Debate

The message of our 2019 election review is a stark one for Liberal Democrats. Amongst many problems, the most serious is that voters did not know what we stood for, beyond our opposition to Brexit. As members continually tell me, there was no overarching vision for the country we wanted to create. The good news is, this can be solved. It means focussing on voters’ concerns and avoiding talking to ourselves. And it means a laser-like emphasis on a strong core offer to voters. I want our party to stand for a fairer, greener and more caring society. I’ve already set out plans for a new post-Covid deal for carers and a £150bn Green Recovery Plan that would deliver green jobs and a green economy. The third plank – of a fairer society – has never been more needed, with the pandemic revealing in sharp relief the extent of inequality and poverty in Britain. So, Beveridge-like, today’s Liberal Democrats have to be at the forefront of a new mission for social justice post-Covid. Education must be at the heart of that plan. Liberals have long argued that education is the single biggest investment we can make to improve social mobility and children’s life chances – but we have to be honest, that all the tinkering and experimentation of the last 40+ years has not delivered anywhere near sufficient progress for children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Equality of opportunity remains a dream as far off as ever. There’s no doubt that resources remain an important part of the solution. Back when I advised Paddy Ashdown on economics, we drew up a policy of a 1p rise in income tax, dedicated for education, and I remain in favour of bold solutions to the funding challenges across education. How money is spent is critical, when the focus is social justice. I’m proud of having developed the policy of a pupil premium that gives extra cash to more disadvantaged children and that this is now benefitting hundreds of thousands, after Liberal Democrats pushed it through during our time in Government. I would argue our success with pupil premium will be seen as one of the most progressive education policies since the 1944 Education Act. But our new education vision has to meet the continuing gaps in educational attainment, made worse by Covid. Based on the evidence that pre-school and early years education can have the biggest impact for a child’s lifetime outcomes, this should be our priority now. Ahead of the 2019 election, I was in charge of costing our manifesto and Jo Swinson came to me and made it clear that she wanted our manifesto to have the most ambitious expansion of childcare ever proposed at its heart. I’m proud our costed manifesto delivered her ambition. Our plan would deliver 35 hours a week of free childcare to every child from 9 months, closing the gap between the end of parental leave and the start of existing childcare provision and providing huge savings to families. There is no doubt it is a game-changer. It costs around £13bn, and was described by the IFS as ‘cementing an entirely new leg of the welfare state and offering a big boost to families with young children.’ We should reflect on that quote. An entirely new leg of the welfare state, proposed by the Liberal Democrats, carrying on the legacy of Beveridge and Lloyd-George whose proposals on social welfare and education were the kind of revolutionary thinking that we need to embrace again. It is that thinking that we should use as the building block for the message we take to the country. I want our country to be fairer, greener and more caring. When voters go into the voting booths in future elections, I want them to imagine a country where we give families proper help with childcare, invest record amounts in fighting climate change and give the 10 million carers in our country a better deal. And when they imagine that country, I want them to know that voting Liberal Democrat is the way to deliver it.

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*Feminism

UCC Is A Collective Good – Feminism Supports It As A Right, Society As A Whole Is Responsible

Gershon 20 [Livia Gershon. Gershon is a freelancer whose writing has appeared in publications including Salon, Aeon Magazine and the Good Men Project. 08/14/2020, "Is Childcare a Right?," JSTOR Daily, https://daily.jstor.org/is- childcare-a-right/] /Triumph Debate

Even before COVID-19 shut down many providers, finding good, affordable childcare has been a longstanding problem for many families. Legal historian Deborah Dinner writes that back in the 1960s, feminists tried to address this issue. They saw childcare not as a market commodity or need-based social program but as a right. After the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Dinner writes, women’s rights advocates created the National Organization for Women (NOW) to pressure the federal government into enforcing the law’s anti–sex discrimination provisions. NOW and other liberal feminist groups argued that without childcare, many women were effectively barred from full participation in employment, education, and politics. The group demanded childcare as a fully public resource comparable to public schools, available to all, regardless of income level. Meanwhile, radical and socialist feminists promoted universal childcare as a way to challenge the basic place of women within the nuclear family. Many of them believed that childcare should be the responsibility of society as a whole. Black feminists noted that both the liberal and radical feminist perspectives tended to focus on white, middle-class experiences. Black mothers often had very different concerns. They had to contend with expectations that they work for money while raising children, but without support that would make that possible. Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm argued that many women were forced to rely on welfare because they were stuck on waiting lists at day care centers. On the other hand, the welfare recipients who led the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) called for recognition of their unpaid work. “Activists in the NWRO critiqued the racial and cultural double standard suggesting that middle-class white women should act as full-time mothers, while black and poor women enjoyed no similar privilege and had to leave their children to work in menial jobs,” Dinner writes. Some welfare rights activists demanded the right to high-quality, freely chosen childcare. But they were wary of being forced to put their children in care situations that they didn’t choose or have any control over. They also pointed to the importance of fair pay and good working conditions for childcare workers. Despite their differences, Dinner writes, most feminists agreed that childcare should be a universal right. And they almost got something approaching what they wanted. In 1971, Congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act. It would have provided free childcare for the lowest-income families, with fees on a sliding scale for everyone else. But the very fact that it offered something approaching universal care stirred up opposition. The influential conservative magazine Human Events complained that, rather than just serving poor children, it would help “middle-income couples that would like to farm out their children when they pursue individual careers.” Others suggested that it would “destroy…the family” by putting “government in place of the parent.” Ultimately, President Richard Nixon vetoed the bill. And even as women’s labor-force participation grew through the rest of the twentieth century, the idea of universal childcare never got that far again.

52 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Feminist Liberation Requires Separation From Motherhood As An Expectation For Women

Berlatsky 13 [Noah Berlatsky. Noah Berlatsky edits the online comics-and-culture website The Hooded Utilitarian and is the author of the book Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics. 04/16/2013, "Good Day Care Was Once a Top Feminist Priority, and It Should Be Again," Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/04/good-day-care-was-once-a-top-feminist-priority-and-it-should-be- again/275027/] /Triumph Debate

Jonathan Cohn's devastating piece on the inadequacies of American day care in The New Republic does exactly what good muckraking investigative journalism should do—it makes you ask why on earth we let this continue. As Cohn says, other countries (notably France) have safe, well-regulated, subsidized, affordable daycare for all. In contrast, daycare in the U.S. is expensive ($15,000 a year per infant on average) and of shockingly low quality. Child care workers are paid less than parking lot attendants, many are required to have little or no safety training. The anchor of Cohn's article is a horrific story about a group of children caught in a fire when their caretaker left to go shopping with kids asleep in the house and a pan of oil on the stove. My knee-jerk reaction was to wonder where the hell the left in general, and feminists in particular, are on this issue. This is a massive, dangerous, crushing problem that affects the lives of the vast majority of mothers in the United States. Again, one wants to ask—where are the feminists? The simple answer to that question is that, though their success has been limited, feminists are, and have been, right where they should be on this issue. Second-wave feminism strongly supported child care reform. The National Organization for Women actually called for free 24-hour child care for all. More practically, liberal feminist groups helped to put together and lobby for the 1971 Child Development Act (CDA), which would have established federally funded community centers with a sliding fee scale based on income. CDA was a relatively modest program given the need, but it had broad support not only from feminists, but from advocates for the poor, trade unions, and employers who wanted to reduce absenteeism. However, as Cohn notes in his article, despite passing the Senate 63 to 17, President Nixon vetoed the bill. Cohn does not explain at length why Nixon torpedoed the bill, but feminist historian Christine Stansell does. In The Feminist Promise: 1782 to the Present, Stansell writes: A coalition of Protestant evangelicals and the John Birch Society materialized—out of thin air, it seemed—in a full-out campaign against the bill. Conservative columnist James Kilpatrick rose to the attack, charging that the CDA was designed "to Sovietize our youth... This bill contains the seeds for destruction of Middle America." It was a departure from the right's obsession with Communist subversion and the evils of integration . Nixon, looking to appease the far right wing of the Republican Party in the wake of his newly initiated policy of détente with China, vetoed the bill after initially giving it his full support. His stand against "government interference" in the family meshed nicely with his opposition to "government interference" in segregated schools. The little-remembered battle over the CDA, then, was one of the first moves by the radical right into family issues—and one of its first and most lasting victories. Though there was initial outrage from mainstream outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times, it soon dissipated. And, as Stansell says, "Feminist attention was elsewhere, on the move to legalize abortion." NOW could have rallied protests when the CDA was defeated, Stansell says, but it did not. "I couldn't even get the members of NOW to make childcare a priority, or even an issue," Friedan said in her memoir Life So Far. That's obviously something of an exaggeration; childcare was an issue for NOW and other feminists. But it remained for the most part a secondary one. To some degree, feminism's acquiescence in the sidelining of child care probably had to do with ideology. Parts of the feminist movement, and particularly radical feminists, were mistrustful of motherhood, and saw it as limiting and inimical to liberation. They were, as Friedan said somewhat ruefully, "rebelling against the feminine mystique which had defined women solely in terms of their role as mother or their sexual relations to men." Shulamith Firestone declared "Pregnancy is barbaric," while Ellen Willis admitted that "I saw having children as the great trap that completely took away your freedom." Mother and feminist Rosalyn Baxandall added, "Most radical feminists were not anti-child, they simply ignored children." Little wonder, then, that abortion rights seemed a more congenial cause than child care. Feminists can, then, be faulted in part for our current child care mess. I think it's important, though, to point out that they are not primarily to blame. After all, even if they ended up putting more effort into the abortion struggle than into child care advocacy, the fact is that they pushed for both. It's not feminism's fault that John Birchers and the religious right were paranoid. It's not feminism's fault that Nixon was a craven opportunist. In fact, I wonder whether child care's relative marginalization within feminism is the result of the failure of child care legislation as much as its cause. Political movements are often defined by their victories. It's well known that Roe v. Wade energized pro-lifers, but surely it was an even bigger boon for the pro-choice movement, which has, ever since, had something to defend, and a basic language of rights to defend it with. In contrast, while feminists have continued to work for affordable child care, that work has gained little traction, and (probably as a result) has not been as central to the movement as other causes. The feminist movement for child care was squashed before it really got going. That's been bad for the country and bad for families, as Cohn shows. But I think it's also been bad for feminism, which would have been strengthened in many ways by being more closely associated with a fight for parents. Hopefully Cohn's article will lend urgency to this issue, and someday soon feminist's long fight to give America a safe, accessible, and affordable day care system will finally result in a victory—for feminism, for parents, and for everybody.

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UCC Policies Protect Women Who Work In The Childcare Industry – Fights Social Stigma Against Devalued Childcare Work, Promotes Safer Working Condition, And Higher Wages

Danziger Halperin 20 [Anna K. Danziger Halperin. Anna K. Danziger Halperin is a historian of public policy, gender, and childhood. She teaches at CUNY School of Professional Studies, and has previously taught courses at Columbia University and St. Joseph's College, Brooklyn. "An Unrequited Labor of Love: Child Care and Feminism." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 45.4 (2020): 1011-1034.] /Triumph Debate

The universal vision of NOW’s rhetoric in the 1970s focused on women’s right not to solely perform motherly duties, to fulfill a role in society outside the home and the family while society took over some of the responsibility of caretaking. Women gained the right to participate in the public sphere more fully via federal employment-related legislation, protections for reproductive rights, and increased political representation because of gains made by NOW and other participants in the second-wave feminist movement. However, NOW’s failure to forcefully advocate for the CDA represents a missed opportunity for its vision of motherhood. In championing women’s public engagement outside of the home, and the right of women to be more than “just” mothers—but simultaneously failing to fight for universal public policies that support child rearing—feminists have, perhaps unwittingly, contributed to the further denigration of the private sphere, especially caregiving activities that, when outsourced, are still compensated poorly and often undertaken by women of color. As scholars of welfare reform Felicia Kornbluh and Gwendolyn Mink have put it, “liberals who took women’s waged work as a positive end in itself, and who were willing to impose an obligation to engage in such work on low-income people, may have helped produce this disregard for the mostly uncompensated work of mothering” (2019, xv–xvi). Nixon’s veto message contained language that directly rejected NOW’s universal vision: he contended that the CDA would “commit the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over against the family-centered approach” (1971, 5). While many have interpreted this statement as “designed to disarm conservatives critical of Nixon’s surprising move to recognize Communist China” (Steiner 1981, 91), the statement can also be read as reinforcing the prevailing ideology that maintained responsibility for children’s care squarely within the private family, painted parenthood as a female enterprise, and tied women’s roles in society to motherhood. The exception to this ideology was for families considered to be too “pathological” to be trusted to care for their children alone. In the language of the Moynihan report, government intervention into family life is only appropriate for children from poor families—especially nonwhite families. By ceding “family values” discourse to conservatives and focusing mainly on women’s freedom to compete in the marketplace, mainstream feminist activism has, as Nancy Fraser (2013, 209–26) has argued, largely abandoned issues of social reproduction and contributed to the devaluation of caregiving activities. Katherine Turk concludes her study of gender and workplace rights after Title VII by arguing that a rhetoric of “corporate feminism” that emerged from mainstream feminism has meant that women “have had to downplay their reproductive and domestic obligations in order to be regarded as committed to their jobs” (2016, 206). Further, by the late 1980s, mainstream “feminists demonstrated their concern that workplace options that acknowledged the work/family conflict many women faced could stigmatize and handicap them all—a fear that had come to outweigh their commitment to pragmatic solutions that accounted for the reproductive labors most women continued to shoulder,” namely caregiving (2016, 188). Premilla Nadasen’s account of the domestic workers’ rights movement reveals a similar challenge, as she argues that “the pitting of household labor against work opportunities outside the home contributed to negative perceptions about the values of this work” (2015, 135). In this context, women’s caregiving labors—both paid and unpaid, and performed by both mothers and other caregivers alike—are often justified as arising from a more emotional, even primal foundation: love. As economist Nancy Folbre puts it, “just because care is paid by a wage doesn’t mean that it isn’t motivated by love as well as money” (2001, xii). She argues that increasing opportunities for women to undertake noncaregiving roles has increased the cost of care and decreased its quality. The term “family values,” she maintains, “conveys the ideas of love, obligation, and reciprocity” (2001, xii). None of these are, or should be, the sole province of the political Right. This love, however, has been unrequited, even by feminists. As Jocelyn Olcott has argued, “we gain the greatest understanding about human experience not by separating out love from labor, or life from work, but rather by understanding them as a dyad” (2011, 6). Dichotomies between commodified and uncommodified labor have often led to the devaluation of caregiving labor, such as the care and education of small children, in favor of paid employment, and this has consequences both for children’s material and developmental well-being and in keeping women who perform such undervalued work in poverty. Folbre argues that the relative success of liberal feminism “has contributed to a dilemma. Women know they can benefit economically by becoming achievers rather than caregivers” (2001, 4). But this leaves “low achievers,” including both unpaid and paid caregivers, in a bind. The mainstream feminism of NOW has unintentionally denigrated caregiving labor by primarily supporting the priorities of upper- or middle-class (often white) women to pursue economic opportunities outside the home. Lower-income women are pushed by social welfare policy to engage in paid labor regardless of their desire to do so, and many undertake caregiving or other forms of domestic labor at devalued wages. The current political moment represents an opportunity to reformulate feminist rhetoric to speak explicitly to women’s roles as paid and unpaid caregivers. In Women’s Marches, women have decried the lack of progress over the past fifty years. The #MeToo movement has 54 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

exposed the continuing, widespread prevalence of sexual harassment and assault, and the threat of an activist, conservative Supreme Court to undo the reproductive rights secured by feminist activism. Protests against family separation and for Black Lives Matter have also focused attention on how social policy and politics casts certain families, but not others, as worthy of protection. Given the renewed focus on why feminism is still needed, we should look back to a similar moment in the early 1970s when activists were faced with a plethora of problems but also engaged in grassroots mobilization. Now is a moment to reevaluate a feminist agenda, and part of this reformulation must more effectively and inclusively speak to women’s experiences as mothers and caregivers. Conservatives are now chomping at the bit to claim child care as their own issue—a move designed to undercut feminist support—via nonfeminist policies that would perpetuate gender, race, and class inequalities while assisting only the privileged. Feminists must reenter these debates to achieve a reversal of nearly fifty years of policy drift to the right. Child care is a complex, multifaceted issue in which our current fragmented and inadequate system pits key stakeholders against one another in a race to the bottom: parents, caregiving professionals and informal providers, and children themselves. The ability to engage in labor outside the home hinges on mothers’ ability to secure safe arrangements for young children. Many women of course do not have a choice about whether they work—our social policy system forces mothers who may want to stay home to participate in the low-wage labor market. The paid and unpaid labor of both informal and formal caregivers—a largely nonwhite and female workforce—is undervalued and underappreciated. Children too have needs that must be addressed—high-quality, developmentally appropriate, and loving care cannot solely be the province of wealthy families. An intersectional feminist approach to child care across class and racial divides must support these interests simultaneously. While feminists of course are not to blame for the failure of the CDA, the strategic impasse NOW faced in 1971 is symptomatic of broader challenges facing advocacy for universal child care over the past five decades. Only by acknowledging the all-too- common trap of pursuing targeted rather than universal social policies can we articulate a more progressive vision. In the current political landscape, marked with competing calls for child care solutions, we should look back to the similarities of the 1970s and examine the consequences of failing to prioritize child care as a feminist issue.

55 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Intersectional Models Of Feminism Necessitate That All People Have Access to UCC – Overlapping Obstacles, Race, And Class

Chancer 19 [Lynn Chancer. Chancer is Executive Officer of the Ph.D. Program in Sociology at the Graduate Center and Professor of Sociology at Hunter College of the City University of New York. 05/06/2019, , "Revisiting and Fulfilling the Feminist Promise of Universal Day Care," Gender Policy Report, https://genderpolicyreport.umn.edu/revisiting-and- fulfilling-the-feminist-promise-of-universal-day-care/] /Triumph Debate

American, second-wave feminism immediately brings to mind fights over abortion, violence against women, and sexual objectification (notably, the protests at the 1968 Miss America pageant in Atlantic City). Much less frequently remembered is that early liberal and radical feminists — many of whom were involved in starting the National Organization of Women (NOW) — saw the provision of affordable and high-quality universal daycare as a major sine qua non of “women’s liberation.” Why? And what happened to strip this vital issue out of politicians’ platforms and feminist cultural discourse (let alone feminist activism en masse)? Replying to the “why” question is fairly simple: Given that women are still often primarily responsible for home and childcare obligations, full participation in the public spheres of work, education, and politics has long hinged on solid social support and assistance in the relatively “private” realms of households and families. For those who have children, daycare access (or lack thereof) poses ongoing and significant burdens. Relatives may or may not be available to take care of children when they are too young to go to school. Daycare may be unaffordable; it may corral an unjustifiable portion of a parent’s income than can be justified when weighed against possible work earnings or the attainment of educational degrees. Parents may not know how to find a good provider for their children (a problem easily rectifiable if quality public options were available and publicized). As feminists grow more attuned to concerns about intersectionality — namely, how race and class, among other social differences, compound gender-based concerns — the lack of universal, high-quality daycare in the United States has begun to highlight the effects of growing socioeconomic inequalities on and between women and families. Middle- and upper-class women may be able to afford to hire a “private” childcare provider (or “nanny”), but this option is laughable for most of those situated at the working-class and poorer ends of the American economic spectrum. In most other advanced industrial countries, parents across classes benefit from this important social provision. As early feminists realized, to be truly effective, daycare must be a universal social benefit. Today, then, scholars like the contributors in this series can point to the most advanced industrial countries and the host of social assistance they provide for family support — from generous parental leave to excellent daycare for pre-school children. That the United States does not provide such comprehensive support makes it an outlier among socially wealthy countries. And it is a problem that, in turn, may well affect other “outlier” statistics related to women’s ability to achieve full and equal public participation. For example, whereas the United States was relatively ahead of other countries in the 1970s in terms of women serving in national legislatures, by 2019 the Inter-Parliamentary Union reported that this figure had declined sharply — to a hard-to-believe 78th in the world, lagging behind Europe and Afghanistan. What happened, and what can be done to reverse this worrisome gender-related trend that led to my diagnosing a “rise and stall of American feminism” from the 1980s through the 2010s? In referring to a “rise and stall,” I focus on how, with regard to politics but also other issues like reproductive justice (i.e., access to abortions), feminist progress began to plateau or even decline in the 2010s. However, I went on to call my recent book *After the Rise and Stall of American Feminism* because this trend is now reversing: the #MeToo movement may well have initiated a new burst of feminist activism and cultural consciousness with its focus on the problems of sexual harassment and violence against women across lines like class, race, sexuality, and age. By extension, this may be the perfect time to return to the early feminist issue of universal daycare. As I investigate in *The Rise and Fall of American Feminism*, this may owe to another set of increasingly outdated divides between “bread and butter” economic and cultural “sexuality” related issues for which feminists have often advocated separately. Now, as thinkers and activists identify and collapse such divisions, we seem to have a chance to actualize, address, and redress a gamut of multi-faceted concerns. Feminist policymakers, sociologists, economists, and legislators have made good headway in advocating for, and attaining, better parental leave in some places in the United States; in New York City, for example, universal pre-K became guaranteed for all families in 2017, under Mayor Bill DiBlasio. Still, it is clear that far more needs to be done to realize what early second-wave feminists envisioned: all women and families having the means to meet their desires for full social and economic participation and for taking unequivocally good care of their family and dependents. As sociologist Kathleen Gerson writes in The Unfinished Revolution, young men and women want egalitarian relationships in private and public. Both/and, not either/or. It’s time for the generous, universal, affordable, and high-quality daycare for everyone, regardless of class and across other social differences, envisioned at least as far back as the 1960s. In 2019, the success of #MeToo suggests that social media is a good platform for advocating, discussing, and promoting an across-the-board range of feminist issues. It is well worth taking to feminist blogsites, penning op-eds and magazine articles, making podcasts and journalistic appearances, and talking to and pressuring politicians – all to reissue this foundational social problem and reframe it as one aligning with other feminist concerns including reproductive justice, political and economic participation, and less sexist cultural imagery. In sum, feminists have good reason to conclude that saying ‘me too’ matters here as elsewhere. By now, it should be clear that daycare fulfills one shared need of women and families while simultaneously highlighting the meaning of intersectional feminism (given socioeconomic equalities between classes that have worsened, too, since the 1990s). Daycare is and remains a significant feminist goal, like many others, the gender revolution portended and ignited. And it is a measure that can and should be realized in the United States of the 2020s, just about a half decade after the second wave insisted on its relevance.

56 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Broad Feminist Agenda Must Prioritize UCC To Lesson Economic Inequities

Palley 17 [Elizabeth Palley. Palley is a professor of social work at Adelphi University and the co-author of In Our Hands: The Struggle for US Child Care Policy (NYU, 2014). 03/21/2017, "Feminism Must Be Intersectional: Putting Child Care on the Agenda," Truthout, https://truthout.org/articles/feminists-need-to-focus-on-child-care/] /Triumph Debate

The recent women’s marches throughout the United States and the world were energizing and empowering. My impression of the march in Washington, DC was that women involved in this huge display of solidarity wanted to send the message to the Trump administration that we will not be silenced and we do not want to go back to a time when overt discrimination against women was acceptable. Women expressed concern about the misogyny of Trump and others in his administration as well as fear that women’s reproductive health choices will be further restricted. This march was an empowering experience for many women but, as noted by the organizers, is just the beginning of some long battles ahead. It is no surprise that women’s reproductive rights were a center piece of the march. Trump’s threat to reproductive rights is real and profound. It is already clear that he will make appointments to the federal bench that will be heavily influenced by the religious right. However, to move forward this movement must embrace a broader feminist agenda that goes beyond reproductive rights. It must be intersectional and inclusive and avoid the alienation of women of color that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. A major issue that must be part of this agenda is child care, which should be understood as both a necessary social investment and an issue of labor rights for the many women working as child care providers. It has only been through the availability of child care many women have been able to stay in the paid labor force. However, this has often been accomplished on the backs of poorly paid care providers, most of whom are women; disproportionately women of color. In order to be more inclusive, the new women’s movement needs to put concrete universal child care proposals on its agenda and fight for better pay and working conditions for child care providers. Child care is not and should not be considered “a woman’s issue.” However, any feminist movement must understand the historical and current role that women play in child rearing and include child care supports and policies on its agenda. Women with children earn 71% of what fathers earn. Having children affects women’s treatment in the workforce and without proper support, it is difficult for many women, other than the very rich, to stay in the paid labor force. Many families have remained in the middle class solely as a result of a second household additional income, that of a woman. Child care must be available to enable women to work or many more families will fall into poverty. Any new movement must also put the needs of child care workers, in the fore. Child care employees are some of the lowest paid people in the country. Forty six percent receive either Medicaid or Food Stamps. A 2016 report by the Berkeley Center for the Study of Child Care Employment highlights the poverty of child care providers as well as the limited training many receive. It describes new supports for child care providers across the country as “optional, selective, and sporadic.” The median hourly wage of child care providers in 2014 was $10.31, 39% less than that of all other workers. Only 15% receive employer-based health insurance and even fewer receive pension contributions from their employers. Many of these women face a loss or reduction in health benefits if the Affordable Care Act is revoked. Many have limited or no sick leave. Dr. Corey Shdaimah and I recently completed focus groups throughout the State of New York with child care providers. Our research found that most need more financial support in order to provide the best care for America’s children. Though we did not ask their incomes, we were struck by the financial challenges that the home-based providers reported, many struggling to participate in trainings or fund fingerprinting of new workers (a federal requirement) that can cost between $50-200. Immigrants make up a significant percentage of the early care and education workforce. In New York and California, approximately are immigrants. Through the United States, 18% of all early care and education providers are immigrants. Fifty percent of these women work in informal. Many are undocumented. An inclusive feminist agenda must ensure that these women remain safe, receive educational supports, and are fairly paid. The cost of child care is a huge financial strain for many families. Though proposed tax benefits may be helpful to some families, they fall far short of addressing the core problem that we face with child care in the United States. If we want qualified well-educated people to care for our children, we need to be able to pay them a living wage. We have not been able to find a way to use technology to make child care more productive or cheaper. In order to ensure that parents can afford care and that providers receive a living wage, we, as a country need to subsidize child care. No doubt, this will be expensive and cuts against the grain of lower taxes and less state and federal spending. However, if we want to be competitive in the future, we need a well-educated public and this education needs to begin early. Subsidizing care is not a new idea. In fact, much of the industrialized world provides both child care and health care as a basic right. We could learn from Sweden, France, England, and many other nations throughout the world. The last time this was considered on a national scale in the United States was during the Nixon administration when it was vetoed. It is time for the feminist movement to add child care to its priorities and to work toward putting universal child care back on the national agenda.

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COVID-19 Has Regressed Childcare Gender Norms – UCC Models Healthier Relationships

Nordberg 20 [Anna Nordberg. Norgberg is a writer and author, published in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Slate, The San Francisco Chronicle, OZY, and Sunset. She is a member of the Writers Grotto. 05/01/2020, "What does feminism look like without child care? It's not pretty," San Francisco Chronicle, https://www.sfchronicle.com/culture/article/What-does-feminism-look-like-without-child-care-15240503.php] /Triumph Debate

I was bone tired. The first week of sheltering in place had been a blur of logging into school Zoom meetings, slapping together turkey sandwiches, unloading the dishwasher, taking my kids on long walks so we didn’t all turn on each other, and cooking dinner — sometimes (it felt) all at the same time. That’s when my husband came down from his makeshift office, looking as exhausted as I felt. “I really need a break,” he told me. I felt for him. I also envied him. Every day he disappeared for 12 hours upstairs, his work increasing as the economy cratered, while downstairs, I was with our kids, ages 7 and 5. We inhabited different universes — his, a more intense at-home version of his normal work life. Mine, a time warp back to the 1950s, pandemic-style. Before coronavirus, we’d divvied up the child care and chores in a way we both found fair. But the shutdown triggered a series of ruthless prioritizations that, at first, we lacked the language or space to address. Our jobs worked when we had child care. They didn’t without it. And because his pays the bills while mine is in freelance journalism — and is flexible, that magic word — it was mine that took the hit. Within 48 hours in March, parents across the Bay Area lost schools, child care, sitters and help from grandparents. The idea of work-life balance became laughable, for those lucky enough to keep their jobs. In many dual-income households, the parent with the more “flexible” career often — and without fanfare or comment — picked up most of the child care. In heterosexual couples, that parent was usually the mother. The phrase “instant regression” ricocheted around in my text chains with other moms. Was the lockdown a vacuum into which the past decades’ progress around gender and child care disappeared? Seven weeks in, it’s clear that “regression” is too pat an explanation. Just having another parent to complain about is a privilege — the load on single parents right now is infinitely harder to bear. Still, the crisis has revealed how deeply entrenched our notions around gender, work and care go. Perhaps most of all, it demonstrates that feminism doesn’t work without child care. Even when both parents are feminists. “All of us, when we’re under stress, revert to the familiar,” says Myra Strober, a professor emerita of economics at Stanford who is working on a book called “Love and Money.” “Parents today may be in relationships that are more equal than in the past. But if they didn’t grow up in that situation, it’s so easy to revert.” From a distance it may be easy to blame men. But we need to take a hard look at why so many dads, even when a pandemic has upended every facet of American life, feel like they can’t ask for time during business hours to help with child care. Work-life balance isn’t really modeled for guys, says Andrew Ulmer, a San Francisco dad who left his startup job a few weeks before the COVID-19 outbreak. He is now watching his 4-year-old daughter full time while his wife works as head of content at a tech firm. “No one is saying, ‘Hey guys, if you want to spend more time with your families, do what you need to do,’” Ulmer says. “His colleagues schedule calls all day long, and he feels obligated to be on them,” says Maury Argento of her husband, an engineer in San Francisco. The couple have a 1-year-old daughter who, before the pandemic, went to day care part time. “I wish he would stand up and say, ‘I have a family and a wife and I need more flexibility.’ But he doesn’t feel like he can ask for that right now.” In fact, says Argento, her husband is working longer hours than before. “We finally had a conversation where we agreed that I would get 30 minutes a day to exercise, and that I should be able to take a shower by myself,” she says. For parents who are usually committed to supporting both careers, the shutdown has created a brutal calculus around protecting the breadwinner. Before the pandemic, Argento worked part time as a sports massage therapist, ran an online marketplace and managed the family’s downstairs rental unit. Though she can no longer see clients or rent their unit, she could theoretically run the online business. But without child care, there simply isn’t time. “Because my husband makes a full-time paycheck and our daughter is on his health care, we don’t want to mess with that,” she says. But economist Strober argues that we need to challenge the assumption that the person who makes less money or is in a less-senior position has more flexibility. “People who are higher up in an organization usually have more flexibility,” she says. “Part-time flexibility is not the whole story.” Another challenge: With everyone stuck at home, experts say, pandemic parenting puts more pressure on the default parent — the one who handles most of the school and child care logistics, not to mention the one the kids are more likely to run screaming to. In most, though certainly not all, cases, this is the mother. “The COVID-19 crisis has amplified the assumption that mothers bear the brunt of child care responsibilities,” says Gina Fromer, CEO of Children’s Council of San Francisco, a nonprofit that helps families find and afford child care (disclosure: I serve on the board). Children’s Council has seen the number of calls to its Family Services Team double since shelter in place. “Even during ‘normal times,’ most if not all of the inquiries we receive are from moms,” Fromer says. This default parenting dynamic in heterosexual relationships starts early (research shows that same-sex couples share care more equally). In the U.S., mothers are much more likely to take parental leave, and reduce their working hours, than fathers, even if they continue to work full time. (The U.S. is the only developed country in the world without federal paid leave for parents.) The birth of a child barely makes a dent in the number of hours men work, says Joseph Altonji, a professor of economics at Yale, but “women respond a great deal.” Greater reliance on child care has narrowed that gap, but “there is still an asymmetry in response, and you’ll see that between men and women who both work full time.” For many moms right now, it’s not just loss of work hours. It’s also the quality of those hours. The moms I spoke to all regularly juggled responsibilities during work calls — shoving dinner in the oven, helping kids with a homework problem — while their husbands had more privacy, a door to shut against the chaos. One mother was on a video conference call when her daughter appeared behind her, proudly holding a bloody lost tooth. Alameda mom Soni Khatri has shifted much of her work (full time, in digital publishing) to nights and 58 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

weekends. That enables her husband, an attorney, to work during the day while she takes on domestic and homeschooling responsibilities for their two kids. “My job is a bit more understanding that I need flexibility,” she says. “With my husband, there’s more pressure for ‘business as normal.’” While child care is divided up more equally between parents who both have demanding jobs, remote learning is still mostly shouldered by the mother. Ann Pellegrini and her husband, who live in Menlo Park and both work at large tech companies, take turns watching their two young daughters, but Pellegrini oversees the majority of the remote learning for their first-grader and is “more of the enforcer.” To be sure, the shelter-in-place orders have sparked some positive changes. Almost everyone I spoke to said they hoped that the crisis would normalize working from home for more parents. Dads have also had the opportunity to spend more time with their kids. “I feel like we split things even more equitably now,” says Allison Landa, who works part time as a freelance writer and editor while her husband works full time at Bayer Corp. in Berkeley. While her husband has always been hands-on (“he was raised by Amazons,” she says), he’s stepped up more now. When we emerge from this crisis, perhaps we can put pressure on some of the assumptions the pandemic has laid bare. While there is clearly more cultural pressure on mothers to be the default parent, there is also intense cultural pressure on men to carry on with business as usual — no matter what is happening with their families. As for our household, after those brutal early weeks, my husband and I have rallied around each other. He cheered when I got my first pandemic assignment, even though it meant an even crazier week for both of us (and less homeschooling and more “Trolls: The Experience” for our kids). We share a lot of gallows humor. We also share the hope that we can emerge from this crisis with more appreciation — and pay — for child care providers, early educators and teachers. Parents, especially single parents, need more support. Perhaps after slogging along in quarantine for months, the country will finally wake up to the need for universal child care. That might sound like a wild pandemic fever dream. It need not be.

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Pandemic Is A Breaking Point – UCC Needed To Undo The “Girl Boss” Version Of Mainstream Feminism, And To Support Black And Low Income Families

Schilder 20 [Elena Schilder. Schilder is a writer that has been featured in WAX magazine and This Recording and is also studying at Bank Street College and Silberman School of Social Work. 09/04/2020, "Universal Childcare Goes Beyond Women Having It All," Bitch Media, https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/universal-childcare-feminist-history] /Triumph Debate

Thanks to the global pandemic that has upended family routines and divisions of labor, childcare is now a talking point on the national political stage for the first time in a long time. In a recent campaign video, presidential candidate Joe Biden emphatically mentioned childcare as a need of working families that’s not being adequately met. “We have to change the way in which we deal with allowing people an opportunity to make a living,” he said. “That includes childcare.” That he mentioned childcare at all is a testament to how the pandemic has laid bare what has always been true: Families need access to affordable childcare in order to effectively function. Biden’s eagerness to talk about childcare is likely thanks to his former fellow candidate Elizabeth Warren’s refreshing awareness of and attention to this issue; she’d unveiled her plan for universal childcare well before the pandemic hit. New attention is also being paid to universal childcare, thanks to mothers sharing their experiences of attempting to work remotely as they balance childcare responsibilities with job demands. It was a stressful reality before the pandemic, and it’s literally impossible to juggle all of these competing priorities now. This “balancing act” narrative has been central to the feminist movement since at least the 1970s, when an array of related and aligned movements for women’s liberation pushed issues like childcare, reproductive justice and health, and workplace equality into the national spotlight. And yet as I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s and learned about women’s liberation, I never heard about childcare being an essential part of the movement. Instead, the popular public narrative around parenting and feminism was—and continues to be—the now-tired cliché of “having it all” or whether it’s possible for women to balance parenting with their careers. The idea that access to quality, affordable childcare might mitigate the severity of walking this tightrope has remained obvious to feminists, especially those who are focused on reproductive justice. But it has rarely been part of the mainstream conversation about feminist policy aims. However, there was once a time when the right to childcare had top billing for a generation of feminists. In a 2010 article for Law and History Review, legal historian Deborah Dinner explained how childcare, framed specifically as a basic right owed to women, was a unifying issue across feminist identities of the ’70s, bringing together various grassroots campaigns. She writes that raising “rights consciousness” around childcare “encouraged working-class and middle-class, African American and white, radical and liberal feminists to identify shared policy interests and to form coalitions on both the local and national levels.” For middle-class white feminists, the universal right to childcare expressed their dissatisfaction with gender and family norms that forced middle-class women to take care of children at home. For Black feminists, the universal right to childcare disputed the common cultural narrative that blamed Black mothers and Black families for systemic poverty. For that generation’s welfare rights activists, these arguments protested the way government-sponsored childcare was available only to those living below the poverty line, and how it was used as one of many tools to surveil and control the lives of welfare recipients. Then, as now, childcare was an issue that mattered deeply to women across class and racial lines. Feminist organizing around the right to quality childcare for all women led feminist activists to lobby for and cocreate the Comprehensive Child Development Act (CCDA) in 1971. Though the bill didn’t offer universal childcare, it sought to expand Head Start to include a network of community centers that would’ve provided childcare, medical care, and nutrition to families on a sliding scale. It also left the door open for expanded legislation that could eventually include all U.S. families. Senator Walter Mondale, who later served as Jimmy Carter’s vice president, cosponsored the CCDA, which passed both the House and the Senate—but President Richard Nixon vetoed it. Nixon was following the guidance of his then-staffer Pat Buchanan, who would become one of the most prominent voices of family-values conservatism in the decade that followed. Nixon offered strong language in his denunciation of the bill, writing that he wouldn’t commit “the vast moral authority of the national Government to the side of communal approaches to childrearing over against the family-centered approach.” Conservative columnist James Kilpatrick went so far as to say that the legislation was part of “a far- reaching scheme for the essential Sovietization of the American family.” In retrospect, some have theorized that childcare wasn’t a priority for American feminists in the way it was for their European counterparts, who saw motherhood and parenting as a special circumstance requiring special legislation. This distinction may exist between the continents, but there’s no question that feminists in the United States want childcare-focused policies. Before Nixon vetoed the CCDA, the National Organization for Women—perhaps one of the most powerful and mainstream feminist organizations, though it has recently been embroiled in controversy—listed 24-hour childcare as one of its demands. It was Nixon’s veto that politicized the issue, creating the foundation for conservative attacks on the goals of women’s liberation that still persist today. Nixon and the conservatives who opposed the CCDA drew a boundary between “communal” and “family-centered” approaches to childrearing. Though this language is rooted in the antagonisms of the Cold War, this boundary has outlasted our obsession with Soviet communism, living on in the ways our social policies align “family” with the absence of government institutions and intervention. After Nixon vetoed the CCDA, its congressional sponsors attempted to redesign and pass it in 1973, but an overwhelming wave of backlash from conservative civilian groups halted its progress. These groups propagated conspiracy theories by pamphlet and flyer, claiming that the childcare centers the bill proposed would lead to the unionization of children, who would be raised by the state to buck their parents’ demands and values. Many of these groups, including Oklahoma’s Women Who Want to be Women, were women-led, and they continued to influence the ’80s right-wing narrative that privileged the image of a patriarchal, nuclear family unit and demonized forces, like daycare, that might act on children outside of the family. These fictitious narratives became central to the rise of the Christian Right. The erasure of childcare as a feminist agenda point has had various consequences, but most profound has been the abysmal options offered to both workers and parents by the private childcare industry since Nixon’s veto. In considering the obvious need for universal childcare, I find myself reflecting on the demand for 24-hour childcare, which now feels unimaginably ambitious as a policy goal. And yet it isn’t an overestimation of what parents, 60 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

particularly those in single-parent households—the vast majority of whom are women—really need. That old tension between “communal” and “family-centered” deserves revisiting, because when it comes to childcare, the nuclear family is not enough. A recent episode of the podcast Intercepted, guest- hosted by progressive activist and writer Naomi Klein, explored the idea that COVID-19 and its aftermath may allow us to “escape from the nuclear family” and reimagine our family structures. Klein’s episode focused on the inefficiencies and deprivations of the single-family home at this unique point in history. “In a pandemic that confines us to our homes for work, school, and leisure, the single-family home is a really bad technology,” she said. Klein also interviewed members of a multiple-family living structure who extolled the benefits of their living arrangement, particularly when it comes to sharing childcare duties. Of course, any reenvisioning of the nuclear family must also reassess the role of men and fathers in providing childcare. Women in heterosexual households still do the bulk of domestic work, including childcare, even when both partners have full-time jobs. That this work is done largely by women has contributed to both its invisibility and to the lack of support for it as a public good. As I write this, my friends with children are creating their own makeshift childcare arrangements for the fall—many of which must, by necessity, be communal—in an environment where many still work from home, and where schools and daycare centers may not be fully open, safe, or available for the foreseeable future. Progressives, activists and politicians alike, should embrace universal childcare as a powerful tool for supporting families, so that quality care is equitably distributed and childcare workers (many of whom are also parents) are protected and paid well. We have a unique opportunity right now to reimagine our approach to caring for young children, as much a feminist issue today as it was in 1971.

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*Abuse & Neglect

Universal Childcare Reduces Child Abuse And Neglect By Over 20%

Sander and Thomsen 18 [Malte Sander and Stephan L. Thomsen. Both authors are Researchers for the Institute of Labor Economics. July 2018, “The Effects of Universal Public Childcare Provision on Cases of Child Neglect and Abuse”, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Effects-of-Universal-Public-Childcare-Provision-Sandner- Thomsen/ca62c19b8dec318b8beb0bbb212a7a1cca144e4a] /Triumph Debate

Table 1 shows the results of the difference-in-differences estimation from equation 1. The first rows of the table present the coefficients of interest, the interaction between counties with an expansion above the median and the post-treatment period (2008-2014). We present two types of treatment effects: the intention-to-treat effect (ITT) in the first row and the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) in the row below. Column 1 refers to the estimation results without including time- variant control variables. The coefficients reveal that in the treatment group counties, 0.24 fewer cases of child abuse and neglect per 1,000 children occurred than in the control group counties. This effect size does not look very relevant at first glance. However, considering that the average number of child protection cases over all years and counties per 1,000 children is 1.12, the effect size reflects a decrease in child protection cases of approximately 21.4 percent if the county increased its number of slots above the median expansion rate. The relevance of the effect size is further emphasized by the ATT. It shows that the direct effect of childcare coverage on those children placed would reduce child abuse and neglect by approximately 2.8 cases per 1,000 children. The results in Columns 2 to 4 additionally consider several time-variant county characteristics in the estimation. The coefficients get slightly smaller but are qualitatively comparable to the coefficients obtained from the main specification, and they are relevant in size (ATT: between - 2.238 to -1.966 cases per 1,000 children). Table 2 shows that the ITT and ATT effects of child care on child abuse and neglect are robust to alternative definitions of the treatment. The first row (I) presents a definition in which the post-treatment period includes the years 2007 to 2014 (instead of 2008 to 2014 in Table 1). In row II, the treatment group is defined as counties having a childcare expansion above the mean during the years 2002 and 2007 (instead of 2002 to 2014 in Table 1). Row III reports the estimation results when both definitional changes are applied. For all specifications, the effects remain stable, with similar sizes as when the main definitions are used. The next two rows (IV and V) present results when the expansion in the years 2007 to 2009 defines the counties above the median (IV) with the shorter post-treatment period and (V) with the longer post treatment period. Using this definition reduces the effects, and all estimates become statistically insignificant. Finally, the last four rows (VI to IX) present results when the treatment group is not defined by counties that are above the median expansion and above the 1st tertile and the 3rd tertile. When we only include those counties in the 3rd tertile, which strongly expanded the available slots, the effects are larger than in the main specification and are highly significant. Accordingly, when the treatment group is defined by the 1st tertile of expanding counties, the treatment effects are smaller and insignificant. Overall, the estimations clearly indicate that the increase in childcare slots in a county has a reducing effect on cases of child abuse and neglect.

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Access To Quality Childcare Mitigates Risk Factors That Lead To Child Abuse

Fortson et al. 16 [Beverly L. Fortson, behavioral scientist on the Child Maltreatment and Sexual Violence Team in the Research and Evaluation Branch of the Division of Violence Prevention (DVP) in CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2016, “Preventing child abuse and neglect : a technical package for policy, norm, and programmatic activities”, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/38864] /Triumph Debate

Assisted housing mobility: Housing rental assistance that facilitates moving to better resourced low poverty communities reduces household victimization, neighborhood social disorder, and increases neighborhood safety. Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment found a number of positive outcomes. The MTO experiment was a large randomized controlled trial conducted in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York in which low-income families living in high-poverty neighborhoods were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a group offered a housing voucher that could only be used to move to a low-poverty neighborhood (i.e., census tracts with 1990 poverty rates below 10 percent) along with housing- mobility counseling; a group offered a Section 8 housing voucher without any location restriction; and a control group. Participants were originally enrolled in the trial starting in 1994 and then followed for 10-15 years. MTO participants relative to controls experienced less psychological distress and depression, which are risk factors for child abuse and neglect. Children who moved to the lower poverty neighborhoods before age thirteen were more likely to attend college and went on to earn 31% more than those who did not receive the conditional voucher. Moreover, the girls raised in lower poverty neighborhoods were more likely to marry, and when they had children, more likely to maintain a relationship with the father. The girls were also more likely to live in lower poverty neighborhoods as adults. Thus, the grandchildren of the intervention group were more likely to be raised by two parents, enjoy higher family incomes and spend their entire childhood in neighborhoods with lower poverty, potentially breaking the cycle of poverty. Other studies have found that housing assistance also reduces homelessness a risk factor for placements with relatives or in foster care. Subsidized child care: Parents receiving child care subsidies tend to choose better quality child care. Better quality child care increases the likelihood that children will experience safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments and decreases the risk of maltreatment-related fatalities. In multi-level regression analyses of within-state trends, states meeting demand for child care assistance (i.e., no wait lists) decreased rates of child abuse and neglect after controlling for states’ childhood poverty, adults without a high school diploma, unemployment, child burden, and racial and ethnic composition; neighborhoods with more licensed child care spaces relative to child care need, as defined by the number of 0- to 5-year-olds in the neighborhood with working parents, had lower rates of child abuse and neglect. Access to affordable child care also reduces parental stress, and having access to high-quality child care is associated with fewer symptoms of maternal depression. Both parental stress and maternal depression are risk factors for child abuse and neglect. Moreover, children who live with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times more likely to die of inflicted injuries than children who live with both biological parents, thereby highlighting the importance of quality childcare, as mothers would not have to leave the child alone with other (unrelated) adults in the home. Livable wages: A matched controlled trial of a guaranteed annual livable income resulted in decreases in two of the risk factors for child abuse and neglect perpetration: low levels of education and mental health problems. Specifically, livable income was associated with improved school performance and graduation rates among children; a reduction in hospitalization rates, particularly for injuries; and physician visits, especially for mental health.

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Teachers And Caregivers Help Neglected Children Develop Better Emotional Processes

Mortensen et al. 16 [Jennifer A. Mortensen, Assistant professor of Human Development Studies at the University of Nevada, and Melissa A. Barnett, Associate Professor of Family Studies-Human Development at the University of Arizona, May 2016, “The role of child care in supporting the emotion regulatory needs of maltreated infants and toddlers”, Children and Youth Services Review, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740916300755?casa_token=nnsVGBofu5QAAAAA:OxNJBCjM7 uMLJ-mStmthhuDOpMc02fgsiM3Yv5GkA6hubSB-DPmt8VATUFKoxaypuiDBbag8vg] /Triumph Debate

Concurrent and longitudinal examinations of the effects of teacher caregiving quality have found that caregiving characterized by sensitive, responsive, and positive behaviors is associated with a variety of indicators of socioemotional wellbeing such as higher emotional engagement, social competence (Burchinal et al., 2008, Love et al., 2005), social development in elementary school (Peisner-Feinberg et al., 2001), and reduced behavior problems in adolescence (Vandell et al., 2010). Evidence for the effect of teacher caregiving quality specifically for the development of emotion regulation is limited (Mortensen & Barnett, 2015); however, evidence in related areas suggests that teachers play a critical role in these processes. Teacher-child relationship quality and teacher-child attachment are associated with fluctuations in children's cortisol levels, having potential implications for developing regulatory systems (Badanes et al., 2012, Lisonbee et al., 2008). Teachers also promote emotion regulation in infants and toddlers through synchronous interactions such as warm limit setting, watching for infant cues and bids for emotional reactions, using verbal reinforcement to encourage positive emotional expression, and providing physical comfort, empathy, or using redirection to help children work through negative emotions (Ahn, 2005, Feldman and Klein, 2003, Lee, 2006).Additionally, evidence suggests that there is significant variation in the effects of child care depending on early adverse experiences, with children facing the most risk typically showing the greatest gains when exposed to high-quality child care (including sensitive and responsive teacher-child interactions). For example, Watamura et al. (2011) highlighted the “double jeopardy” young children face when they experience both home and child care settings that are of poor quality (i.e., marked by few learning opportunities and unresponsive care) in terms of socioemotional adjustment across early childhood; however, children in low quality home settings and high quality child care settings showed improved outcomes. Similarly, child care program effects have been shown as particularly strong for children with mothers who have low levels of education (Peisner-Feinberg et al., 2001), socioeconomically disadvantaged boys, and African American children (Vogel et al., 2010, Votruba-Drzal et al., 2010). Children at risk for poor socioemotional outcomes given biological dispositions, such as a highly reactive temperament, also show evidence of greater socioemotional gains when in high quality child care environments (Phillips et al., 2012, Pluess and Belsky, 2009). As the research continues to develop in this area, special consideration needs to be paid to maltreated infants and toddlers. The cumulative risk factors these children experience may position them to make great gains in quality child care that provides them with a stable caregiving environment and sensitive-responsive caregivers; however, given the significant threats to emotion regulation development these children face, research with non-maltreated samples may be limited in application, and these children may have additional developmental needs that could be better addressed in this context. 4.2. Emerging evidence with victimized preschoolers Little research has empirically tested the effects of child care on the development of victimized infants and toddlers; however, emerging research with samples of preschool children points towards the promising role of child care programs in improving outcomes for these children. For example, for children living in non-parental and foster care arrangements, Head Start and other school readiness interventions have been shown effective at improving teacher-child relationships, reducing behavior problems, and improving emotion regulation strategies that help children work effectively in the classroom (Lipscomb et al., 2013, Pears et al., 2013). Close teacher-child relationships may also be especially significant in reducing externalizing problems for these children, as compared to their low-income, non-maltreated peers (Lipscomb et al., 2014).

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Universal Childcare Reduces Cases Of Abuse – A 1% Increase In Childcare Placements Leads To A 1.8% Reduction In Maltreatment Cases

Sander and Thomsen 20 [Malte Sander and Stephan L Thomsen, Both authors are researchers for the Institute of Labor Economics, 2020, “Preventing child maltreatment: Beneficial side effects of public childcare provision”, Hannover Economic Papers, https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/216969/1/dp-669.pdf] /Triumph Debate

In addition, to check whether the effects are temporary only or persist for longer periods, Column 5 adds the results of an extended model with a one-period lag of the indicator of public childcare provision. The corresponding coefficient estimate shows a lasting effect, reducing the number of child protection cases in the following period. Hence, the effects do not fade out quickly. Finally, Column 6 provides a simple test on potentially reversed causality, i.e., that the number of child protection cases may have forced a stronger expansion of public childcare provision. Obviously, this rarely tends to be the case, as the small and insignificant coefficient estimate implies. Overall, the main empirical results are robust to different specifications with the result that a one-percentage point increase in childcare places leading to a reduction of 1.8% cases per 1,000 children. As the following back on the envelope calculation shows, the effect sizes are meaningful: From 2002 to 2015, in West Germany childcare slots have increased by 25 percentage points; this expansion implies that in 2015, 45% fewer cases occurred in comparison to a situation in which the childcare supply had remained at the same level as 2002. In the years before 2015, the reduction in cases was lower than in 2015 as childcare supply was on a lower level. Summing up the avoided cases in each year between 2002 and 2015 (see Appendix I for the total number of cases for each year) implies that 20,625 more child maltreatment cases would have occurred if childcare supply had remained at the same level as 2002. 7. Mechanisms In this section, we use rich administrative data to identify the core mechanisms by which childcare expansion reduces child maltreatment cases. As explained in section 2, childcare expansion may affect child maltreatment through various channels. First, childcare may improve the quality of care as it reduces time in inadequate care. Second, it may give better income prospects to parents if labor supply increases. Third, it may reduce overburden if leisure time instead of labor supply increases, and finally, it may give state authorities the opportunity to monitor families at risk, which may change the behavior of potential perpetrators.

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Existing Child Care Structures, Requirements, And Fees Are Too Difficult And Can Trap Mothers In Abusive Relationships

Waller 2019 [Adam Waller, Producer for WBUR, February 19th 2019, “Day Care For All: How America Views Universal Pre-K”, WBUR, https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/02/19/day-care-for-all-universal-pre-k-child-care-working-families ] /Triumph Debate

How hard? As any parent can tell you, child care is one of the biggest costs a family faces. According to the Economic Policy Institute’s state-by- state tables, in Alabama it’s $5,637 a year for an infant and an only slightly less daunting $4,871 for a 4-year-old. That’s 69 percent of the average rent and 33.7 percent less than the cost of in-state tuition at a four-year college. At the other end of the alphabet, West Virginia parents are worse off: For them, infant care, at $7,926, is 32 percent more than the cost of college. Pick a state at random and the results are no better. New York: $14,144, or double the cost of a year of college. Illinois: $12,964. California: $11,817. No wonder child care is affordable for only a small minority of families, meaning they pay 10 percent or less of their income for it: 17.8 percent of families in Minnesota, 18.7 percent in Massachusetts, 37.7 percent in Georgia. And that’s for just one child. Most families have more." The New Republic: "A New Deal for Day Care" — "Most Americans have long considered child care to be a personal problem rather than a collective one. But times have changed. Today, nearly eight million families pay nannies, day care centers, or some other provider to watch over their children, according to census data. This shift, from parental to professional care, has not been a happy one economically: Annual costs can easily reach tens of thousands of dollars, outpacing what families typically spend on food and, in many states, housing or even public college tuition. In Massachusetts, for example, where child care costs are some of the highest in the country, a parent with an infant spends an average of $20,125 each year on day care; freshman-year tuition at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, runs only $14,596. The expense doesn’t necessarily result in good care: Fewer than 10 percent of day care centers, according to a 2006 survey, have well-trained and well-educated providers, who read books aloud to children, respond to them, ask questions, and encourage their development. "That’s for the parents who can even get professional child care. Large stretches of the United States are considered 'child care deserts,' where day care centers either don’t exist at all or are in such demand that there are more than three times as many kids as available spots. Take Minnesota, a state with one of the most intense child care shortages in the country; in the Twin Cities, more than a million people live in one of these deserts—roughly two-thirds of the population. It’s even worse in the state’s rural areas: The numbers reach as high as 84 percent. Across Minnesota, there are more than four children for every available day care center slot. "Fifty years ago, this situation would have essentially been unthinkable: In 1970, about half of all American mothers stayed home to care for their children. But today, the vast majority of parents, men and women, want to work outside the home; yet too often they can’t—because they can’t afford care for their children. In 2016, nearly two million parents with kids age five and younger had to quit, turn down a job, or significantly change their work because of child care problems. Women are often the hardest hit. Since the 1980s, as child care costs have climbed 70 percent, working mothers’ labor force participation rate has declined 13 percent." Elle: "Having a child will bankrupt you" — "For a while Angelica Gonzalez was able to make everything work. Shortly after she graduated college, she landed a dream job—working as a family liaison in a school district—and she qualified for child care subsidies that meant she had to pay only $15 a month for her young daughter. Then one day she received an unexpected child support payment of about $200, which increased her income so sharply that her subsidy was rescinded. Nearly overnight, her child care payment shot up to $800. She took on a second job, bringing her kids with her in the evenings, but it became too much. 'This whole life I had built was just falling apart,' she says. "Gonzalez left both jobs in search of higher pay, but nothing better materialized. She turned to neighbors to watch her children, but that proved to be dangerous: one person so neglected them that her daughter almost got run over by a car. "It was in the middle of this difficult period that she got involved with a man who promised to help her but who turned out to be abusive. 'My abuser was like, "Oh you work so hard, and you're struggling, and I just want to help,"' she says. '[I was] feeling so vulnerable and so exhausted and so overworked.' Eventually, she was offered what seemed like a way out—a salaried sales position in marketing that would have allowed her to support herself. "But every day care center she contacted to care for her two-year-old son, the youngest of her two children at the time, was completely full. 'I don't have family or friends or people to kind of fill that gap,' she says. So she stayed with her boyfriend, and the more he helped, the harder it became to escape: 'When I would try to leave him, I'd be homeless.' "

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Child Maltreatment Causes A Laundry List of Psychical & Developmental Issues

CWIG 19 [Child Welfare Information Gateway, April 2019, “Long-Term Consequences of Child Abuse and Neglect”, Children’s Bureau, https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/long_term_consequences.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Some long-term physical effects of abuse or neglect may occur immediately (e.g., brain damage caused by head trauma), but others can take months or years to emerge or be detectable. There is a straightforward link between physical abuse and physical health, but it is also important to recognize that maltreatment of any type can cause long-term physical consequences. Childhood maltreatment has been linked to higher risk for a wide range of long- term and/or future health problems, including—but not limited to—the following (Widom, Czaja, Bentley, & Johnson, 2012; Monnat & Chandler, 2015; Afifi et al., 2016): Diabetes, Lung disease, Malnutrition, Vision problems, Functional limitations (i.e., being limited in activities), Heart attack, Arthritis, Back problems, High blood pressure, Brain damage, Migraine headaches, Chronic bronchitis/emphysema/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Cancer, Stroke, Bowel disease, Chronic fatigue syndrome. Child abuse and neglect also has been associated with certain regions of the brain failing to form, function, or grow properly. For example, a history of maltreatment may be correlated with reduced volume in overall brain size and may affect the size and/or functioning of the following brain regions (Bick & Nelson, 2016): The amygdala, which is key to processing emotions, The hippocampus, which is central to learning and memory, The orbitofrontal cortex, which is responsible for reinforcement-based decision-making and emotion regulation, The cerebellum, which helps coordinate motor behavior and executive functioning, The corpus callosum, which is responsible for left brain/right brain communication and other processes (e.g., arousal, emotion, higher cognitive abilities) Fortunately, however, there is promising evidence that children’s brains may be able to recover with the help of appropriate interventions (Bick & Nelson, 2016). For additional information about these impacts, refer to Information Gateway’s Understanding the Effects of Maltreatment on Brain Development (https://www. childwelfare.gov/pubs/issue-briefs/brain-development/). Additionally, the type of maltreatment a child experiences can increase the risk for specific physical health conditions. For example, one study found that children who experienced neglect were at increased risk for diabetes, poorer lung functioning, and vision and oral health problems. Children who had been physically abused were at higher risk for diabetes and malnutrition. Children who were victims of sexual abuse were more likely to contract hepatitis C and HIV (Widom et al., 2012).

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Child Maltreatment Reduces Life-Long Economic Stability

Currie et al. 10 [Janet Currie, Researcher for the Department of Economics, Columbia University, and Cathy Spatz Widom, Psychology Department of John Jay College, April 20, 2010, “Long-Term Consequences of Child Abuse and Neglect on Adult Economic Well-Being”, Child Maltreatment, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1077559509355316?casa_token=pyRPFY_8d9kAAAAA:1onGQvdPgdjUW s1jK34GKB1hSg0nGuYWUghh0xUFchtsQzj7p7O5W82v5LzTCNv_Rskd9GOpCnGW] /Triumph Debate

Table 2 presents the results of bivariate analyses and shows that those who were maltreated as children have inferior adult out- comes along most measured dimensions of economic productivity and that estimates are generally similar in the full and matched samples. As of the 1989–1995 assessment, when these individuals were young adults (approximately age 29), participants with histories of childhood maltreatment had obtained a year less of education on average, had lower scores on an IQ test, and were less likely to have a skilled job, compared to controls. Disadvantages persisted into middle age. In 2003–2004, individuals with histories of abuse and neglect were about 14 percentage points less likely to be employed and significantly less likely to own a bank account, stock, a vehicle, or a home, compared to matched controls. For the full sample, abuse/ neglect was associated with less likelihood of having nonmortgage debt, but this is one outcome where the difference was not significant in the matched pair sample. Where participants reported earnings, individuals with documented histories of abuse and/or neglect reported almost $8,000 less per year on average than controls. Table 3 presents the results of regressions estimating the long- term economic consequences of child maltreatment. We con- ducted separate estimations for each economic outcome or dependent variable, with controls for demographic and background characteristics. Table 3 shows that many of the differences between the maltreated group and controls remain statistically significant, despite controls for demographic and background characteristics––individuals maltreated in their childhood had lower IQ test scores and earnings and were less likely to be in a skilled job (1989–1995), be employed, own stock, own a vehicle, and own a home (2003–2004) compared with the controls. For one outcome (owning a home), a significant odds ratio with the full sample is not significant in the matched pairs sample. For two outcomes (bank account and nonmortgage debt), a nonsignificant odds ratio in the full sample became significant at the 90% level of confidence in the matched sample.

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Education

Universal Pre-K Increases Years Of Schooling, Degree Completion And Graduation Rates – Multiple Studies Prove

Dietrichson et al 2018 [Jens Dietrichson, Ida L. Kristiansen, Bjorn C. V. Nielsen, 2018, “Universal Preschool Programs and Long-Term Child Outcomes: A Systematic Review”, https://pure.vive.dk/ws/files/1608357/10621_Universal_Preschool.pdf ] /Triumph Debate

We have two main findings regarding the average effects: Firstly, the effects on test scores and school grades, and on measures related to health, well-being, and behavior varied across (and sometimes within) studies. The magnitudes also varied, and the majority of estimates were not statistically significant (as reported in the studies). Secondly, all estimates for outcome measures related to adequate primary and secondary school progression, years of schooling and highest degree completed, and earnings and employment indicated beneficial average effects. The magnitudes of these estimates were often substantial, as well as statistically significant. Furthermore, the three included BCAs indicated benefits-to-costs ratios clearly above one. While the majority of studies and estimates thus indicated that universal preschool programs have beneficial long-term effects, the differences between outcome types are important to understand, and we discuss potential explanations below. A simple explanation for the differences between outcome types could be that some programs were of a low enough quality to be harmful on average. No harmful effects were detected in adulthood, but the few studies that included estimates in primary and secondary school as well as in adulthood showed consistent beneficial average effects over time. If harmful effects are similarly persistent, this pattern indicates a crucial point: universal preschool programs need to be of better quality than children’s counterfactual mode of care to produce beneficial effects. Another interpretation could be that the full effects of universal preschool are better captured by the longer-term measures. Measures like graduation, earnings, and employment are arguably influenced by a broader set of skills than some of the measures for which studies found harmful effects. For example, improved personality skills seem to be the best explanation for the patterns in the Perry Preschool program of on the one hand enduring beneficial effects on crime, health, and earnings, and on the other hand short-term but quickly fading effects on cognitive skills (Heckman et al., 2013). However, as the included studies found some harmful effects on crime, health, and behavioral measures, lasting effects on personality skills cannot explain all the differences found between outcome types. An additional reason related to the timing of measurement is that harmful effects may wane, either because other interventions are later given to children who fall behind, or naturally as children get older. For example, there could be short-term harmful effects on health and socialization from being around other children, but such effects may pass or even turn beneficial over time (e.g., Strachan, 1989; Baker et al., 2008). Although there was some evidence of fadeout of initial harmful effects (see e.g., Lebihan et al., 2017), most of them seem too long-term for waning effects to be a major explanation of the differences between outcomes. Some outcome measures may be more variable and therefore more likely to produce both harmful and beneficial estimates by chance, despite the true effect being beneficial or harmful. Test score and grades are typically measured on one occasion, while school progression, graduation, employment, and earnings are the result of more continuous processes. They are therefore less prone to chance results. Included cognitive skills tests were often not high stakes for students, and incentives and motivation to perform well matter for test results (e.g., Kautz et al., 2014). If children do not put in a lot of effort, the chance component of test scores may be substantial. However, some harmful effects were found on outcomes that were not measured at one test occasion and that are high stakes. The increased crime rates found in Baker et al. (2015) is perhaps the best example. In our view, the differences between outcome types are not due to upward bias in studies showing beneficial effects. Individual studies may of course be biased, but the risk of upward bias in studies showing beneficial effects did not seem to be higher than the risk of downward bias in studies showing harmful effects. Studies were more likely to systematically overstate statistical significance, due to for example multiple hypothesis testing and problems with properly adjusting for clustering. These problems also pertained to studies showing harmful effects and would not change the direction of the effects. Publication bias may mean that we should temper our conclusions regarding both beneficial and harmful effects, as null effects might be missing from the literature. While this may be the case, the treatment group in the included studies was often just more exposed than the control group. Given an effect, such study designs underestimate both beneficial and harmful effects. The distribution of true effects may therefore contain both larger harmful and beneficial effects, as well as more null and small effects. In any case, unless harmful effects were less likely to be published or written up – of which we have no evidence – publication bias cannot explain the differences between outcome types. We cannot rule out a combination of the other explanations, but the simplest explanation of the differences between outcome types is that they were caused by different universal preschool programs having different effects. Indeed, given the variation in factors related to quality in the studied programs it would have been surprising if we had not found some differences. It was perhaps more surprising, also in relation to the message from prior reviews, that the results were not more mixed. We return to the causes of quality differences below, where we discuss heterogeneity in terms of SES and gender.

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UCC Boosts College Graduation Rates And Adulthood Income – No Harms

Kawarazaki 2021 [Hikaru Kawarazaki University College London, January 2021, “The Hidden Mechanism: Revealing the Effects of Early Childhood Education and Care After Half a Century”, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=3394392 ] /Triumph Debate

This study estimated the long-term effects of ECEC participation at age four on college completion, adulthood income, and personality traits. The main analysis was based on an IV regression because there is a potential threat of endogeneity; parental choice to enroll children in ECEC may be correlated with unobservable household characteristics. To address this issue, I used an exogenous policy that affects enrollment in the childcare system and children’s income only through enrollment status. Specifically, the analysis used the exogenous expansion of ECEC from the 1960s to 1980s in Japan owing to the spike in demand under Japan’s high rate of economic growth. This expansion’s rate differed regionally, and supply-side constraints were generally binding, allowing me to treat this variation as exogenous. The results show that enrollment in Japan’s childcare system increases children’s future income and wages by age 50 as well as the likelihood of college completion. The subsample analysis reveals that most effects come from those of female children of 35–50 years. In addition, ECEC increases the probability of college completion for girls. There seem to be no long-run effects on non-cognitive abilities measured using the Big Five indexes. Furthermore, I examined the mechanism behind the effects by conducting mediation analysis. Based on the analyses, most of the effects on income can be explained by the rise in the likelihood of college completion for women, which in turn leads to higher wage, and, therefore, it leads to higher income. This research contributes to the literature as well as policymaking. Few previous studies have discussed the long-term LATEs from the last 50 years of universal childcare systems as opposed to the ITT effects, shorter- term effects, or effects of ECEC with targeting. Few studies have discussed the mechanisms behind this phenomenon as well. I also show the long-term positive effects of early-stage intervention on income, which is also useful for policymaking. If a government allocates a fixed budget for one cohort over its lifetime, my results might imply that it may be more efficient to limit the allocation of funds to them when they are young rather than when they became adults, only because doing so would boost skills, such as their cognitive and non-cognitive abilities in childhood, and increase their future income. Spending resources on older cohorts may lead only to consumption without any economic growth. Although no direct effects are observed, this research exemplifies the usefulness of ECEC by showing its indirect effects. ECEC reduces inequalities between the advantaged and disadvantaged by benefiting the latter and not imposing direct non-monetary cost to the former. I also find that ECEC increases the likelihood of college completion and raises future income for women. These results imply that ECEC can reduce inequalities and encourage governments to eliminate any barriers to enrollment, such as childcare fees, particularly for disadvantaged children, given the finding that there is no effect and cost for advantaged children. The results also implies that ECEC enrollment could break the intergenerational poverty chain because the early childhood intervention reduces the inequality in their adulthood. Regarding gender inequality, these results are informative for countries or communities where women have culturally and historically been relegated to home production or part-time work. This research is also useful for discussing the expansion of ECEC in developing countries, as described in Target 4.2 of the United Nation’s SDGs (United Nations, 2015).67 This is because this analysis is based on the universal (i.e., not targeted) ECEC expansion of 1960–1989 in Japan during which the country experienced rapid development. Some might think that an alternative policy can be more efficient, such as parental leave where parents, especially mothers are supposed to spend more time with their children. However, as Yamaguchi, Asai and Kambayashi (2018b) discussed, using childcare is beneficial for improving parenting quality and mothers’ subjective well-being, in addition to reducing stress among low-education mothers, while the parenting quality of low-education mothers is reported as low. Therefore, a childcare system is beneficial for both parents and children from disadvantaged households. The main caveat of this research comes from the data. Although the questionnaire used is unique, the sample size is smaller than that of recent empirical works. Therefore, the estimations’ standard errors are large, and, consequently, the estimations less accurate than they would be otherwise. The data are also not panel data and contain retrospective or subjective records, which could reduce accuracy. Overcoming these caveats is left for future research. Another potential caveat is that the result cannot be directly referred to improve the situation in Japan of the current situation because the availability of ECEC is substantially different. The implication stated here can be useful in developing countries where the government is investing in ECEC under the SDGs (United Nations, 2015).

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ECEC Increases High School Graduation Rates - Latvia Proves

Kūkoja 2020 [Katrīne Kūkoja, Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences, “The Effect of Early Childhood Education and Care Services in Latvia”, Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability, https://content.sciendo.com/configurable/contentpage/journals$002fjtes$002f21$002f2$002farticle-p17.xml] /Triumph Debate

Research results show that over the past years high positive correlation can be observed when it comes to the ECEC service attendance rate and the following indicators: fertility rate (0.879), women employment (0.981), overall employment (0.980) and average earning (0.955), indicating that when the ECEC service attendance rate increases, these indicators also have a tendency to increase. Weaker, but still statistically relevant positive correlation can be observed when we look at the high school graduation rate (0.703). Regarding the teen pregnancy, results showed that during the period of 2010ñ 2017 high negative correlation could be observed (-0.976), indicating that when the ECEC attendance rate increased, the teen pregnancy rate had a tendency to decrease in Latvia. Weaker, but still statistically relevant negative correlation can be observed when we look at the rate of administrative crime level in Latvia (-0.786). However, research results showed that no correlation could be observed between the ECEC service attendance rate and the educational attainment indicators ñ average state examination results of third graders in mathematics (-0.110) and learning language (0.111), indicating that in the reporting period statistically relevant connection did not exist between these indicators (see Table 1). As mentioned above, to get a deeper understanding of the results of short-term education attainment tendencies in Latvia, teachersí pilot-surveys in two elementary schools of Valmiera were carried out. The survey results showed that one of the main reasons for this situation was the fact that children came to school inadequately and unevenly prepared (for example, some students could not read) indicating some ECEC quality problems. Some of the other responses mentioned in surveys regarding tendencies of average state examination results of third graders in mathematics (-0.110) and learning language are the following: ó The number of students in class is too high and the proportion of younger pupils has increased in recent years. More children are starting school at age of 6 and it pulls the average mark down; ó Many children have behavioral and learning disturbance problems, as well as lack of motivation. The main reason is the fact that children start school earlier; ó There is a continuous change, which results in pupils and teachers being over- loaded with ìunnecessaryî things, for example, over time there has been an increase in requirements imposed on children who start attending school ñ now students have to know how to read before starting school; ó Each year the state examination differs in the difficulty level.

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UCC Incrases Probability Of Attending College And Graduating HS – Head Start Program Proves

Garces et al 2002 Eliana Garces of Economic Analysis LLC, Duncan Thomas Department of Economics UCLA, Janet Currie Department of Economics, UCLA, and National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2002, “Longer-Term Effects of Head Start”, The American Economic Review, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/00028280260344560 ] /Triumph Debate

Very little is known about the longer-term effects of participation in Head Start, although previous research showing “fade-out” in effects on test scores raises legitimate questions about whether early gains translate into benefits later in life. This paper uses nonexperimental data on young adults in the PSID to ask whether participation in Head Start is associated with benefits in adulthood. We exploit the panel dimension of the PSID and control for observable differences between respondents when they were young children. We also exploit the family-based sampling frame of the PSID by including maternal fixed effects and comparing adult outcomes of siblings. Participation in Head Start has positive effects on the probability of attending college. However, these positive effects are driven by whites. Whites also see large increases in the probability of graduating from high school, and possibly in earnings as young adults. We did not find statistically significant effects for African Americans, though we did find some suggestive evidence that Head Start may increase the probability of graduating from high school among African-American males. We also find that African-Americans who participated in Head Start are significantly less likely to have been booked or charged with a crime than siblings who did not. Head Start did not appear to have any significant effect on reports of being booked or charged among whites. Finally, we find some evidence suggesting that there are positive spillovers from older children who attended Head Start to their younger siblings, particularly with regard to brushes with the law. We have sought to carefully describe the limitations as well as the strengths of our study sample and methods. With those limitations in mind, we conclude that the results are supportive of the view that Head Start participants gain social and economic benefits that persist into adulthood. Moreover, as we have argued above, our methods are likely to provide lower-bound estimates on the positive effects of Head Start. However, it would be foolhardy to leap to conclusions about the long-term efficacy of a large program like Head Start on the basis of a single study. Much remains to be discovered about the nature and distribution of longer-term benefits from early childhood interventions.

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Political Participation

UCC Is Key To Increasing Voter Turnout And Political Participation

McElwee 2015 [Sean McElwee, research associate at Demos, July 27th 2015, “Most Americans don’t vote in elections. Here’s why”, http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/7/most-americans-dont-vote-in-elections-heres-why.html ] /Triumph Debate

Gaps in voter turnout exacerbate the United States’ already unequal political system. Its uniquely difficult electoral system is responsible for much of the low voter participation. This includes the practice of filling key offices during midterm or off-cycle elections, the odd Electoral College, a majoritarian rather than proportional system and the voter registration barrier, which leaves the responsibility for voter registration to citizens. (In most countries, the government conducts voter education and registration.) It doesn’t help that one of the two main political parties views reducing voter turnout as a key to its electoral success. Furthermore, the fact that the United States disenfranchises its many felons contributes to the low turnout. To illustrate why the turnout gap matters, a recent study by political scientist Robert Erikson found that the median voter in 2008 in terms of income was at the 66th percentile for the general population. And as political scientist Michael Barber estimates, fewer than 3 percent of campaign donors, who give more than $200, make less than $50,000 — almost the same as the median household income in the United States. Assuming that politicians respond to the median voter, they are less likely to favor policies of redistribution than they would if they responded to the median citizen. There is also another, less recognized factor at play. In her 2005 book, “How Policies Make Citizens,” political scientist Andrea Louise Campbell argued that government structures and policies could either facilitate or deter citizen participation in politics. For example, Campbell notes that the establishment of Social Security led to increased civic participation by the elderly (especially the poor), by motivating them to defend and seek the program’s expansion. By contrast, the stigma associated with welfare programs such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) led to a decrease in voter turnout. Other studies corroborate Campbell’s findings. A 2010 study on the role of public policies in civic and political engagement found that initiatives such as Head Start, a federal program that provides early childhood education, health, nutrition and other services to low-income children and their families, increase political participation, while welfare and public housing assistance policies reduce it. Similarly, Suzanne Mettler, author of “Soldiers to Citizens,” argues that the GI Bill, which provided many benefits to World War II veterans, boosted their civic participation. Veterans had a positive experience with the program and felt that they were treated with dignity and respect, which lead to greater political participation, not only through voting but also by boosting veterans’ involvement in civic organizations. In a 2012 USA Today poll, 59 percent of non-voters said they were frustrated by the fact that “nothing ever gets done” in government while 54 percent cited “corruption” and 42 percent pointed to the lack of difference between the two parties. About 37 percent said politics doesn’t make much difference in their lives. These results suggest that the most effective Republican disenfranchisement strategy may not be voter ID laws, but grinding government to a halt. By forcing government shutdowns, Republican leaders and lawmakers have significantly reduced voter participation to historic lows (see chart below). Less than 1 in 5 Americans believe that government works for the benefit of everyone. Furthermore, recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions such as Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United v. FEC, which led to the influx of corporate cash into politics and the rise of the donor class, have together turned more people away from politics. But we can’t blame only conservatives for the low voter turnout. Many Americans forgo voting because they don’t see differences between Democrats and Republicans. “Respondents who perceive a greater difference between the candidates ... are more likely to vote,” political scientists Jan Leighley and Jonathan Nagler, write in their book, “Who Votes Now?” “Those in the top income quintile see a larger difference between the candidates on ideology than do those in the bottom quintile.” Their findings support claims made in recent cross-national research and a previous study by political scientist David Brockington, in which he argues that when individuals feel ideological affinity to candidates, they are more likely to vote. In addition, “choice-rich environments,” in which parties span a wider ideological range, also boost voter turnout. Ahead of the 2016 elections, Democrats need to embrace popular progressive policies to convince potential voters that they are indeed different and that they offer real solutions. Americans must also fight back against voter suppression attempts, among other things, by demanding automatic voter registration. Moreover, in order to reduce the power of money in politics and limit the influence of the donor class, lawmakers must work to increase the power of the people through public financing and strict lobbying regulations. But these steps aren’t enough. Voters must also pressure the candidates to put forward a vision that benefits the middle and lower class. People are far more likely to participate in politics if they feel that government plays an important and beneficial role in their lives. Policies such as debt-free college, universal child-care and pre-K education, a higher minimum wage and living wage job guarantees could increase voter turnout and civic engagement. American democracy is not for sale. The voting booth is a potent force against the power of plutocracy.

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UCC Is The Only Way Means Through Which Women Can Gain Full Citizenship And Political Participation

Le Blanc 2009 [Susan Julia Le Blanc, Athabasca University, April 2009, “Reinserting Women in to Historical and Contemporary Child Care: The Politics of Universal Child Care”, http://dtpr.lib.athabascau.ca/action/download.php?filename=mais/susanleblancProject.pdf ] /Triumph Debate

For child care to be available for all it needs the political agenda importance similar to education and healthcare for Canadian society to begin to truly value child care done by both mothers and workers. Universal child care would aid the ideological evolutionary process by increasing the value of this affective work as all Canadians would have shared ownership, and therefore shared power, in this state funded program akin to established health care and education in Canada. In ideological terms universal child care has the potential to shift the affective responsibility from women to a shared societal responsibility. Universal child care would actively raise the social importance of child welfare, child care workers, and child care done by mothers. It is no accident that the main means of controlling women is the lastxxvi to be meaningfully transformed by policyxxvii, or by law. Historically women’s absence from formal politics and current under representation in the legislature is due to the continuously recreated subordinate status of women within the institution of gender which systemically permeates all other social structures and institutions, particularly the family. The real threat of universal child care is in offering women the means of managing one of the most significant barriers to their full citizenship participation and the opportunity of tipping the distribution of political power from the male strong hold to a more democratically equitable position. In this way universal child care, as borrowed from Baker et al., (2004) is about improving equality of conditions to enable women to “exercise real choice” (p. 41). Society’s capacity is currently unable or unwilling to embark upon the project of addressing in a full and more meaningful way how ideology is a barrier to transformatory change for women. The institution of gender has served to maintain the social, political, and economic order of patriarchy for millenniums. We have yet to escape the legacy of patriarchy as an ideology that serves to maintain and recreate itself long after patriarchal laws have been repealed. Ideology is slow to evolve and women have not yet reached full citizenship status. Patriarchy, the underlying ideology behind the gender division of domestic labour is centuries old and permeates all social institutions. Drawing on the work of Lerner (1986); the patriarchal ideology underpinning gender is that biology is destiny. The substantive default vocational categorization for woman is assuming her to the role of either past, present, or future mother and subsequently attaching affective and domestic duties (significantly child care), thereby limiting her to those roles in spite of prohibitive legislation in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Universal child care in Canada is about the conditions women need to pursue their citizenship potential, raise the value of child care and the value of those that do this care work. Until we obtain this condition of substantive equity the issue of child care must be addressed in the context of women.

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Head Start Programs Increased Political Participation

Karch 2016 [Andrew Karch, Arleen C. Carlson Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, 2016, “Early Start: Preschool Politics in the United States”, https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/73a99c47-6a6c-4bf8-9348-3cecdb57f572/625245.pdf ] /Triumph Debate

The long-term impact of federalism may vary across policy areas due to the structure of existing programs and their political appeal. Programs that offer the states considerable discretion might facilitate the mobilization of state officials, while those constraining subnational authority might limit it. The varying administrative role of state governments across programs like Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families therefore represents an analytical opportunity to examine and refine the argument advanced in this book. Furthermore, the popularity of existing programs might influence whether state officials will mobilize to defend their prerogatives. If a program is viewed as a political liability because of the financial burden it imposes or the social construction of its target populations (Schneider and Ingram 1993), state officials might be willing to cede administrative control to Congress. Future research on the long-term impact of federalism and venue shopping should seek to identify the conditions that are most likely to generate feedback effects. The political evolution of Head Start, a targeted national program that serves disadvantaged young children and their families, also illustrates how policy feedback contributed to the fragmentation of American preschool education. Established as part of the War on Poverty in 1965, Head Start maintained a tenuous existence during its early years but was placed on surer footing during the 1970s (Vinovskis 2005; Zigler and Muenchow 1992). It is a comprehensive program that provides educational and other services. Head Start parents value the decision-making authority the program allows them to exercise and the job opportunities it provides. Recent survey evidence suggests that recipients view Head Start as effective (Mettler and Stonecash 2008). Experience with the program also seems to increase political participation (Schneider and Sidney 2009; Soss 1999). The existence of Head Start spurred the creation of the National Head Start Association in 1973, which has been an outspoken and active defender of the program for the past four decades. Ironically, the mobilization of Head Start supporters contributed to the fragmentation of the early education policy community. They generally favored the expansion of publicly funded programs but viewed major changes as potential threats to their prerogatives and their budgets. Tensions between Head Start supporters and other advocates were evident in the 1970s, when a California official described Head Start teachers as an obstacle to an early childhood bill and when the Child Care Act of 1979 sought to accommodate the Head Start community by avoiding any direct conflict with the program. By the late 1980s, Head Start supporters often viewed new early childhood programs as substitutes for, rather than com- plements to, their favored program. At a congressional hearing in 1988, for example, the president of the National Head Start Association openly expressed her fear that a new national program would compete with Head Start for funding. The case study evidence and quantitative analysis presented in chapter 8 of this book suggest that Head Start also generated policy feedback at the state level. Accommodating the concerns of the Head Start community was often a prerequisite for major reforms

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Negative Evidence

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Health, Cognitive & Development Harms

Empirics Prove – Universal Childcare Can Negatively Affect Test Scores, Health Outcomes, Crime Rates And Have Gendered Results

Baker et. al 15 [Michael Baker, Jonathan Gruber, and Kevin Milligan, Baker is a Professor of Economics at the Universiy of Toronto. Milligan is a Professor of Economics at the University of British Columbia. Gruber is a Professor of Economics at MIT, September 2015, “NON-COGNITIVE DEFICITS AND YOUNG ADULT OUTCOMES: THE LONG-RUN IMPACTS OF A UNIVERSAL CHILD CARE PROGRAM”, https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w21571/w21571.pdf] / Triumph Debate

As noted above we are unable to follow any impact of the Quebec program on cognitive outcomes at older ages in the NLSCY due to issues with the standardized math tests in the first waves. Instead we use data from periodic standardized testing of Canadian teens through SAIP/PCAP and PISA. Note that the 2009 PISA scores are likely to capture both teenagers in Quebec who were and were not exposed to the child care program. We consider different coding of the EXPOSURE dummy for the 2009 scores to discover how the estimates vary on this margin. The estimates are presented in table 3. The standard deviations of the scores are approximately one so the point estimates can be read directly as proportions of a standard deviation. In the first row are the results for the PCAP/SAIP tests. The estimates indicate a marginally significant, negative impact of exposure to the Quebec program on math scores of over 20 percent of a standard deviation, and statistically insignificant, small, negative impacts on reading and science scores. In the next two rows are the results for the PISA tests alternatively viewing the 2009 scores as capturing Quebec children who are not or who are exposed to the child care program. If we view the 2009 scores as pre-program, we obtain a marginally significant positive impact of exposure in math of almost 12 percent of a standard deviation and an almost equal marginally significant negative impact in science. The impact on reading is positive, statistically insignificant and very small. If instead we view the 2009 scores as post program, the impact on math is still positive but larger and significant at the 1 percent level and one quarter of a standard deviation, while the impact for reading and science are both statistically insignificant and very small. On balance the results in table 3 do not provide strong evidence of a persistent negative impact of the Quebec program on cognitive ability, as first evidenced on table 1 in PPVT scores. The least precise inference is for math scores. The estimates show exposure to the Quebec program leading to over a 20 percent standard deviation increase or decrease in scores. The inference for science and reading scores is a more consistent story of no impact of the Quebec program. Overall there is no strong evidence in these estimates that the Quebec Family Plan had a lasting impact on children’s cognitive development. Health and Life Satisfaction We next study the impact of exposure to the Quebec program on health status and on life satisfaction using the CCHS and CMHS surveys. The results of this analysis are shown in Table 4. For the CCHS, we show the results for ages 12-20, while in the CHMS we use a sample of 15-20 year olds. All health measures are coded so a higher score indicates a worse outcome. The point estimates from each survey mostly indicate that exposure to the Quebec program is associated with some worsening of self-reported health. For youths exposed to the program, the health indicator rises in both surveys. The increase in the CCHS is 7.2 percent of a standard deviation. The rise is a much larger in the CMHS but the standard error is larger as well so that the estimate is not significant. The estimate for life satisfaction is small and statistically insignificant in the CCHS, but indicates a statistically significant poorer outcome in the CMHS; the effect is large, amounting to more than one-third of a standard deviation. There are no significant effects on mental health or stress, but quality of life measure also worsens significantly in the CHMS, once again by more than a third of a standard deviation. Overall, these results give strong indications of a worsening of both health and life satisfaction among those older youths exposed to the Quebec child care program. Youth Crime Our final measure of longer-run outcomes is youth criminal activity. In evaluations of the Perry Preschool program, the long-run impact on crime was a vital component of the analysis.17 Our aim here is to investigate whether the link between non-cognitive development and crime holds up in a symmetric case where there is a decrease in measured non-cognitive development. As noted above, we have two measures of criminality—rates of accused and convictions. We focus on four crimes (personal, property, other criminal code convictions and drugs), as well as an aggregate measure of the incidence of all of these crimes. To lay the foundation for this analysis, Figures 1 and 2 show cohort-specific age profiles of differences in the aggregate crime rates per 100,000 people between Quebec and the rest of Canada, in which the cohorts vary by their exposure to the Quebec program. For example, the bottom light dashed line in each graph shows the difference between the crime rate in Quebec and the crime rate in the rest of Canada, at each age, for those born before 1993. These children were not exposed to the child care program in Quebec. The light grey long dashed line shows the same differences for those born in 1993, who had one year of exposure (at age 4). The solid light grey line shows the differences for those born in 1994, who also had one year of exposure. The dark grey lines show the results for cohorts born between 1995 and 1997, who had two to three years of exposure. The final set of black lines at the top shows the results for cohorts born from 1998 to 2000, who had three to five years of exposure. The differences in the age profiles by cohort in these graphs are quite striking: there is a mostly monotonic decrease in the difference between the crime rates in Quebec and the rest of Canada with years of exposure to the Quebec program. That is, as cohorts in Quebec were more exposed to the program, their crime rates rose relative to the rest of Canada. This visual representation allows us to rule out the argument that this is just an aging effect: more exposed cohorts have higher differential crime rates at every age. It also allows us to rule out the idea that this is just a time series effect – at any year, crime rates are higher for more exposed children (this can be seen by following the points diagonally – e.g. in 2010 those born in 1993 are 17 and have a much lower differential than those born in 1997, who are 13 at that year). This is striking evidence that exposure to this program is associated with higher levels of crime. In the appendix we show 77 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

similar figures for the four specific crime types that we study. The story is similar to that told by figures 1 and 2-- a positive effect of exposure to the child care program on crime rates for each type of crime. For drug accusations, the profiles are more compressed, but still show the same pattern. In table 5 we formalize this inference with regression estimates. In column (1) we present the simple difference-in-differences results, where we control for fixed effects for province, year, age, and gender. In addition, we also include a set of dummies for crime type in the pooled regression for all crime types. In column (2) is a richer specification that includes the full set of second order interactions between province, age and gender (and crime type in the regressions for the aggregate rates). Finally, in column (3) we add controls for province*year trend to allow for province-specific trends in crime rates (as well as crime type*province*year in the aggregate rate regressions). The estimates are generally consistent with the graphical evidence: exposure to the Quebec program leads to higher rates of crime. Looking first at all crime counts, the estimates from the simple difference-in-differences specification indicate increases in both the rates of accused and convictions that is statistically significant. This estimate for rates of accused does not change much when we add the second order province/age/gender interactions in the second column, but there is an increase in the estimates for convictions. In column (3) the estimate for accused falls but remains sizable and highly significant, while the estimate for convictions returns to the level seen in column (1). The estimates from the richest specifications indicate sizeable effects on crime rates. For accused, we estimate a rise of 300 crimes per 100,000 children, compared to a mean of 7,970 crimes. This is a rise of 3.7 percent. The result is slightly higher in percentage terms for convictions per 100,000 (4.6 percent). The remaining rows of the table show the results for each type of crime. The impact of exposure to the Quebec program is largest for other criminal code convictions; the estimates from the richest specification show an increase in accusations of these crimes of 321 per 100,000 children, or nearly 19 percent of the mean, and for convictions for these crimes of 310 per 100,000, or about 28 percent of the mean. The estimated impacts on property crimes are almost as large. Consistently smaller are the estimated impacts on crimes against persons, at 11 percent of the mean for both accusations and convictions. Finally, the impact for drug crimes is 7.5 percent of the mean for accusations but over 17 percent of the mean for convictions. Heterogeneity in the Impact of the Quebec Child Care program on the Outcomes of Children at Older Ages We next present estimates of the effect of the Quebec program by gender. Gender differences are of potential importance as there is recent evidence that the impacts of nonparental care vary by gender,18 as well as growing interest in gender differences in childhood and adult success.19 Gender differences in life outcomes have also captured the popular imagination, with some arguing that male attributes are at odds with changes in social and economic norms (e.g., Rosin 2012). Certainly the increasing prevalence of the non-parental care of children in developed countries, make it an obvious candidate to explain any emerging differences in the outcomes of men and women In Table 6 are estimates of the impact of the Quebec program on non-cognitive skills at ages 5-9, by gender. We see much stronger impacts on hyperactivity and aggression for boys, even relative to their higher standard deviations. For example, the negative impact on Aggression is primarily for boys, and the estimate in this case is one third of a standard deviation. For girls the strongest effect is on prosocial behavior, which worsens by 22 percent of a standard deviation. The larger impacts for boys on aggression in particular suggest that there may be gender differences in the impact of the program on criminal activity later in life. Indeed, that is what we see in the gender splits in crime rates in Table 7. The estimates indicate larger absolute impacts on the crime rates for boys, particularly for other criminal code violations and drugs.20 Therefore, the gender differences in the impacts of the Quebec program on crime rates line up with the gender differences in the impact of the program on noncognitive development.

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UCC Results In Negative Social-Emotional Effects On Children

Erickson & Stevens 2021 [Jenet Erickson research fellow of The Wheatley Institution & Katharine B. Stevens Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, February 1st 2021, “Universal Child Care: A Bad Deal For Kids?”, Institute for Family Studies, https://ifstudies.org/blog/universal-child-care-a-bad-deal-for-kids ] /Triumph Debate

Years of emotional and behavioral assessments collected on children who had attended child care after the launch of Quebec’s universal child care program indicated cause for concern. On average, 2- to 4-year-old children who had been in child care showed significant increases in anxiety, aggression, and hyperactivity, and experienced more hostile, inconsistent parenting and lower-quality parent-child relationships compared to children who had not attended. As children grew older, these negative outcomes did not dissipate: among 5- to 9-year-olds, the social-emotional problems not only persisted, but in some cases increased, particularly for boys with the most elevated behavioral problems. Follow-up studies conducted 20 years after the program’s inception further revealed that negative social-emotional outcomes associated with attending child care persisted through adolescence and into young adulthood. Among young people from ages 12 to 20, self-reported health and life satisfaction decreased significantly. The scale- up of universal child care in Quebec was also associated with a subsequent “sharp and contemporaneous increase in criminal behavior” across Quebec, as the rate of crime conviction jumped 22 percent. As the following figure indicates, though crime rates in Quebec are lower than the rest of Canada, there was a significant increase in crime accusation and conviction rates for cohorts exposed to the child care program. In the United States, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care (NICHD-SECC)—a longitudinal investigation following a group of 1,364 children from birth onwards—yielded findings that have also raised concerns. Although some of the study’s evidence showed that high quality child care increased children’s basic academic skills at kindergarten entry, extensive hours in a child care program during infancy and toddlerhood predicted negative social- emotional outcomes into adolescence. By age four-and-a-half, children who had spent more than 30 hours per week in child care had, on average, worse outcomes in every area of social-emotional development—weaker social competence, more behavior problems, and greater conflict with adults—at rates three times higher than their peers. Just 2% of children who averaged less than 10 hours per week exhibited behavioral problems, compared to 18% of those who averaged 30 hours or more and 24% of those who averaged 45 hours or more per week. The negative effects associated with extensive hours in child care rivaled the effects of poverty. Family income, maternal education, child care quality, and quality of the child’s relationship with the caregiver had no impact on those effects (see figure below). The number of hours spent in child care continued to predict negative social-emotional outcomes into the third and sixth grades: at both points, children who had experienced at least 30 hours per week of non-parental care were rated by teachers as having worse social skills and poorer work habits. Children who had spent more time in center-based—rather than home-based—child care had the highest rates of behavior problems and conflict with teachers. By age 15, the link between hours in child care and problem behaviors was still nearly the same as it had been at age four-and-a-half: adolescents from both high- and low socioeconomic backgrounds who had spent more than 30 hours per week in any type of paid care before age four-and-a-half had higher average rates of risk-taking behaviors such as alcohol, tobacco, and drug use, stealing or harming property, and participating in unsafe activities What might have caused these effects? A fairly new body of research comparing children’s stress levels in child care and at home sheds new light on that question. Researchers assess children’s stress levels in both environments by measuring salivary levels of the stress hormone cortisol, produced by the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) system in response to psychological or physical stress. A growing number of studies (see here and here) have found that some children’s stress levels increase significantly when they are in child care—especially full-time, center-based care—indicated by persistently elevated cortisol levels when in the child care setting, specifically. When at home, their cortisol levels return to normal. Children are “hardwired” to develop within a small group of familiar people and require one-on-one nurturing relationships to develop well; for most of human history, in fact, children’s early development unfolded in the home, usually with full-time maternal care. The much bigger groups and more chaotic conditions characteristic of child care settings compared to home and family environments may cause elevated stress levels among some children. The effect of this phenomenon is not precisely known. But persistently elevated stress during early childhood has been established as a risk factor for adverse developmental outcomes, including disruptive behavior.

79 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

UCC Increases Aggression And Anxiety In Children And Harms Parental-Child Relationships

Baker et al. 2008 [Michael Baker of the University of Toronto Jonathan Gruber of MIT and Kevin Milligan of University of British Columbia, April 2008, “Universal Childcare, Maternal Labor Supply and Family Well-Being, http://economics.mit.edu/files/3103 ] /Triumph Debate

In this paper we provide, to our knowledge, the first comprehensive analysis of a universal subsidized childcare program, following its impact from childcare use through employment and finally to children’s and parent’s outcomes. We uncover strong evidence of a shift into new childcare use, although approximately one third of the newly reported use appears to come from women who previously worked and had informal arrangements. The labor supply impact is strongly significant. Finally, we report striking evidence that children’s outcomes have worsened since the program was introduced. We also find suggestive evidence that families we study became more strained with the introduction of the program. This is manifested in increased aggressiveness and anxiety for the children, more hostile, less consistent parenting for the adults, and worse adult mental health and relationship satisfaction. As discussed earlier, these results are subject to a number of interpretations that highlight the importance of future work in this area. Most importantly, it is not clear whether the negative 30 child outcomes are short-run problems or long-run effects. In addition, we raise the puzzle of why families would take advantage of a policy which leads to worse child outcomes, worse parenting, and worse parental outcomes.23 It is possible that the other unmeasured benefits of higher family incomes offset these costs. Alternatively, it is possible that families will learn that they are not better off in this new regime, and that ultimately use of subsidized childcare may fall. Once again, following the long-run evolution of these policy effects will be central to a full welfare analysis of the program. Despite these qualifications, our results are particularly germane for ongoing policy debates in the U.S. and Canada. Our estimates do not speak to the efficacy of highly targeted child care subsidies for groups such as single mothers, but these are typically not the focus of current debate. Instead, it is universal expansion of early child care/education that draws the most heated argument. Most directly, our evidence advises caution in Canada for other provinces considering adopting the Quebec childcare model. It is possible that our findings are short-run rather than long-run effects, but more evidence is needed before the program is adopted elsewhere. In the U.S., the debate is over universal pre-school for four and possibly three year olds. The motivation for these expansions is the enormously positive cognitive returns for a limited set of experimental pre-school interventions (see Anderson, 2007 for a review of these experiments and a re-interpretation of the results) and to the public provision of pre-school for low-income populations under the Head Start program (Currie and Thomas, 1995). The effects may be quite different, however, for the balance of the population. Furthermore, our results bring the social, behavioral and health consequences of early non parental care to a debate that has been preoccupied with cognitive results. Whether these negative findings for Canada would extend to pre-school is an open question, but they suggest at a minimum that it is necessary to use higher quality interventions if the goal is to improve child outcomes.

80 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Childcare Harms Parental Interactions – Increased Hostility And Ineffective Parenting

Baker et al. 2008 [Michael Baker of the University of Toronto Jonathan Gruber of MIT and Kevin Milligan of University of British Columbia, April 2008, “Universal Childcare, Maternal Labor Supply and Family Well-Being, http://economics.mit.edu/files/3103 ] /Triumph Debate

The NLSCY not only gathers data on child outcomes, but also on the quality of parental interactions with children and on the well-being of parents themselves. Both of these might plausibly be affected by increased use of childcare and labor supply induced by the $5 per day program. As best we can tell, the effect of non-parental care on these sorts of outcomes has not been investigated in the literature. We use three measures of the quality of parental interactions provided by the NLSCY: “hostile and ineffective parenting”; “parental consistency”; and “aversive parenting.”22 These indices are aggregated from parental responses to individual questions listed in the Appendix; once again, while subjective, they represent the views of experts on the best indicators of the quality of parent-child relationships. The second panel of Table 3 presents difference-in-differences estimates of the effects of the policy change on these indicators of parental interaction quality. For each of these scales, there is strong evidence of less effective parenting after the new policy was put in place. There is a significant rise in the hostile/ineffective parenting index of about 8.7% of its baseline value, a significant decline in the consistent parenting index of about 3.6% of its baseline value, and a significant rise in aversive parenting of about 2.4% of baseline. We plot the time trends for the three parenting measures in Figure 6. While aversive parenting shows little closing of the Quebec-rest of Canada gap, the other measures show remarkable changes consistent with the parent-child relationship getting worse in Quebec in waves 4 and 5 The final rows of Table 3 consider the effects on measures of parental well-being. The self-assessed health status of the mother and father is available in the NLSCY, along with a depression score for one of the parents. (We present the depression results only for mothers, since the mother was the primary respondent in the vast majority of families.) In addition, the survey contains a question about the satisfaction of the survey respondent with their spousal relationship, on a scale of 1-11. The estimated coefficients indicate deterioration in paternal health around the time of this policy, with a reduction of 2.9 percentage points in the odds that the father reports himself in excellent health. For mothers, the estimated effect on self-reported health is smaller at -0.011, and not statistically significant. For mothers, however, we have striking evidence of an increase in depression: the mother’s depression score is estimated to increase by 0.422, or 9.2% of a standard deviation. There is also a very striking negative effect on reported relationship satisfaction of 11.6% of a standard deviation.

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Universal Pre-K Is Associated With Higher Rates of Infractions

Lipsey et. al 18 [Mark W. Lipsey, Dale C. Farran, Kelley Durkin. All three authors are researchers at Vanderbilt University. 03/09/2018, “Effects of the Tennessee Prekindergarten Program on children’s achievement and behavior through third grade”, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, doi:10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.03.005] /Triumph Debate

5.2.1. Teacher ratings (ISS) For the ISS subsample, teachers rated children’s behavior and performance in the classroom on the Cooper–Farran Work-Related Skills and Interpersonal Skills scales, and the ACBR Peer Relations, Behavior Problems, and Feelings About School scales. Table 12 shows the effect estimates onthesemeasures throughthe 3rdgrade year. There is no consistent direction in the effect sizes for these ratings and none are statistically significant with one exception. The 1st grade teachers’ ratings of children’s feelings about school was statistically significant with VPK children having less positive attitudes toward school than control children. Application of the weighting function that extrapolated the results in Table 12 to the statewide VPK population (not shown) produced comparable findings with negative VPK effects (p < .10) on teacher ratings offeelings about school in the 1st and 2nd grade years. 5.2.2. Disciplinary actions (RCT) School records in the state database report expulsions and inschool and out-of-school suspensions. The frequency of such events is low, especially in any one school year. The outcome variable used here thus aggregates across the K-3rd grade years to indicate whether there were any recorded actions (yes/no) during that period. The overall rates are further subdivided into those for less serious infractions such as breaking school rules and related administrative matters and more serious infractions such as fighting, bullying, and bringing a weapon to school. Table 13 summarizes the results for the primary analysis with multiple imputation for missing values, analysis with only observed values, and the weighted analysis that generalizes to the statewide population of programs and children. All those analyses found a higher frequency of violations of school rules for VPK participants that was marginally significant (p < .10). The weighted analysis also showed a significantly greater frequency of major infractions and all infractions taken together for the VPK participants. 5.2.3. Attendance (RCT) Attendance rates for children in the RCT sample were derived from state data for kindergarten through 3rd grade as the proportion of instructional days for which a child did not have a recorded absence. As shown in Table 14, those rates were universally high, around 95%, and no significant differences were found between the VPK treatment and control groups for any year. The results using only observed data and applying the weighting function to estimate statewide effects are not shown but are substantially similar.

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Overall Literature Shows Pre-K Has Negative Effects On Children Long Term – Our Evidence Uses Best Research Models, Affirmative Studies Are Rare, Small, And Hard To Scale

Piper 18 [Kelsey Piper. Piper is a Staff Writer for Vox, previously worked as the head of the writing team at Triplebyte. 10/16/2018, “Early childhood education yields big benefits — just not the ones you think”, Vox, https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/16/17928164/early-childhood-education-doesnt-teach-kids-fund-it] /Triumph Debate

There’s a bizarre-seeming paradox sitting at the heart of research into early childhood education. On the one hand, there’s a sizable body of research suggesting that kids who go through intensive education at the ages of 3 and 4 don’t really come out ahead in terms of academic abilities. By kindergarten much of their advantage has receded, and by second grade researchers typically can’t detect it at all. On the other hand, there’s an equally substantive body of research suggesting that early childhood education produces a profound, lifelong advantage. Kids who enter intensive preschool programs are less likely to be arrested, more likely to graduate, and less likely to struggle with substance abuse as adults. One study with a followup when the students were in their mid-30s found that they were likelier to have eventually attended and completed college. This is an area where research is fiercely debated — and really important. In 2017, the US spent $9 billion on Head Start, the flagship early childhood education program launched in the 1970s. If one set of studies is wrong, that has profound implications for how we should be spending that money instead. Here’s an explanation that makes sense of all the research: The benefits of early childhood education aren’t coming from the academic skills they teach students. Early childhood education helps because it’s reliable daycare. Early childhood education’s effects fade — except the ones that persist decades later In the past few years, early childhood education has taken a beating in studies of its effects a few years down the road. The Department of Health and Human Services commissioned a massive study of Head Start, the flagship early childhood education program, and found “the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by 1st grade for the program population as a whole.” In the 2008 to 2009 school year, when Tennessee had to assign spaces in their early childhood education program by lottery, it created the conditions for the perfect natural experiment. Researchers found, if anything, negative effects: “the control children caught up with the pre-k participants on [kindergarten and subsequent] tests and generally surpassed them.” There are studies out there which have found lasting benefits to test scores. But in general, the better-conducted the study, the more discouraging the results. How is that compatible with the impressive list of positive long-term effects discussed above? One explanation commonly entertained in the debate over early childhood education is that the studies for one side or the other are just wrong. Pessimists about education interventions have pointed out that the recent studies, which found no effects from early childhood education interventions, are randomized control trials (RCTs), which are considered the gold standard for research into policies like these. Meanwhile, the findings of long-term benefits come from longitudinal studies, tracking all of the kids in a program. RCTs are generally more reliable on a complex question like this one. So maybe the RCTs are right, the longitudinal studies are all turning up noise, and there are no effects from preschool. But defenders of early childhood education can retort that the evidence base for the long-term effects is actually quite solid. Some of the studies that find a long-term advantage from education are very carefully designed to avoid the methodological problems associated with not having a control group. For example, the Brookings Institution tried to compare kids who attended Head Start with their siblings who didn’t, and found long-term effects on graduation rates, college attendance, and adulthood self-control and self- esteem. They even found that Head Start improved parenting practices for the next generation. A different analysis by the National Bureau of Economic Research used a regression discontinuity design — exploiting the fact that Head Start was provided to the poorest counties but was not provided to some nearly identical counties just over the income threshold. They found effects from Head Start on child mortality, graduation rates, and college attendance. Optimists, then, have often argued that it’s the RCTs that must be wrong — maybe there are persistent effects on what students learn even though most studies don’t turn them up. There are some studies in which researchers found persistent gains from early-childhood school programs. They’re often the ones that go well beyond preschool, offering five or six years of high-quality intensive education. It might be that a few standout programs actually do deliver academic results. But they seem to be rare, small, and hard-to-scale. There are also some independent reasons to suspect that early gains from preschools don’t last. In general, education in kindergarten just does not predict performance by the end of elementary school very well. Researchers Guanglei Hong and Bing Yu, looking at data from a large longitudinal study of kindergarteners, found “no evidence that early-grade retention brings benefits to the retainees’ reading and math learning toward the end of the elementary years.” One more thing to look into is health interventions. Early childhood education programs have life-affecting long-term health outcomes, which is likely because the education interventions are often packaged with health interventions. Head Start, thought of as a preschool intervention, also provides meals, social services, parenting services, immunizations, and thorough health screenings that catch diabetes, anemia, and hearing and vision problems. It seems possible that much of the benefits from early childhood education are actually from the health interventions — which is a big deal because those parts of the program are much less expensive than the preschool parts. This can’t be the whole story, though, because not every education program that showed some results included health interventions. (And one study was thoughtful enough to provide health interventions to their control group as well, and still found results.)

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Unequal Quality

Empirics Prove – Universal Childcare Can Result In Massive Variations In Center Quality

Rege et. al 18 [Mari Rege, Ingeborg Foldoy Solli, Ingunn Storksen, Mark Votruba, Mari Rege, Ingeborg Foldoy Solli, and Ingunn Storksen are all Researcher/Professors at the University of Stavanger, Norway. Mark Votruba is a Professor at Case Western Reserve University, December 2018, “Variation in center quality in a universal publicly subsidized and regulated childcare system”, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537118301076] /Triumph Debate

The robustness of the FE results to richer covariates and the failure of the Hausman test to reject both suggest that selection effects are unlikely to be important drivers biasing our estimates of center variation. To investigate selection more formally, for each child we constructed a proxy for center quality as the leave-out residual score (i.e. conditional on the full covariate set) over each child's classmates. We then tested via OLS regression whether children with certain characteristics were more likely to attend a center with “over-performing” children. The results of this exercise are presented in Table 5. In column 1, we find a weakly positive and statistically insignificant relationship between a child's own predicted score and the LOM residual score of her classmates. Focusing on our parsimonious covariates in column 2, higher maternal education is only weakly predictive of selection into a center with higher performing classmates. Somewhat contrary to expectations, we find that father's immigration status is a positive predictor of selection into a center with higher performing classmates, with an estimate that reaches marginal significance. This finding is robust to the inclusion of the full set of covariates in column 3. Moreover, the estimated effects of father's education indicate children of higher educated fathers tend to select into higher quality centers. That said, as we documented earlier, the inclusion of the richer covariates had little effect on our estimates of center variation. While we find some evidence of selection, there is little support for the notion that children with the strongest SES backgrounds are differentially selecting into better centers to any great degree. This may suggest that there is limited differences in center quality across different types of neighborhoods, and that location is the primary concern for parents when choosing childcare center. Moreover, it may be hard for parents to observe center quality. 5.4. Mechanism investigation Table 6 explores potential mechanisms behind center-level variation in scores focusing on a limited number of structural characteristics we were able to obtain for a subset of the centers in our study. This evidence should not be interpreted as casual as the structural indicators are not random and may be associated with other unobserved indicators for quality. For 52 centers in our study, we obtained data on the following characteristics: the tenure of the center director, the teacher-child ratio and center size. Due to the much reduced sample size, we replicate the results of our preferred RE specification in column 1, finding the variation to be somewhat smaller and (unsurprisingly) no longer significant. In columns 2–4, we augment this model with controls for each of the structural characteristics, and in column 5 we include all three simultaneously. The teacher-child ratio proves to be a strong positive predictor of school readiness scores. The result in column 3 suggests that 30% of the originally estimated variance in center effects is potentially attributable to variation in child-teacher ratios. Column 5 suggest almost 75% of the originally estimated variance in center effects is potentially explained by the three structural characteristics, though this should be regarded cautiously considering two of the three coefficients are statistically insignificant. Nonetheless, child-teacher ratios (at least) appears to be a strong contributor to the center variation we estimate. 5.5. Heterogeneous center effects by maternal education Mixed effects models were estimated to investigate whether the influence of centers on school readiness is mediated by family SES, for which mother's education serves as proxy. If higher quality centers are effective at reducing the school readiness gap between high and low SES children, we would expect the γc and φc terms in Eq. (3) to covary negatively.16 Estimation results are presented in Table 7. Unfortunately, the mixed effects models proved too weakly-powered to provide substantive evidence towards this hypothesis. The bottom of column 2 reports the likelihood ratio test for whether the allowance for the additional variance terms, Var(γc) and Cov(φc, γc), significantly improves model fit over the original random effects specification, reported to column 1.17 We fail to find evidence for significantly improved fit (p = .33). So while the directional evidence suggests children of lower SES might benefit more from placement in a higher quality center, we are unable to draw strong conclusion in that regard. The same is true when if we perform this exercise over the individual assessments; while estimates of the covariance term are generally negative, they never approach levels of statistical significance. 5.6. Estimation by subject Table 8 reports the results of FE and RE specifications with parsimonious controls for each of the six individual assessment tests. Several important distinctions are revealed as far as the influence of family characteristics. Maternal education appears to be an especially strong predictor of self-regulation HTKS scores. The children of college educated mothers also score strongly on math, vocabulary and working memory, but the effects of maternal education are more muted for phonological awareness and the self-regulation hearts and flowers test. Not surprisingly, the children of immigrant parents perform especially poorly on the vocabulary test. Female effects are generally positive and significant, but insignificant (and negative) for vocabulary and the self-regulation hearts and flowers test. Age effects are consistently positive, but substantially smaller for phonological awareness. Turning to the main findings of interest, for each assessment the Hausman test fails to reject the RE specification in favor of the FE model. For math, self-regulation HTKS and vocabulary we find significant evidence of center-level variation. While the results for the working memory test fail to achieve statistical significance, the estimated variance terms are comparable in size to the math test. In contrast, center level variation appears weaker for phonological awareness and is especially weak for the self-regulation hearts and flowers test. 6. Discussion Our paper investigates differences in childcare quality across centers in the universal childcare system of Norway. This is important because the ECEC literature suggests that if childcare quality varies across centers, universal childcare systems can potentially increase disparities in school readiness, particularly if the children of parents with high education select into centers of high quality. Our analysis demonstrates large and significant 84 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

variation in school readiness across centers. Indeed, the difference in school readiness skills in centers at the 90th and 10th percentile in the center effect distribution was estimated to be over one half (0.55) of a standard deviation. These results are robust to numerous robustness tests and do not seem to be driven by parental selection into centers of different quality. We extend our analyses by investigating how measures of structural quality predict the development of school readiness skills. The analysis demonstrates that the teacher-child ratio is associated with a large and significant increase in school readiness skills and that the ratio can explain a meaningful portion (about 30 percent) of the variance in center effects. Notably, this evidence is not causal as the structural indicators are not random and may be associated with other unobserved indicators for quality. Our analysis of center quality must be interpreted with caution. First, even if differential selection of children into higher/lower quality centers on the basis of socio-economic background appears quite limited, we cannot rule out that the differences in center effects capture unobserved similarities in children's prior skills and parental background. Another possible concern is that children in the same center are co-located residentially, and may experience common shocks affecting child development. Moreover, the estimated variance in learning across center captures the combined effect of teacher quality, peers, childcare pedagogy, in addition to structural quality such as child-staff ratios, and class size. While our study demonstrates that which childcare center a child attends is a strong predictor of school readiness skills, it provides limited causal evidence for the mechanisms of the substantial variation across centers we observe. The substantial variation in childcare center effects documented in this paper highlight the importance of research identifying factors that contribute to a good learning environment in universal childcare systems.

85 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

UCC Varies In Center Quality - Canadian Evidence Shows Funding Limits Lead To Unequal Care

Williams 18 [Conor Williams. Conor Williams is a fellow at The Century Foundation. May 2018, “When ‘Universal’ Child Care Isn’t Universally High-Quality”, https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/05/quebec-child-care- family-leave/559310/] /Triumph Debate

Quebec’s family policy begins with up to 55 weeks of paid leave for parents when they have or adopt a child, as well as a yearly allowance of anywhere from $500 to about $1,900 (in American dollars) that families receive per kid under the age of 18. But the policy’s central piece is Quebec’s full-day, year-round child-care program for all children under 5, which the province annually subsidizes with roughly $2 billion in public funding. Quebec families cover part of the costs on a sliding scale, with the wealthiest families paying around $17 per day for their first child. In 2016, nearly 300,000 children were enrolled in the province’s system. But just because the program is “universal” does not mean it is uniform. A plurality of the province’s young children attend centres de la petite enfance (CPE)— publicly subsidized, nonprofit child-care centers that collect small daily fees. Families apply through a centralized lottery system, with many kids granted preference to a given center if their siblings are already enrolled there or (in some cases) if their parents work in the same building. But funding limitations mean CPEs can’t serve everyone who wants their services. Families say it’s normal to spend several years on CPE waitlists before getting a slot. So, in 2003, provincial leaders created a tax credit that reimburses families for up to 75 percent of tuition at private child-care centers and home-based care options. This new option helped ease Quebec’s child-care-undersupply problem for more families. It also helped the number of seats in unsubsidized private centers in Quebec skyrocket: Slots in these centers, many of them for-profit ones, grew by 3,000 percent between 2003 and 2016, reaching more than 55,000 seats. The total number of child-care seats in the province grew by a relatively modest 73 percent during the same period. Cristian Cano, a restaurant manager who immigrated from Chile and has lived in Quebec for 21 years, is among the thousands of parents who ended up enrolling their kids in an unsubsidized private center because of the CPE space limitations. Cano and his wife resorted to a home-based child-care center run by a Haitian woman they knew. While happy with the outcome, Cano argued that the provincial government ought to allocate more funding to CPEs. A visit to a CPE—one of the nonprofit, publicly subsidized centers—makes it clear why these centers are so popular with Quebec families. CPE Populaire St-Michel is located in a borough just northwest of downtown Montreal, where almost half of the residents are immigrants. Its 220 children are spread across three programs—the infants are in a nursery that employs one adult for every five children; older kids are grouped by age in noisy, cheerful classrooms connected by a purple hallway. Teachers put kids in charge of their learning, its director explained, encouraging them to move and explore. Part of a local cooperative aimed at getting more children outdoors, CPE Populaire St-Michel’s courtyard features a sandpit and (in the spring) a butterfly garden. If children get dirty, they can wash off using hoses with showerheads that accompany the padded mats, balls, and the bucketful of hockey sticks in the center’s motricite (“movement”) room. St-Michel even keeps its children active during the long winters when it’s too cold outside, letting kids ride bikes up and down the hallway. Then it refuels them with fresh lunches prepared on-site. When I visited, the kitchen served kids broccoli omelettes with mixed salad and grilled potatoes; they were slated to have Greek turkey dumplings and herbed rice with tzatziki sauce the following day. In and of itself, variability in the delivery of public education isn’t a bad thing. Families have diverse needs and preferences—parents’ schedules can be inflexible, their kids may have allergies, and so on. A single curriculum, delivered through a single type of child-care center, is unlikely to meet everyone’s needs. What’s more, new public early-education initiatives don’t arise in isolation. It was easier for policymakers to provide public support for private child-care providers than it was to dramatically expand the CPEs. But Quebec’s example shows that a diverse system of child-care providers also comes with challenges. The government imposes stricter learning standards on the publicly subsidized CPEs; it has less oversight of the private providers. As a result, a given private provider may be able to attract families concerned primarily with cost not by its educational quality but rather by its low tuition. As part of a 2014 government study, observers rated the CPEs considerably higher than they did private providers across a range of factors, including teachers’ interactions with infants, the facilities, and educational programming. The upshot: In creating the tax credit, Quebec may have achieved one prong of the family policy’s mission at the expense of another. As the University of Quebec at Montreal economist Pierre Fortin put it, “We have two tiers of child care: One that is of very high quality and one that is of low quality.” Still, in subsidizing such programs, Quebec has ultimately made well-resourced, affordable early-childhood education the norm. When the provincial government had to cut the equivalent of about $93 million in CPE funding several years ago as part of austerity measures, a 2016 Montreal Gazette article lamented that one center “had to ration food” by reducing the amount of meat it served and halting its fresh-fish offerings; the center, the article noted, could “no longer afford to make sandwiches with croissants.” Such cuts certainly aren’t negligible—CPE St-Édouard’s director Luce Vandemeulebroecke, for example, had to reduce her teachers’ hours, and many centers have found themselves increasingly reliant on philanthropy. Still, that a rollback on croissants made headlines attests to the relative strength of public commitment to the program. While CPEs serve children from birth to 5 years old, most American public prekindergarten sites only serve 3- and 4-year-olds. For comparison’s sake, a cut of $93 million would eliminate about 40 percent of the pre-K spending in Washington, D.C., which runs one of the country’s most widely accessible early-education systems. D.C. preschoolers wouldn’t just lose field trips and balanced meals. The program would cease to exist— at least as a system striving to serve all children. It doesn’t have to be that way. Quebec’s CPEs show that it’s possible to create an expansive, publicly funded system of high-quality child care and early-education centers whose reach extends far beyond the most impoverished kids. Of course, “expansive” sounds expensive, and new public funding is always challenging to come by.

86 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Costs Inherently Place Universal Systems Into A Double Bind – Either They Are High Quality And Low Access Or High Access And Low Quality

Oldham 16 [Angela Oldham, Law @ DePaul University, “Fix Me Baby One More Time: A Permanent Solution for Day Cares,” DePaul Law Review, https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=3994&cont ext=law-review] /Triumph Debate

The French model is what started the Preschool for All revolution around the world.300 The benefit of the creche system is that it is an affordable national system.301 The government-run system allows for a centralized and regulated standard of care that far surpasses the patchwork system currently in place in the United States.302 Because of these centralized standards, students are provided with amenities that accentuate the quality of the French model, namely, college educated teachers and onsite health care.303 The government uses tax dollars to subsidize the cost of child care and sets the remaining fees according to a sliding income scale; thus, French families bear far less out-of-pocket expenses than the average U.S. family.304 Undoubtedly, the French model is a great example of how a government-run system can actually provide quality and affordable child care; however, critics argue that it is not truly accessible to all families.305 France does not publish how many families are waitlisted for a spot each year, but, in 2013, a family lobby group estimated that 20% of families will never have access to creches because the government cannot meet the growing demand.306 The French model is an improvement in comparison to day care in the United States, but the political and social goal should be preschool for all; however the French model is not accessible to all.307 The German model guarantees child care for all children over oneyear-old.308 Unlike the French model, Germany is still attempting to see if it can create enough day care facilities to meet the increase in demand.309 Perhaps in recognition of France’s supply-demand struggle, the German government is quickly building and converting as many day care facilities as possible.310 The benefit of the German model is that the government provides every family a legal right to child care in recognition of the important economic windfall of protecting the workforce; however, critics argue that a right to child care is much different than a right to quality child care.311 The German government quickly put together day care facility employees to accommodate the demand for day care facilities, and, as a result, the German model still suffers from infrastructure and personnel issues.312 Specifically, the Federal Families Ministry commissioned a report, which found that only 3% of the German facilities were of good quality.313 In Germany, much like the United States, the states determine the education laws, so the lack of quality is partially due to a lack of substantial and centralized regulation.314 Although the German model affirmatively answers the call for preschool for all, the economic burden heavily outweighs the socioeconomic benefits if day cares are not held to high quality standards.315

87 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Universalizing Childcare Standards Is Too Difficult – Too High Leads To Unregulated Care And Too Low Leaves Parents Dissatisfied

Berlinski et al. 15 [Samuel Berlinski, Principal Economist at the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank, and Norbert Schady, Principal Economic Advisor for the Social Sector at the Inter-American Development Bank, 2015, “The Early Years Child Well-Being and the Role of Public Policy”, Inter-American Development Bank, https://publications.iadb.org/en/early-years-child-well-being-and-role-public-policy] /Triumph Debate

In private markets, prices may provide some signals about quality. Economic research (Tirole 1988) has shown that where direct infor-mation can be obtained (even at a cost), informed consumers can improve the quality of the products offered. Moreover, as the fraction of well-informed parents increases, the likelihood that valuable information will be revealed increases as well. As a result, the public benefit of an informed parent is greater than the private cost the parent is willing to pay. This positive externality provides a rationale for public policy intervention in the childcare market. Standards and licensing systems guaranteeing minimum levels of quality could be seen as an answer to this need. Parents know that a licensed child- care center provides at least that minimum level of quality. However, imposing a minimum level of quality has its limitations. Enforcing regulation is very difficult and costly because this is a market with many small providers. Even assuming perfect enforcement, regulating the minimum quality may not generate the variety of quality demanded by parents. If the standard is too low, the market may offer too many providers close to the minimum quality, leaving the demand of parents willing to pay for a higher standard unsatisfied. If the standard is too high, the total supply of childcare services may be too low to satisfy demand, particularly for low- income parents, which may drive them to a completely unregulated sector (Hotz and Xiao 2011). Subsidized childcare provision or voucher programs cannot solve the information gap issue. However, voucher programs may be effective in changing the average quality at which demand and supply meet because they allow parents to buy more expensive care. Importantly, a combination of vouchers and regulation of private providers may prevent some parents from moving to the unregulated sector after regulation is introduced.

88 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Childcare Facilities Quality Is Low - Are At High Risk Of Lead In Drinking Water

Stanbrough 2020 [Elizabeth Stanbrough, Auburn University, 2020, “A Critical Opportunity: Lead in Drinking Water at Child Care Facilities”, https://etd.auburn.edu/bitstream/handle/10415/7562/StanbroughThesis.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y ] /Triumph Debate

3.3 Results and Discussion In all, 1,498 water samples were collected from 11 child care facilities. Table 1 provides a description of the 11 facilities and the results for each. These results affect a total of 1,096 children, with the majority from low-income families. Children served by individual facilities ranged from 25 in Mississippi to 213 in Chicago. Nine facilities were in commercial buildings and two were converted homes. The number offixtures tested at each facility ranged from 8 to 66 but was not associated with the number of children served or the age of the building. Approximately eighty percent of samples (80.6%) contained lead levels less than 1 g/L, below the LOQ and unquantifiable through ICP-MS testing. Where lead levels were above 1 g/L, 1.0% exceeded the LCR action level of 15 g/L Pb, 9.9% exceeded EDF’s action level of 3.8 g/L, and 18.4% exceeded the American Academy of Pediatrics’ health-based recommendation of 1 g/L. The frequency of lead in first draw and all samples is reported in Figure 3. Studies of lead in water in both North Carolina (Redmon et al., 2020) and Canada (Deshommes et al., 2016) likewise found variability in samples taken from individual locations was higher than variability between locations, which was also the case in this study. Because exhaustive sampling was conducted at every drinking water outlet, 10 of 11 facilities (91%) produced multiple samples with quantifiable lead. Remediation would have been recommended at two facilities(18%) based on the 2006 3Ts, where lead in first draw samples exceeded the action level of 20 ug/L. Remediation would have been required at three locations (27%) if there were a nationwide standard for child care centers limiting lead in first draws to 15 g/L. Figure 4a depicts the percentage of total samples containing above 1 g/L Pb (AAP recommended action level) and 15 g/L Pb (current LCR action level), along with the maximum lead level detected at each facility location; Figure 4b depicts the same for first draw samples. First draw sampling yielded higher percentages of samples exceeding 15 g/L Pb, as expected. A maximum concentration appeared after the first draw at 5 facilities (Tun, Chi1, Chi4, Cin2, Cin3), with exceptionally high “spikes” at three locations after aerator cleaning. Until recently, there was no nationwide standard requiring lead in water sampling at child care facilities. The LCR revision finalized December 2020 will require utilities to collect first draw samples from two drinking water outlets at child care buildings, allowing lead to go undetected at unsampled outlets. Facilities with maximum first draw lead were not consistently the same facilities with the most extensive low-level lead (Figure 4b). The LCR revision applicable to child care facilities requires that two outlets be sampled and lead reported to the facility director, but no action level is included. Facility directors and utilities will be responsible for deciding appropriate mitigation. With sampling limited to 2 outlets at child care facilities, selection of an action level is critical to trigger mitigation where low-level lead is widespread. In this study, limited sampling and an action level of 15 g/L would perhaps have flagged sites with instances of high lead (if the offending outlet were selected for sampling), but low-level lead at many sites would have gone undetected. If a lower action level is used to trigger mitigation, limited sampling is more likely to detect widespread lowlevel lead and further sampling would increase detection of high lead at individual outlets.

89 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Quality Care Is Key -- Cheap Care Is A Waste Of Money No Matter How Inexpensive And May Do Harm

UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre 08 [UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre. The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, Italy, was established in 1988 to strengthen the research capability of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and to support its advocacy for children worldwide.. 2008, “The child care transition A league table of early childhood education and care in economically advanced countries”, https://www.unicef- irc.org/publications/pdf/rc8_eng.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Access is of little merit without quality. All OECD governments therefore face a difficult challenge in defining and monitoring quality in early childhood services. Ideally, this is a task that would involve parents and communities as well as child care professionals and academic institutions. The available research is consistent in finding that the quality of early childhood education and care depends above all else on the ability of the caregiver to build relationships with children, and to help provide a secure, consistent, sensitive, stimulating, and rewarding environment. In other words, good child care is an extension of good parenting. Or, as the already cited US National Research Council report puts it, “If there is a single critical component of quality, it rests in the relationship between the child and the teacher/ caregiver, and in the ability of the adult to be responsive to the child.”xv This, then, is the essence of ‘quality’ – but it is an essence that is patently difficult to measure. It is, however, possible to measure some known preconditions of quality – principally the availability of sufficient numbers of well trained, well supervised, and well remunerated early childhood professionals. Benchmarks 5, 6, and 7 therefore set out minimum standards for, and compare current national performance against, three of the key, measurable aspects of quality in early childhood education and care. In general, the picture is not encouraging. The 2006 OECD review Starting Strong concludes, for example, that there is often “a wide pay gap between child care staff and teachers, with child care staff in most countries being poorly trained and paid around minimum wage levels. Not surprisingly, staff turnover in the child care sector is high.” In many countries, child care professionals stand at the bottom of the wages ladder and have little in the way of either job security or opportunity for career development. In some, including Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, employment in nurseries and day-care centres is often seen as suitable for those who are very young, unqualified, transient, or all three. Where pay is low, staff turnover rates tend to be high (30 per cent per year among child care employees in the United States, for example, compared to under 7 per cent for school teachers). “Such high staff turnover rates,” comments the US National Scientific Council, “currently undermine the relationships that young children have with the adults who provide much of their daily care.” This is child care on the cheap. And it will not serve. As a rule of thumb, approximately three quarters of the costs of providing early childhood services are accounted for by salaries. As there is substantial evidence that staff with higher levels of education and more specialized qualifications provide more stimulating and supporting interaction with children, the scope for cost-cutting is therefore limited if quality is to be maintained. Moreover, services that fall short of the required quality will not deliver benefits and may do harm; they are therefore a waste of money no matter how inexpensive they may be. Worse, from the point of view of the best interests of the child, they squander an opportunity that will not come again. Benchmark 5 asks that all staff should have at least initial training before taking up employment in early childhood education and care. The suggested 80 per cent value currently attached to this benchmark applies to all staff working regularly with young children, including neighbourhood and home-based caregivers. If untrained staff have to be employed to cover short-term needs, then an approved induction course in early child care and education should be a statutory obligation. Benchmark 5 also attempts to address the issue of staff quality and turnover by stipulating that pay and conditions in line with those of the teaching or social care professions are at least envisaged. This benchmark too has obvious weaknesses, being unable to capture the extent or duration of the training required, or the depth of in-service training and support that personnel in early childhood services need, or the determination of governments to implement rather than ‘envisage’ an upgrading of the child care profession. Nonetheless, it is significant, and disturbing, that only 17 of the 25 OECD countries surveyed were able to measure up to this relatively undemanding benchmark. It is also surprising that Denmark and Norway, with otherwise well-regarded early childhood services, fail to reach the 80 per cent minimum level for the initial training of child care staff. Benchmark 6 reinforces the training dimension of ‘high quality care’ by stipulating that a minimum of 50 per cent of staff in early education centres, including classroom assistants and all advisers and teachers, should have a minimum of three years tertiary education, with specialist qualifications in early childhood studies or a related field. As Fig. 1 shows, 20 out of 25 OECD countries were able to meet this standard, the only exceptions being Austria, Finland, Japan, Norway, and Switzerland. This benchmark, too, has obvious limitations and has had to be interpreted somewhat liberally in order to admit a) countries in which the qualification required is a two year college diploma and b) countries such as France, Ireland, and the United Kingdom where a primary school teaching qualification, with no special training in the developmental needs of pre-school children, is all that is required.* Benchmark 7 focuses on group size and staff-to-children ratios. Specifically, it sets a minimum of one member of staff to every 15 four-to-five year-olds, and a maximum group size of 24. As Fig. 1 shows, only 12 out of 25 OECD countries currently meet this standard. In many of the countries that fall short of the standard set, significant increases in funding will be required to bring staff-to-children ratios up to 1:15 and group sizes down to a maximum of 24. Mexico, for example, has much to do if it is to meet this benchmark as it rapidly expands pre-school education to its entire child population. But significant increases in spending will also be necessary in some wealthier OECD countries such as Ireland where the youngest children are often assigned to classes with the least favourable staff-to-children ratios. Acceptable staff-to-children ratios will, in practice, vary with circumstance, including the number of hours per day in child care. But the research shows overwhelmingly that young children need a great deal of one-to-one attention and support – relationships rather than group instruction. It is widely acknowledged that infants and very young children 90 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

are not ready for group activities; but even in the case of four and five year-olds, smaller groups make it possible to plan activities that are more stimulating and more attuned to each child’s interests and stage of development. Overall, these three ‘quality’ benchmarks (5, 6, and 7) represent no more than a minimum ‘floor’ of inputs that are known to be associated with the kind of stimulating, supportive staffto-children relationships that are the core of quality and good practice in early childhood education and care. Currently, only five OECD countries – Iceland, Hungary, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Sweden – measure up to all three. Six countries – Australia, Belgium (Flanders), Canada, Ireland, Japan, and Norway – meet only one. In the nations that fail to meet the minimum quality standard for early childhood services, it may be that a prerequisite of rapid progress is a change in public attitudes. In some countries, it is still widely assumed that little or no training is required for looking after infants and toddlers, that slightly more training may be required for those entrusted with three-to-five year-olds, and that higher level qualifications are necessary only for teachers of older children. Such views are now dangerously out of date. In practical terms, improvements in pay and working conditions would be an obvious step towards changing attitudes and upgrading the profession, as would integrating early childhood care into the wider teaching and caring professions (as is already happening in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden where child care assistants have the opportunity for further training leading to higher qualifications.) The availability of academic opportunities and qualifications in early childhood education and care would also help to raise the status of the profession and to anchor practice in research and evidence-based policy making. Finally, it should be noted that higher levels of staff training, improved staffto-children ratios, and smaller group sizes are of special importance in centres serving at-risk children and children with special educational needs. Without the extra resources that this requires, it is much less likely that early childhood education and care will make a significant difference to the lives of disadvantaged children.

91 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Low Quality Childcare Leads To Less School Preparedness And More Behavioral Issues

Donoghue 17 [Elaine A. Donoghue, MD, FAAP, COUNCIL ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, 2017, “Quality Early Education and Child Care From Birth to Kindergarten”, American Academy of Pediatrics, https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/140/2/e20171488.full.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Children’s early experiences are all educational, whether they are at home, with extended family and friends, or in early education and child care settings. Those educational experiences can be positive or negative. At present, more than half of children less than 5 years old regularly attend some type of out-of-home child care or early childhood program,1and their experiences in these settings will affect their future lives.1 The arrangements families make for their children can vary dramatically, including care by parents and relatives, center-based child care, family child care provided in a caregiver’s home, care provided in a child’s own home by nannies or baby-sitters, or a combination of these types of care.1–3 How a family chooses this care is influenced by family values, affordability, and availability.2,4 For many families, high-quality child care is not available or affordable.2,4 This policy statement outlines the importance of quality child care and what pediatricians can do to help children get care in high-quality early childhood education (ECE) settings. When care is consistent, developmentally appropriate, and emotionally supportive, and the environment is healthy and safe, there is a positive effect on children and their families.5–14 Children who are exposed to poor-quality environments (whether at home or outside the home) are more likely to have unmet socioemotional needs and be less prepared for school demands.5–14 Behavioral problems in ECE can lead to preschool expulsion with cascading negative consequences. Each year, 5000 children are expelled from ECE settings, which is a rate 3 times higher than that of their school-aged counterparts.15 When behavioral health consultation is available to preschool teachers, the rate of reported expulsions is half that of the control population.15,16 Early education does not exist in a silo; learning begins at birth and occurs in all environments. Early brain and child development research unequivocally demonstrates that human development is powerfully affected by contextual surroundings and experiences.17–19 A child’s day-to-day experiences affect the structural and functional development of his or her brain, including his or her intelligence and personality.17–19Children begin to learn to regulate their emotions, solve problems, express their feelings, and organize their experiences at an early age and then use those skills when they arrive at school.19 The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has recognized the importance of early brain and child development by making it a strategic priority.

92 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Low Quality Childcare Decreases Women’s Participation In The Workforce

Vandell et al. 2000 [Deborah Lowe Vandell, Chancellor's Professor and Founding Dean Emerita of Education at the University of California, Irvine, and Barbara Wolfe, Richard A. Easterlin Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin, November 2000, “Child Care Quality: Does It Matter and Does It Need to Be Improved?”, Institute for Research on Poverty, https://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/sr/pdfs/sr78.pdf] /Triumph Debate

In much of the existing literature linking parental employment and child care, the primary issue is the affordability of care and the elasticity of response to child care costs. In this sense one can see the potential for a trade-off between quality of care and labor force participation, in that higher-quality care is likely to be more costly. A parent facing that higher cost may decide to forgo or limit employment or to elect lower-quality and less costly care (Scarr, 1998). Maume (1991) found that a $10 increase in the weekly cost of child care was associated with a 1.6 percent increase in the probability of exiting employment within a year. A slightly earlier study by Blau and Philip (1989) also provided evidence that Quality of care may influence employment in several ways. Parents may be reluctant to leave their children in a low-quality, unsafe environment or with adults who do not provide a stimulating or warm environment. This may be a particular problem for lower-income families, who have more limited choices of providers. In contrast, a safe, warm, stimulating environment may encourage employment and longer hours of work. Parents may also be more effective employees if they do not have concerns about the environment in which their children spend a good part of each working day. Having well-cared-for children may also lead to employees with higher productivity than those whose children are left in less satisfactory environments. Parents may also be more likely to be on time to work and less likely to miss time from work if their children are cared for in a safe, warm, and stimulating environment. Evidence. There is limited evidence on whether higher-quality care has positive impacts on parental employment, because there have been few studies. The available evidence suggests that among low-income women, higher-quality child care may increase employment, stability of employment, and hours of work. See Table 9 for detail on these studies. Meyers (1993) has explored how a mother’s perception of the quality of her child’s care and the convenience of the child care arrangement affected her labor market progress in the JOBS program. The results show that a mother’s perception of the safety of her child’s care arrangement and the trustworthiness of the provider were significant predictors of the mother’s continued participation in the JOBS program and in labor force participation more generally. Mothers also responded to the ratio of children to staff. Those mothers who reported that the ratio of children to adults in their care arrangement exceeded professionally recommended standards were more than twice as likely to drop out of the program than mothers who reported that their child’s care arrangement met the standard. Additional evidence that quality plays a role in women’s labor force participation comes from another experiment, the Teenage Parent Demonstration. As reported in Ross and Paulsell (1998), among the group of first-time teenage welfare recipients whose members were randomly assigned to the program—which required employment, job training, or schooling— nearly a third reported that the quality an increase in the cost of care was associated with an increased probability of a mother leaving the labor force. of child care was a problem that led them to stop working or to change hours and/or activities. Ross and Paulsell interpret this to mean that “Mothers who are required to work as a condition of receiving welfare benefits may try to manage with lower-quality child care than they would in the absence of such a requirement, but this low-quality care may be the reason that mothers interrupt their employment activities”

93 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Crowdout

Universal Pre-K Leads To Crowdout And Is Associated With Lower Household Income

Bassok et. al 16 [Daphna Bassok, Luke Miller, and Eva Galdo. Bassok and Miller are Professors at the University of Virginia. Galdo works for the Institute of Education Services. May 2016, “The effects of universal state pre-kindergarten on the child care sector: The case of Florida's voluntary pre-kindergarten program”, https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v53y2016icp87-98.html] /Triumph Debate

***VPK = Universal Pre-Kindergarten Program

Over the study period, child care capacity decreased (demeaned capacity presented in Fig. 1). Specifically, market capacity decreased by 83 slots per 1000 children (or 10%) between the pre- and post-VPK periods (Table 2). The informal sector experienced a larger relative contraction (28%) than the formal sector (8%) resulting in a 2 percentage point shift of capacity from the informal to formal sector. While the timing of this contraction broadly aligns with the introduction of VPK, it does not imply VPK caused a contraction. Rather, other market forces such as the recession may have created downward pressure on the market counteracting a potentially positive VPK effect (or exacerbating a negative one.) Our model is designed to isolate the VPK effect. Table 3 shows the primary results from this analysis and indicates that, in fact, VPK increased total market capacity relative to predicted capacity in the absence of VPK. Increasing VPK participation among 4-year-olds from 0 to 100% expanded capacity by a marginally significant 20.5% (p < .1) above predictions. Rescaling this effect by the average county-level participation rate of 64.8% implies VPK added 13.3% more slots above prediction which equates to an additional 0.09 slots per child aged 0-5 or approximately 100,000 slots statewide. Not surprisingly, the overall expansion is driven by the formal sector where VPK implementation delivered a 23.7% boost to capacity, or 15.4% after rescaling (p < .05). Finally, the informal sector model suggests VPK contributed to that sector’s contraction (13.9% if full participation; 9% rescaled) though that coefficient is imprecisely estimated.10 We assessed the robustness of our findings in a variety of ways. In our analysis, county-level covariates and county fixed effects play a key role in maintaining the assumption that VPK participation rates are ignorably assigned to counties. The county fixed effects control for all time-invariant county characteristics. There remains the possibility that our findings are biased by an unobserved time-varying county characteristic (e.g., maternal employment). To assess the magnitude of this threat, we re-estimate our main models excluding all the county covariates (Table 4, first panel). Including the covariates attenuates the estimates of VPK’s effect but the qualitative story remains unchanged: VPK increased total market capacity through its effect on the formal sector. This suggests that the effect of any unobserved confounder needs to be larger than the combined influence of the full set of observed confounders in order to rule out that VPK added to formal sector capacity. We test the ignorability assumption further by assessing whether a county’s average VPK participation rate in the post-VPK years predicts the county’s child care capacity in any year before VPK was implemented. To do this we estimate a version of Eq. (1) only on the three pre-VPK years, and replace the county fixed effects with interactions between the county’s average VPK participation rate and the three year fixed effects.11 Statistically significant coefficients on these interactions might suggest unobserved factors are related both to future VPK participation rates and to pre-VPK market capacity. None of the interactions are statistically significant (second panel of Table 4).12 Our main results are also robust to relaxing the assumption that the effect of time is fixed across county. We test this by interacting the year fixed effects with the subset of county characteristics that are estimated to be significantly related with capacity in any of the models displayed in Table 3. As shown in the second panel of Table 4, this has very little impact on our estimates of VPK’s effect. A remaining concern is that the results we report were not driven by VPK expansion and instead are the result of other factors or events.13 We implement a variety of strategies to assess the potential of “other events” to threaten our overall findings. First, we estimate a series of models that follow Eq. (1) but replace the capacity outcome with a county-level characteristic as a natural log. We would not expect these covariates to change in response to VPK. If we do find changes in our covariates concurrent with the introduction and expansion of VPK this raises concerns that perhaps some other policy or change occurred simultaneously and our effect estimates are clouded by that shift. There are two take-away from the results shown in Table 5. First, there is no substantive relationship between VPK expansion and the demographic variables. The one significant relationship relates to the percent of the county that is black, and it is modest. Second, the significant coefficients for the economic characteristics reflect the Great Recession. Averaging across the post-VPK years, a 100% VPK participation rate is associated with a 13.4% reduction in household income and a 36.3% reduction in home sales (or 8.7 and 23.5% rescaled to the average VPK participation rate). Re-estimating these models excluding the three Great Recession years (2009– 2011), VPK had no effect on any of these economic characteristics. Economic conditions are associated with the size of the child care market and therefore ought to be included in our models but the economic measures available may not fully capture the independent contribution of economic conditions. We therefore estimate a version of Eq. (1) that excludes the three years of the Great Recession to ensure the uniqueness of those years are not driving our results. These models produce similar results, although we lose some statistical power (Table 4, fourth panel).14 Finally, we re-estimated these models with capacity entered as the number of slots per 1000 children aged 0 to 5 years to assess sensitivity to our preferred log-linear specification that corrects for skewness in the measures. The results are generally consistent with the main results although the effects just miss statistical significance at the 10% level. The point estimate for the market total suggests increasing the VPK participation rate from 0 to 64.8% increased annual capacity by 0.08 slots per child (0.648 × 0.1217) or nearly 85 thousand slots (Table 4, fifth panel). Our main results indicate that although overall the child care sector was contracting in the years after VPK was introduced, VPK had a positive effect on the size of the market and lessened the expected 94 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

contraction by roughly 100,000 slots. It stands to reason that the bulk of capacity increases were directed towards 4-year-olds, the program’s target audience. Further, within the context of year-overyear reduction in market capacity, VPK may have maintained slots for 4-year-olds at the expense of slots for younger children. Our capacity data are not disaggregated by age so we supplement our supply-side analysis with enrollment data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), October Supplements from 1997 to 2011 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015). The CPS, a household survey, asks parents of all children 3 and up whether their child is “attending or enrolled in regular school (regular school includes nursery school, kindergarten, elementary school… etc.)” as well as whether their child attends a public or private school.15 A key strength of the CPS for the current study is that it allows us to separately examine preschool participation for children who were VPK eligible (4-year- olds) and those who were not (3-year-olds). While the CPS offers a Florida sample too small to support a within-state analysis, the national data allow us to leverage other states as a control group. We employ the synthetic control method (Abadie, Diamond, & Hainmueller, 2010; Abadie & Gardeazabal, 2003) to construct a comparison “state” with pre-intervention trends comparable to those in Florida. This method, developed for cases like this where no single potential comparison unit (state) provides a suitable counterfactual by itself, determines the set of state weights that minimizes the difference from the pre-VPK trend between Florida and the synthetic state (i.e., the root mean square prediction error) (see Table A1 in the Appendix for information on the composition of synthetic states). We incorporate these weights in the estimation of the following difference-in-difference model of preschool participation. We predict formal care participation among 3- and 4-year olds (Yst) in state s at time t as a function of an indicator of whether the observation is from Florida (FLs), an indicator of whether the observation is from a year in which VPK is implemented (PostVPKt), a set of state-level time-variant characteristics pulled from the CPS (Xst; racial/ethnic composition, unemployment rate, labor force participation rate, number of children per household, household income, percent married, and percent foreign born), and year fixed effects (αt).17 The effect of VPK on preschool participation is captured by δ and represents the average deviation of Florida’s participation rate from that of the synthetic state. The graphical evidence comparing trends in preschool enrollment between Florida and its synthetic control states suggest that VPK did increase preschool enrollment for 4- year-olds, but did so by crowding out preschool for 3-yearolds (Fig. 2). Prior to the introduction of VPK, Florida and the synthetic states were on the same trajectory with respect to the participation of 3- and 4-year-olds. Concurrent with the introduction of VPK, Florida’s trajectories appear to diverge from those of the synthetic states with relatively more Florida 4-year-olds and relatively fewer Florida 3- year-olds enrolling in some form of preschool. These divergences are statistically significant (Table 6). VPK’s implementation increases 4-year-old preschool participation by 4.4 percentage points and decreases participation among 3-year-olds by 6.4 percentage points (both p < .05). Trends in the percent of attendees enrolled in public versus private programs are consistent with the notion that VPK is driving the results. The graphical and statistical analyses indicate VPK shifted the trend in public attendance among 4-year-old preschool participants upward (the statistical model indicates a shift of 10.2 percentage points). Assuming parents realize VPK programs are publicly funded, even when in private centers, such an increase would be expected. We find no effect for 3-year olds, who were not directly targeted.

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Universal Child Care Crowds Out Informal Arrangements

Havnes et al. 11 [Tarjei Havnes, Assistant Director General at The Norwegian Ministry of Finance, and Magne Mogstad, Professor in Economics and the College, December 2011, “Money for nothing? Universal child care and maternal employment”, Journal of Public Economics, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272711000880] /Triumph Debate

The reform we study led to a staged expansion of subsidized child care, across Norway's more than 400 municipalities. To control for unobserved differences in maternal employment rates across differ- ent years and between different municipalities, we use a difference- in-differences (DD) approach that exploits the temporal and spatial variations in child care coverage induced by this staged expansion. Roughly speaking, our empirical strategy compares the employment rates of mothers with children 3–6years old before and after the reform, from municipalities where child care expanded a lot and municipalities with little or no increase in child care coverage. As described in detail below, subsidized child care both before the reform and during the expansion was severely rationed, with informal care arrangements (such as friends, relatives, and unlicensed care givers) servicing the large excess demand. In our analysis, we will focus on the years immediately after the reform, when child care coverage increased from 10 to 28%, which likely reflects the abrupt slackening of constraints on the supply side caused by the reform, rather than a spike in local demand. We have found no other reforms or changes taking place in this period which could confound our estimated child care effects. Nevertheless, to increase our confidence in the empirical strategy, we run a battery of specification checks. We find that the large-scale expansion of subsidized child care had little impact on maternal employment. Instead of increasing mothers' labor supply, the new subsidized child care mostly crowds out informal care arrangements, implying a significant net cost of the child care subsidies. To be concrete, our baseline specification suggests that the child care expansion caused an average of about 0.06 percentage points increase in maternal employment per percentage point increase in the child care coverage rate. The difference between the increase in maternal employment and the rise in child care coverage suggests a 94% crowding out of informal care arrangements by the new subsidized child care slots. Because of the often slow and uniform expansion of child care over time and space, many previous studies have relied on limited variation in the data or a long time span to identify the effect of subsidized child care on maternal employment. By contrast, our study compares municipalities that differ distinctly in terms of changes in child care coverage within a relatively narrow time frame. Given the variation in our data, employment effects, if they exist, should be present in our estimates. That we find a small but precisely estimated effect of the child care expansion, therefore, is evidence of a weak causal link from subsidized, universally accessible child care to maternal employment. Importantly, this conclusion holds true also when we estimate the model separately by age, educational attainment, and number of children of the mother. The paper proceeds by first discussing our study in relation to previous research on child care and maternal labor force participation Next, Section 3 describes the reform and the succeeding expansion in child care. Section 4 outlines our empirical strategy, before Section 5 presents the data. Section 6 discusses our main results, and Section 7 reports the specification checks. Finally, Section 8 summarizes and concludes with a discussion of policy implications.

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Universal Childcare Crowds Out Private Care - Brazil proves

Paes de Barros et al. 11 [Ricardo Paes de Barros, Director of Social Policy and Research at the National Institute for Applied Economic Research, March 2011, “The Impact of Access to Free Childcare on Women's Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from a Randomized Trial in Low-income Neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro”, World Bank Economists’ Forum, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.258.5722&rep=rep1&type=pdf] /Triumph Debate

Overall, access to free day care seems to significantly impact maternal labor market outcomes in the extensive margin. Mothers become significantly more likely to enter labor the labor force and find employment. Nevertheless, mothers already employed do not seem more likely to work more hours when gaining access to child care. Another question of policy interest is whether the provision of free child care crowds out private supply of paid care. The last two rows in Table 1 suggest that it does. As it can be seen, winning the child care lottery seems to reduce the demand for privately paid centers by 100 percent. In the overall population, while 6 percent of the mothers who lost the lottery enrolled their children in private centers, none of the lottery winners did the same. For the sub-population of mothers who used to have their children enrolled in private centers before the lottery, the drop in demand is even more drastic. Of these, 33 percent still demanded private care if they lost the lottery. None of the lottery winners did so. Finally, we look at the impact of access to free day care services on household income. As shown in the last row of Table 1, the LATEIV estimates indicate that there is a positive and statistically significant average impact of access to free day care of R$92 per month. However, this impact is considerably smaller than the monthly public cost of service per child estimated at approximately R$250. Figure 1 shows estimates of the conditional impact by age of the mother. As indicated, the impact on household income is highest for mothers ageing around 30 years. Nevertheless, even at age 30 the impact is considerably smaller than the estimated cost of service.

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Universal Childcare Crowds Out Higher Quality Care

Brown 18 [Jessica H. Brown. Brown is a Researcher in the Department of Economics at Princeton University. December 2018, “Does Public Pre-K Have Unintended Consequences on the Child Care Market for Infants and Toddlers?”, https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/jbrown2/files/brownjmp.pdf] /Triumph Debate

*** UPK = Universal Pre-K

6 Results 6.1 UPK reduces availability of care nearby for infants and young toddlers Figure 3 plots the coefficients from the fully-dynamic specification (equation 2) with year indicators interacted with level of exposure, as measured by the net change in the number of UPK sites in the hexagon. The parallel trends assumption appears to be reasonably satisfied, and we can see a decrease in the capacity of day care centers for infants and young toddlers as a result of own-hexagon UPKs beginning with the observations from 1/1/2015, the first post- expansion observation. As expected, it takes some time for the child care market to adjust as we can see the effect is growing over time. There appears to be no effect of UPKs in neighboring hexagons, implying that the effect of a new UPK site on child care availability is very local. Coefficients from the semi-dynamic speficiation (equation 1) are in Table 3. By 2018, there was a decline of 1.3 under 2 day care center seats for each new UPK site in the hexagon, a decline of 20% on the pre-expansion base of 6.33 (see Table A.3). With 432 net new UPK sites in 2014, I estimate that the 2014 NYC UPK expansion resulted in 562 fewer day care seats for infants. The 2014 expansion increased the number of sites by 432 and enrollment by 34,000, but the full program including the additional 2015 expansion and the pre-existing 2013 program has over 1,300 sites and 68,000 enrolled. If these results can be extrapolated to whole program, they imply that there are 1,690 fewer infant seats as a result of the UPK program. These seats represent 18% of the total capacity of this sector as of 1/1/2014. To put these numbers in context relative to effects on the child care market found in other papers, Hotz and Xiao (2011) finds that the number of child care centers in an average area falls by about 10% in response to reducing by one the number of infants who can be cared for by one staff member or to increasing the number of years of education required to be a center director by three. Day care centers are generally regarded as providing the highest quality non- parental care (?), so these children may be crowded out to lower-quality environments. Furthermore, these regressions measure the effect of adding one new UPK site to a given area holding everything else fixed. With an expansion as large and fast as this one, there are likely to be general equilibrium effects on the labor market for day care teachers that could make the full effect larger. It is important to separate labor market effects from effects due to the structure of the market because increasing the number of early childhood educators would help with the labor market effects but not the structural ones.

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Crowd Out Decreases Access To Quality Childcare

Keany et al. 14 [Charlotte Keany, Director of Annual Giving & Planned Giving at Earthwatch Institute, and Rachel Leventon, Nonprofit Evaluation Consultant, December 1, 2014, “Impact of Universal Pre-Kindergarten on Community Child Care Providers in the Fort Worth Independent School District”, Center For Non-profit Management, https://www.campfirefw.org/am-site/media/universal-pre-k-impact-study.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Lori Taylor, Director of the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics, and Public Policy at the Bush School of Governance and Public Service at Texas A&M University, recently placed the discussion of child care provider crowd-out in the context of Texas’ universal pre-k policies. Taylor asserts that “preschoolers are the ‘bread and butter’ of the child care industry.” Citing a cost of caring for an infant that is roughly three times the cost of caring for a preschooler, she notes that the differences in tuition between these two age groups generally do not begin to cover the differences in costs. In many instances, infant and toddler tuition do not even cover the wages of the staff needed to care for them. As Taylor suggests, “tuition payments for older children—particularly preschoolers— make up the difference and cover the rent.” According to Taylor’s research, pulling 4-year-olds out of private child care programs and into the public child care system unbalances this private child care financial sustainability equation. Taylor describes the impact of upsetting this balance suggesting, “With reduced preschooler enrollment, tuition revenues would no longer cover the full costs of operating a child care center, and some centers would be forced to close. Tuition rates would have to increase in those centers that remain. Thus, the parents of infants and toddlers would necessarily face sharp reductions in the affordability and availability of high-quality child care.” Additionally, while child care subsidies from the Texas Workforce Commission would partially insulate many low-income parents from tuition increases, those on the waiting list or otherwise ineligible for subsidies would suffer most from these increases. Taylor further extends this economic impact to reductions in maternal employment and overall household earnings. Since Fort Worth ISD’s universal pre-k expansion plan relies primarily on increasing pre-k classrooms in public schools as opposed to through existing private preschools, this research with FWISD child care providers explores whether or not private child care providers in FWISD have had or will have experiences that mirror those of Taylor’s worst case scenario. Because of the crowd-out affect, Taylor suggests that public-private partnerships are the best option. Taylor summarizes her argument stating: “Pre-K initiatives that lack strong ties to the child care industry can lead to higher child care costs, reduced employment, and lower lifetime earnings for parents with younger children. If public pre-kindergarten programs crowd out the private child care industry, many of the near-term gains to the parents of four-year- olds could be offset by losses to the parents of children three-years-old or younger. Don’t cause undue harm to the child care industry. Wherever Head Start programs and licensed child care centers can meet quality standards, they should be part of the state’s pre-k investment portfolio.”

99 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

Crowdout Reduces The Maternal Labor Market Impacts of UCC – Replaces One With The Other Causes Little To No Net Gain

Havnes et al. 11 [Tarjei Havnes, Assistant Director General at The Norwegian Ministry of Finance, and Magne Mogstad, Professor in Economics and the College, May 2011, “No Child Left Behind: Subsidized Child Care and Children's Long-Run Outcomes ”, Journal of Public Economics, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41238095.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A765b96b7878f680e820216ecf9a2e844] /Triumph Debate

If we knew the effect of the child care expansion on maternal employment, we could hone in on the counterfactual mode of care. Following David Blau (2006), con- sider the following three combination of mother's work and child care decision: not working and maternal care, working and informal care, and working and formal care. If the new subsidized formal child care led to a shift from parental to formal care, we would expect it to affect maternal employment rates also.36 Havnes and Mogstad (2009) estimate the effect of the child care reform on full- time and part-time work of married mothers. To this end, they use a DD approach, comparing the growth rate in employment of mothers with the youngest child aged 3 to 6 years living in municipalities where child care coverage expanded a lot (i.e., the treatment group), with the growth rate for mothers with the youngest child of the same age who live in municipalities with little or no increase in child care (i.e., the comparison group). The analysis provides robust evidence that the new subsidized child care crowds out informal care arrangements, with almost no net increase in total care use or maternal labor supply.37As our sample differs somewhat from theirs, we re-examine the effect on maternal employment.38 The precise DD results in Table 7 conform to Havnes and Mogstad (2009). The 0.1785 increase in child care coverage is estimated to have caused less than 1 percentage point increase in maternal employment. This implies a 0.04 per-centage point increase in maternal employment per percentage point increase in the child care coverage rate, which in turn suggests that the new child care slots were associated with a 96 percent crowding out of informal care. We have also performed the DD regressions separately by education and age, which barely moves the estimates. Consequently, our positive results of child care on children's outcomes should be interpreted as reflecting a shift mostly from informal rather than parental care. The shift from informal to formal care seems relevant for debates about subsidized child care also in other countries. Caseio (2009a) and Lundin, Mörk, and Öckert (2008) find no effect on maternal labor supply for married mothers in the US and Sweden, respectively, from increased access to subsidized child care. Also, while Jonah B. Gelbach (2002); Berlinski and Galiani (2007); and Baker, Gruber, and Milligan (2008) find positive effects on maternal labor supply, they all find considerable crowding out of informal care arrangements.

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Crowdout Increases The Net Cost Of UCC

Baker et al. 08 [Michael Baker, Professor in the Department of Economics and Canada Research Chair in Economics, Child Development and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, April 2008, “Universal Childcare, Maternal Labor Supply and Family Well-Being”, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, http://economics.mit.edu/files/3103] /Triumph Debate

It is notable that the impact of the program on labor supply is only about half as large as the impact of the program on childcare utilization in absolute terms. There are two possible explanations for this finding. First, many women may be using childcare without working. The other possibility is a change in reporting: some women may have been using informal childcare and answered ‘no’ to the childcare usage question, but as they switched to the formal sector they report their care. The final four rows of Table 2 investigate these two hypotheses by dividing the sample of mothers into four groups: working and using childcare; working and using no childcare (presumably a mismeasurement that is proxying the informal care of these 0-4 year old children); not working and using childcare; and not working and using no childcare. The first two rows show that there is a reduction of 4.8 percentage points in the share of women who report working with no childcare for their small children, and the share who report working with childcare rises by 12.5 percentage points (the sum of these is the 7.7 percentage point increase in work). Thus, roughly one-third of the 14.6 percentage point rise in childcare use reported in the first row of Table 2 appears to be a shift from unreported informal care to more formal care (“crowding out” of informal care) rather than a net increase in childcare use. Finally, the third row shows that there is a small increase in the share of women who use childcare but do not work of 2.3 percentage points. These findings frame our investigation of child outcomes. The CPE policy is not purely an instrument for increased childcare use and labor supply. Rather, the effect of the policy is a mix of increased labor supply, leading to more childcare use, a shift in the mode of childcare (from informal to formal care), and a small rise in childcare use without increased labor supply. The estimates for childcare use and labor supply can be used to estimate the net budgetary cost of the program, accounting for offsetting tax revenues from increased maternal labor supply. We provide such an estimate in Baker, Gruber and Milligan (2005), and conclude that 40 percent of the costs of the childcare subsidy are covered by the income and payroll taxes on the extra labor the subsidy encourages. That is, the large shift from informal (unsubsidized) to formal (subsidized) childcare, as well as some increased childcare use by mothers who do not work, resulted in a significant net cost of this program, despite the large rise in labor supply. Section V: Child Outcomes, Parenting and Parent Outcomes Child Outcomes As discussed in Section I, there is considerable controversy over the effects of maternal work and childcare use on child outcomes. The policy change in Quebec, along with the rich data on child outcomes available in the NLSCY, offers an opportunity to more completely address this important question. Given the ages of the pre-school children in our sample, we do not observe many of the school performance or test score measures that are favored by economists in this context. Fortunately, there is enormous expertise in other disciplines measuring behavioral outcomes of young children, and this expertise is incorporated into child behavior measures available in the NLSCY.

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*Structural Violence

UCC Fails And Leads To Segregation Of Children By Socioeconomic Background

Drange & Telle 2020 [ Nina Drange PHD in Ecomincs and Senior Researcher at Statistics Norway and Kjetil Telle Direcotr of Health Services Research at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, May 2020, “Segregation in a Universal Child Care System: Descriptive Findings from Norway”, Oxford University Press, https://academic.oup.com/esr/article- abstract/36/6/886/5864520?redirectedFrom=fulltext ] /Triumph Debate

We have studied the allocation of publicly funded child care in a country with a very extensive and right-based provision of universal care, and with a system that is designed to provide uniform and high-quality child care for all children. Compared to many other countries, there is little segregation in participation in Norwegian child care, with almost all children having attended formal child care before starting school (Van Lancker and Ghysels, 2016). Moreover, the strict regulations of structural quality apply to all centres and the maximum co-payment of parents is low and decided by the national government. These features should limit advantaged parents’ ability to utilize high income or valuable networks to dis-proportionally occupy care of higher quality—reasons often put forth to explain perpetuating social inequalities in educational choices and outcomes (Lareau, 2014; Austin and Berends, 2018; Farkas, 2018; Thompson, 2019). Still, we describe excessive segregation of children by socioeconomic background across centres. We find some signs that private centres take advantage of their discretion with respect to whom to admit by enrolling dis-proportionally more advantaged children than those who applied. The impact of this on the overall segregation is, however, limited. Our main finding is that the excessive segregation of children by socioeconomic background across centres in Oslo stems from parental application behaviour, and that this application behaviour extends far beyond what would follow from residential segregation. The segregating parental behaviour may be explained by different parental preferences across social class status, in line with theories of cultural capital (Farkas, 2018) and previous empirical studies of parents’ school choices (Austin and Berends, 2018). Another explanation may be that preferences are similar, but that advantaged parents have better access to networks with more reliable and relevant information (Schneider et al., 1997; McPherson, Smith-Lovin and Cook, 2001; Lareau, 2014). At least in the latter case, policymakers may want to undertake compensatory measures to secure the opportunities of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, for example by providing information and guiding to disadvantaged parents about characteristics of child care centres that may benefit their children the most. Furthermore, since the segregation from parental application behaviour by far exceeds residential segregation, our simulation results suggest that policymakers can reduce segregation substantially by making relatively modest changes in the assignment rules. Previous studies have found that generous and high quality public child care targeted exclusively at disadvantaged children can improve their development and reduce social inequality in childhood and beyond (Heckman and Karapakula, 2019). This has spurred hopes that publicly subsidized universal expansions of high-quality child care can improve opportunities of children from disadvantaged families and reduce social inequality. But universal child care is not targeted exclusively at children from disadvantaged families, and we may fear that parental behavioural responses can undermine many of the potential benefits of universal child care expansions (Van Lancker, 2013; Van Lancker and Van Mechelen, 2015). Our findings suggest that such fears may not be unwarranted. Even in a child care system with almost universal participation and where parents’ ability to utilize high income or networks to dis-proportionally occupy care of higher quality is limited, substantial segregation may prevail in the quality of child care. This implies that universal child care systems may not be able to fully counter-act inequalities in other spheres of life, unless deliberate policy action is undertaken. Information and guiding to disadvantaged parents about characteristics of child care centres that may benefit their children the most, and assignment rules that reduce segregation, may be necessary to secure the opportunities of all families and children alike.

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Universal Pre-k Is Disproportionately Segregated; Minority Students Receive Lower Quality Care

Latham et al. 20 [Scott Latham, Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University, July 2020, “Racial Disparities in Pre-K Quality: Evidence from New York City’s Universal Pre-K Program”, Annenberg Institute at Brown University, https://www.edworkingpapers.com/sites/default/files/ai20-248.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Table 2 shows the demographic composition of UPK providers overall, as well as the average demographic composition experienced by white, black, Hispanic, and Asian students. Across the entire system, 20.4 percent of students were white, 22 percent were black, 37.7 percent were Hispanic, 16.8 percent were Asian, and 3.2 percent were some other race/ethnicity. Similar to Potter (2016), we find substantial segregation by race/ethnicity. For instance, in 2017-18 white children on average attended a program with about 61% white children and fewer than 6% black children. For black children, those percentages are nearly reversed (57% black children, 5% white children). We also document considerable segregation of Hispanic and Asian students. For instance, on average, Hispanic children attended providers that enrolled about 59% Hispanic children, despite making up only about 38% of children in the city. Similarly, Asian children attended providers with about 50% Asian students on average, despite making up 17% of the population. In Appendix Table A3, we show analogous results for kindergarten and first grade, using publicly available data from the NYC DOE. Consistent with Potter (2016), we find that UPK is more racially segregated than either kindergarten or first grade. Segregation indices offer another approach to describing segregation in UPK. We employ the multigroup version of Theil’s entropy index (H), which provides an estimate of how the diversity of individual providers compares to the diversity of the UPK system as a whole (Reardon & Firebaugh, 2002). We find that UPK has an entropy index value of .44, which means that individual providers are 44% less diverse, on average, than the UPK system overall. We also calculated a series of two-group entropy indices to examine the segregation of individual groups. Here we find that white children are the most heavily segregated (H=.50), followed by black children (H=.43), Asian children (H=.41), and Hispanic children (H=.29). Program quality To provide context for how quality in NYC compares to other contexts, Appendix Tables A4 and A5 compare NYC pre-K’s average ECERS and CLASS ratings, respectively, with available estimates of other state and district pre-K programs. The average ECERS rating in NYC was 4.24, and the average scores for CLASS emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support were 6.38, 6.20, and 3.13, respectively. As other sources have noted (CityHealth & NIEER, 2019), overall quality in NYC is quite high, outpacing the quality ratings of other longstanding pre-K programs, particularly in terms of CLASS emotional support and classroom organization subscales. Given the uneven distribution of students by children’s race/ethnicity, we next examine whether and how classroom quality differs along the same dimensions. We note the correlations between ECERS and CLASS ratings in NYC in Appendix Table A6. In general, we find that the overall correlation between these measures is quite low (.17), as are the correlations between more closely related subscales. For comparison, Mashburn et al. (2008) considered the association between ECERS ratings and CLASS subscales, and reported correlations of .54 and .43 for CLASS emotional support and CLASS instructional support, respectively. Although this difference is notable, the correlations in Mashburn et al. were based on ratings collected in the same classroom. By contrast, in NYC these assessments are frequently conducted in different classrooms at the same UPK site.4 Observed differences may also reflect that UPK teacher quality patterns parallel those from K-12, where scholars have determined that most of the variation in teacher quality is within, rather than between, schools (Jackson, Rockoff, & Staiger, 2014). With this caveat in mind, Table 3 shows ECERS and CLASS ratings for UPK providers throughout the city, and examines how average quality ratings differ for white, black, Hispanic, and Asian children. On average, children in each group attended a provider that scored below 5.0 (i.e. “good quality”) on the ECERS scale (ranging from 4.06 to 4.44). These ratings are in line with those reported in other contexts (see Table A4). By contrast, CLASS ratings were quite high across all groups of children. For instance, the average scores for the emotional support and classroom organization subscales were well above the “high quality” benchmark of 5 for all groups of children (ranging from 6.11 to 6.52), and were considerably higher than those reported for other prominent pre-K programs including Tulsa (Phillips, Gormley, & Lowenstein, 2009), Boston (Weiland et al., 2013), and Georgia (Bassok & Galdo, 2016). Instructional support scores were lower (ranging from 3.06 to 3.28), but comparable to that found in in other contexts (see Table A5). Next, we document large race- and ethnicity- based gaps on both measures. For instance, white children, on average, attended programs that were approximately .51 standard deviations (SD) higher on ECERS and .48 SD higher on CLASS than did black children. We also document significant (and generally large) black-white gaps across all subscales for each measure (Table 3, Panel B). We note smaller, but still substantial, Hispanic-white and Asian-white gaps in provider quality. For instance, white children, on average, attended providers that scored about .23 SD higher on the ECERS and .34 SD higher on the CLASS than did Hispanic children. The ECERS and CLASS gaps between white and Asian children were .09 and .17 SD, respectively. In Appendix Table A7, we also examine how a host of other program characteristics vary by race and ethnicity. Moving to a regression framework, in Table 4 we examine how ECERS and CLASS ratings differed based on the demographic composition of UPK programs. Panel A shows estimates of disparities in ECERS ratings between providers that served majority white students and those that served majority black, Hispanic, and Asian students. We find that providers serving majority black children scored on average .6 SD lower on the ECERS than did providers serving majority white children (column 1); the parallel differences for majority-Hispanic and majority-white providers is a gap of .26 SD. Coefficient estimates from the models with census tract fixed effects (column 3) reflect similarly large differences in quality among providers in the same census tracts. These estimates are not always statistically significant, however, which may reflect the reduction in variation in providers’ majority racial group within individual tracts. We also examine the extent to which these disparities change when controlling for a limited set of program characteristics (columns 4 and 5 of Table 4). We find that ECERS disparities are partly explained by the higher proportion of black children who attend DOE-sponsored programs as well as programs that are means-tested and available only to low-income children (column 5 compared with column 3). However, even with these controls, there is still a large gap in the average quality of programs attended by black and white children, though this difference is not statistically significant. Panel B shows disparities in quality for the CLASS scale. Similar to the ECERS, we document large gaps in quality for providers that served predominantly white children and those that served predominantly black or Hispanic children. For instance, majority-black providers scored .5 SD lower, on average, than did majority white providers (Panel B, column 1). The analogous gap for majority-white and majority-Hispanic providers was .39 SD. Unlike the ECERS results, we find that majority-Asian providers scored significantly lower on the CLASS than did majority-white providers (β = .25 SD). We find that the magnitude of disparities is generally consistent when examining these patterns within the same school district (column 2) or the same census tract (column 3), though again the standard errors are considerably larger at the census tract level. Importantly, these patterns are unchanged if we limit the sample to providers who had both ECERS and CLASS ratings (results available upon request). Appendix Figures A1 and A2 show 103 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

the distributions of ECERS and CLASS scores for majority white, black, Hispanic, and Asian providers. These figures show that the disparities we document in Table 4 occurred throughout the quality distribution, and were not driven by a few extremely low-quality programs.

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Early Childhood Programs Are 20% More Segregated Than High School

Greenberg et. Al. 2019 [Erica Greenberg, Tomas Monarrez, Alice Feng, Allison Fledman, David Hinson, Emily Peiffer, October 1st 2019, “Segregated from the Start Comparing Segregation in Early Childhood and K-12 Education”, Urban Institute, https://www.urban.org/features/segregated-start ] /Triumph Debate

School segregation is well documented and often understood in the context of residential segregation, using neighborhood characteristics to understand what is possible in public and private schools. Young children learn wherever they are: center-, school-, and home-based programs; preschools and sites serving infants and toddlers; or providers funded by public and private investment. How do early childhood programs stack up against the early elementary grades in terms of their black or Hispanic enrollment share? Nationwide, early childhood education is more segregated than kindergarten and first grade, even while enrolling a similar number of students. Early childhood programs are twice as likely to be nearly 100 percent black or Hispanic, and they are less likely to be somewhat integrated (with a 10 to 20 percent black or Hispanic enrollment share). These findings may reflect greater participation in early childhood education among black children than children of other racial and ethnic groups, but the data show greater segregation than we would expect based on enrollment alone. Even though integration is higher in kindergarten and first grade, it is still rare in those grades and in early childhood education. Few programs have a moderate black or Hispanic enrollment share (30 to 70 percent), as shown by the U- shaped distribution of blue and black bars in the chart above. The dissimilarity index, a summary index of segregation, shows that early childhood programs are more segregated than later grades of schooling. This index captures the distribution of black or Hispanic students in a single estimate and represents the share of black or Hispanic students that would need to move to achieve perfect integration. Segregation declines as students progress through formal education. The largest drop is between ECE and the elementary grades, with another sizable drop between middle and high school. Overall, using the dissimilarity index, early childhood education is 20 percent more segregated than high school. Further research is needed to understand why this is the case, but larger school sizes and catchment areas; intentional desegregation efforts through magnet schools, charter schools, and busing programs; and student age and ability to engage in school choice and transportation may explain these patterns.

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Universal Systems Results In Discrimination – Germany Proves

Jessen et al. 2020 [Jonas Jessen, Sophia Schmitz, Sevrin Waights, August 26th 2020, “Understanding day care enrolment gaps”, Journal of Public Economics, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S004727272030116X ] /Triumph Debate *** This study is specifically analyzing a “universal day care system” in Germany

The results for the enrolment gap by parental education are fairly straightforward to interpret. Part of the gap is explained by preferences, as reflected in the demand gap for this type of family background. Some of the gap seems to be explained by financial resources since the gap responds to fees. Finally, the gap gets larger when places are scarce which is consistent with discrimination and/or differences in search effectiveness/intensity (although it is not possible to distinguish between these). The results from the enrolment gap by parental migrant status are somewhat less straightforward to interpret. The enrolment gap by migrant status is (a) only to a smaller degree reflected in a gap in demand, (b) still there at low levels of shortages, (c) not bigger or smaller at higher levels of shortages, and (d) not bigger or smaller after a big reduction in fees. Any explanation for the enrolment gap for migrant parents needs to be able to fit these four facts. Firstly, the lack of a significant gap in demand allows us to rule out that the enrolment gap is because migrant parents do not want a place due to different preferences. There may be a concern that stated preferences reflect parental aspirations and not actual willingness to enrol. However, this does not seem consistent with the fact that 81% of rationed parents also report having made applications to day care centres.24 Secondly, enrolment is not well explained by differences in search effectiveness, since the enrolment gap is unaffected by the level of shortages. Factors such as being well-networked and knowing to apply extremely early are likely to give applications from native-born parents an ‘edge’ when shortages are high. Thus, if the enrolment gap was due to these factors one would expect it to decrease as shortages lessen—but it does not. Other possible factors, such as a complete lack of understanding of the application process or a complete lack of German language, may continue to be important even with low shortages if they prevent foreign parents from applying at all. However, this is not consistent with the fact that most parents that demand a spot have also managed to submit at least one application. Thirdly, we cannot rule out discrimination as an explanation for the enrolment gap. If discrimination against migrant parents is strong enough then it would result in an enrolment gap that does not necessarily get smaller with marginal increases in the availability of places. Migrant parents will struggle to find a place even at relatively low level of shortages if they are at the ‘back of the queue’ for any spot as a result of discrimination.25 To explore the plausibility of this explanation we looked to the literature on discrimination in Germany. We found the evidence to be highly supportive of discrimination against migrants as a potential explanation for the day care enrolment gap. While we did not find any German evidence from the day care context, specifically, we found many studies showing discrimination in other market and non-market areas such as schooling (Lüdemann and Schwerdt, 2013; Bonefeld and Dickhäuser, 2018), employment (Kaas and Manger, 2012; Weichselbaumer, 2020; Koopmans et al., 2019) and housing (Auspurg et al., 2017).26We discuss these studies in detail in the Section A.4. In short, empirical analyses of data on real individuals as well as several audit studies find discrimination against people perceived to be migrants, in particular when there is a perceived difference in cultural values (e.g. women wearing headscarves) in Germany. Studies that examine discrimination against both migrants and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds found discrimination targeted the former exclusively, which is consistent with our pattern of results. Fourthly, it appears that financial concerns are no more or less important for foreign parents than for other parents, based on the result that eliminating fees does not lower the gap in enrolment. This is somewhat consistent with the fact that the difference in the maximum willingness-to-pay for a day care spot between migrant parents and other parents is smaller than the same difference by education (Table 2). Fifthly, there may be further barriers to access that exist even in areas of low shortages. One possibility is day care quality. Even if parents report wanting a day care spot, and spots are available and affordable, they will not enrol their children if they find the quality to be too low. In fact, Table 2 shows that migrant parents are more likely than other parents to report any of the quality indicators (Q) such as group size, opening hours, and proximity of care, as reasons for not enrolling their children in day care. Gaps by parental education also exist, but theyare always smaller. One potential explanation for these differences is that migrant parents place a greater emphasis on quality compared with other parents. However, it could also be that migrant parents live in areas with lower day care quality, making these concerns more prevalent. Migrant parents may also have specific quality concerns. Indeed, foreign parents are three to four times more likely than other parents to cite “if staff were multilingual” and “if culture/religion were considered more” as factors that would lead them to enrol. Notably, citing these quality factors does not seem to be related to lower parental demand for day care, suggesting parents see these as provision-related issues

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Childcare Facilities Lack Of Access And Training Puts People With Disabilities At Increased Risk Of Harm

Smith 2019 [S.E. Smith, Senior Editor for Talk Poverty, March 11th 2019, “Including Disabled Parents Is Key to Universal Child Care”, Talk Poverty, https://talkpoverty.org/2019/03/11/disabled-parents-key-universal-child-care/ ] /Triumph Debate

As long as child care is under discussion, though, it is worth addressing the fact that disability isn’t an issue limited to children and while these bills are an excellent start, we should also be looking to the future. Disabled children grow up and build families of their own — 6.2 percent of parents are disabled, and disability is more common in black and brown parents — and those families, in turn, will need access to child care. Sometimes that means care for disabled children of disabled adults, and sometimes it’s care for nondisabled children of disabled adults. “You really need [child care providers] to be on your team,” explained Dr. Kara Ayers, Associate Director at the University of Cincinnati Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. Ayers is the co-founder of the Disabled Parenting Project, which studies the experiences of parents with disabilities. As part of her research, she said she sees issues like inaccessible restrooms and “just one step” entrances — doorways where a single step is all that lies between wheelchair users and entry — are common at the facilities she visits. Mandated reporters, people legally required to report possible abuse and neglect to the authorities, may have limited experience with disabled parents. Attitudes about disability may lead mandated reporters to be concerned about disabled parents’ capability. This is an issue with doctors, social workers, and teachers, and Dr. Ayers has found that it can appear in child care as well, an issue that raises personal concerns. “If I come in and these people are weirded out,” Ayers added, “one person could decide my daughter is not safe with me and one call could start that process.” Ayers speaks to a looming worry in the disability community: In every state, it is legal to weigh parental disability when making determinations about whether to remove a child from a home, on the argument that the parent must be “unfit.” According to a 2012 National Council on Disability study, removal rates climb as high as 80 percent in cases of intellectually disabled or mentally ill parents involved in custody fights. Disabled parents, said Ayers, worry about admitting that they need help or having to explain that services and supports are not a good fit for them, and that hooks directly into the child care conversation — if disabled people are nervous about communicating their needs, it’s challenging to make necessary recommendations.

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Universal Childcare Disproportionately Worsens Home Environments For Girls

Kottenlenberg and Leher 17 [Michael J. Kottenlenberg, Researcher at Huron University College, and Stephen Leher, Research Associate at Queen’s University, March 2017, “Does Quebec's Subsidized Child Care Policy Give Boys and Girls an Equal Start?”, National Bureau of Economic Research, https://www.nber.org/papers/w23259?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ntw] /Triumph Debate

The latter pathway suggests child rearing may be influenced by the policy. A central message from the education production function literature, dating back to the Coleman Report, is that home inputs such as parental time spent challenging children in math and reading has a positive and significant impact on subsequent achievement measures.34 It has also been hypothesized that some parents have a preference for boys over girls and therefore they invest more in boys. For instance, a large body of research surveyed in Bharadwaj et al. (2012) and Baker and Milligan (2013) present evidence that even in countries where sex preferences are thought to be small or non-existent there are sex differences in the amount of time parents report spending on various activities with their children. These differences may arise from parental beliefs regarding child ability based on gender.35 As Table 2 documents, such differentiation exists within Canadian households. We next consider to what extent does the availability of subsidized child care affects specific child rearing practices.36 Assuming that both parental investments and child care are inputs into a human capital production function for the child and that these inputs have different returns, parents face trade-offs between work, leisure, and child well-being. The Quebec Family Policy reduces the price of child care relative to other investments parents can make to the production process. In equilibrium, when making child care decisions the marginal rate of substitution between leisure and parental time investment into their children is equal to the price of leisure divided by the price of child care. Some parents will change the manner in which their children receive care when the costs of child care are lowered. To examine how investments in home environments responded to the introduction of the Quebec Family Policy on average, we follow a strategy in Kottelenberg and Lehrer (2016) by reestimating Equation (1). We extend the earlier work by exploring gender differences in these policy impacts and the results of this exercise for each of the outcomes summarized in the last panel of Table 2 are presented in Table 5.37 The top panel examines the impacts on measures of parental health and household environment. There are few significant changes to parental health after the policy was introduced but in general families with girls increasingly experience worse home environments. The intention-to-treat estimates indicate that following the introduction of subsidized child care, on average girls face significantly lower levels of parent consistency and lower levels of positive interactions with their parents relative to boys. In addition, only girls experience statistically significant declines in parent consistency. Conversely, the family dysfunction index is statistically significant for boys. The final two panels of Table 4 present evidence regarding changes to specific parental inputs for children aged 0-3 and 4 respectively. The middle panel highlights that following the policy introduction parents of children aged 0-3 significantly decreased the amount of time spent doing activities with their child, focusing on their child, reading to their child, and laughing with their child. These estimated declines are approximately twice as large for girls relative to boys.38 This removes the existing gender gap in this outcome that existed prior to reform where girls generally had 3-4% slightly higher rates of receiving these activities. Examining the intention to treat estimates suggests that once subsidized child care was introduced girls experienced increases in focused time with their parents but experienced decreases in the time spent doing either special activities or being taken to the library with their parents. These latter activities are more time-intensive and are more likely to take place outside of the home. The evidence from Table 5 clearly demonstrates that there are significant gender differential responses to the policy in home investments influencing the home environments. These results extend the findings in Kottelenberg and Lehrer (2016) who report estimates by strata of the developmental score measures separately for children aged 0-3 and children aged 4. The results in Table 5 focus on whether there are significant differences in parenting measures across gender rather than across the unconditional developmental score distribution, which we argue is more informative since parents may respond differentially to the policy by child gender but since they are unlikely to know the exact rank of their child in the distribution making the distributional analysis more challenging to interpret.

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Targeted Childcare

*Universal Child Care Doesn’t Reach Students Who Need It Most

Cornelissen et. al 17 [Thomas Cornelissen, Christian Dustmann, Anna Raute, Uta Schonberg. Thomas Cornelissen is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of York, Christian Dustmann is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University College London, Anna Raute is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Mannheim, Uta Schönberg is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University College London. April 2017, “Who benefits from universal child care? Estimating marginal returns to early child care attendance”, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctpb21/Cpapers/universalchildcare.pdf] /Triumph Debate

In this paper, we assess the heterogeneity in the effects of universal child care on child development at the age of school entry by estimating marginal returns to early child care attendance. Building on a tighter identification strategy than adopted in the related MTE literature, and using novel administrative data on child outcomes in a context in which all children undergo standardized and mandatory school entry examinations, we document substantial heterogeneity in the returns to early child care attendance with respect to both observed and unobserved child characteristics. For our main outcome of school readiness, we find that when attending child care late, minority children are 12 percentage points less likely to be ready for school than majority children. Attending child care early, however, nearly eliminates the differences between minority and majority children. Yet despite these larger returns from treatment, minority children are substantially less likely than majority children to enter child care early, pointing to a pattern of reverse selection on gains based on these observed child characteristics. We document a similar pattern for unobserved child characteristics: children with unobserved characteristics that make them least likely to enter child care early benefit the most from early child care attendance. We also provide evidence that these children may be disproportionally drawn from disadvantaged family backgrounds. Overall, our results show not only that heterogeneity in children’s responses to early child care attendance and parental resistance to child enrollment are key when evaluating universal child care programs but also that parents’ choices on behalf of their children may differ from those that the children themselves would make. They further suggest that the universal child care program which we study disproportionally subsidizes advantaged families whose children have the least to gain from early child care attendance. At the same time, it does not sufficiently reach minority and disadvantaged families whose children would benefit the most from the program. These observations raise the question of what type of policies could be implemented to draw these hard-to-reach children into early child care? One important first step (recently enacted by some German states) may be to make child care free for disadvantaged families while eliminating, or at least reducing, subsidies to advantaged families, thereby possibly improving child outcomes without increasing public spending. Such a policy, however, does not address the informational deficits and the cultural or religious concerns that may make disadvantaged and minority families resistant to enrollment in public child care and prevent them from fully appreciating its advantages. Hence, policies that inform disadvantaged families about the benefits of early child care ought to take account of cultural heterogeneity. They should carefully address culturally or religiously motivated concerns of parents while actively supporting their children’s enrollment in programs to improve the take-up rate of hard-to-reach children.

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Data From UCC Policies Show Targeted Care Is More Effective

Kottelenberg and Lehrer 14 [Michael J. Kottelenberg and Steven F. Lehrer. Kottelenberg and Lehrer are both Researchers at Queen's University. August 2014, “Reinvestigating who benefits and who loses from universal child care in Canada”, https://economics.ucr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Kottelenberg-paper-for-1-26-15-recrtmnt- seminar.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Quebec’s subsidized child care policy is unique and is often portrayed as a model for other provinces, states and countries to follow. Yet, the pattern of results reported in prior studies that have evaluated this policy are at best mixed and have led many to speculate about the underlying causal mechanism. In this paper we extend earlier research evaluating the Quebec Family Policy by providing the first evidence on the distributional effects of universal child care on two specific developmental outcomes. Our analysis uncovers substantial policy relevant heterogeneity in the estimated effect of access to subsidized child care across two developmental score distributions for children from two-parent families. Our estimates first reveal a more nuanced image that formal child care can indeed boost developmental outcomes for children from single parent households, particularly for the most disadvantaged within. We also find striking differences in the distributional effects across child gender that differ across developmental scores. Our empirical analysis is suggestive that much of the heterogeneity in policy effects emerges from differences in home learning environments that were present prior to the policy and were altered in response to the policy. In particular, we find that the subsamples exhibiting the largest negative effects from gaining access to child care also have large declines in parenting practices such as reading to the child daily for those who took up child care in response to the policy. Gains in developmental scores, on the other hand, were experienced by samples in which there were no or small positive changes to child rearing practices following the introduction of the policy or in which the pre-existing home environment was extremely poor. As a whole, this suggests that while formal child care is not a perfect substitute for home learning environments, given the large number of hours spent in child care centers, it can provide a remedy for children from the most disadvantaged home environments. While future research is needed to improve our understanding of how child care, parents and government policies interact to influence developmental outcomes, we believe there are three issues this paper highlights that can inform current child care policy debates. First, while the substantial heterogeneity in policy effects may appear to complicate the issue, it really points out that the evidence base surveyed in Baker (2011) is consistent with targeting child care coverage as a more effective policy option relative to universal coverage. Second, the success of child care with disadvantaged populations witnessed in many experimental studies has been hypothesized to level the playing field, since it on average does more than substitute for the parental care that these children would otherwise receive at home. We find that among children from single parent families, subsidized child care appears to substitute for lower levels of parental care or informal care arrangements, in effect leveling the playing field. These children witness large gains in developmental scores after the policy. However, our analysis also indicates that once the policy was introduced, children from two-parent households in Quebec on average shifted from receiving otherwise strong one-on-one parental care at home to reductions in many parent-child activities coupled with potentially less effective higher adult-child ratio care giving away from home. In addition, Baker et al. (2008) and Kottelenberg and Lehrer (2013a) show that these children, while in the home, were on average subjected to working parents affected by potentially higher levels of stress. Thus, since there are many significant household responses to these policies, we suggest attention in policy design must be devoted to mitigating household responses that influence the home learning environment. Third, the observed heterogeneity in policy impacts is not captured by comparing estimates of mean effects across subgroups of children defined by observed demographic characteristics. The treatment effect heterogeneity that we observe in the full sample also exists in subpopulations defined on the basis of child age and we see substantial different patterns for each developmental score by child gender. This reinforces that since the treatment effect heterogeneity is not fully characterized by predetermined variables, an improved understanding of why the policy works, when it does, and why it fails when it does not, is needed.

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*Only Low Income Children Show Positive Responses To Childcare Expansion – Suggests Universal Model Costs Outweigh The Benefits

Havnes & Mogsted 15 [Tarjei Havnes, Economics @ University of Oslo, Magne Mogstad, Economics @ University of Chicago, “Is universal child care leveling the playing field?” Journal of Public Economics, https://faculty.smu.edu/millimet/classes/eco7377/papers/havnes%20mogstad%202015.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Many developed countries currently consider a move towards a universal child care program. We assess the case for universal child care programs in the context of a Norwegian reform which led to a largescale expansion of subsidized child care. We use non-linear differencein-differences methods to estimate the quantile treatment effects of the reform. We find that the effects of the child care expansion were positive in the lower and middle parts of the earnings distribution of exposed children as adults, and negative in the uppermost part. We complement this analysis with local linear regressions of the child care effects by family income. We find that most of the gains in earnings associated with the universal child care program relate to children of low income parents, whereas upper-class children actually experience a loss in earnings. In line with the differential effects by family income, we estimate that the universal child care program substantially increased intergenerational income mobility. Taken together, our results have important implications for a small but rapidly growing literature on universal or large-scale child care programs. Our study points out that the effects of subsidized child care may be both more varied and extensive than what previous studies suggest. Our findings demonstrate that the effects of child care vary systematically across the outcome distribution, and that children of low income parents seem to be the primary beneficiaries. This is especially important when considering the case for universal child care programs, since the benefits of providing subsidized child care to middle and upper-class children are unlikely to exceed the costs. Another contribution of our paper is to highlight the importance of universal child care programs in explaining differences in earnings inequality and income mobility across countries and over time. The size and detailed nature of our data also allow us to bring new evidence on the usefulness of non-linear DiD methods in assessing policy changes, when only observational data is available and theory predicts heterogeneous treatment effects. To interpret the estimated heterogeneity in child care effects, we examine the mediating role of educational attainment and cognitive test scores, and show that our estimates are consistent with a simple model where parents make a tradeoff between current family consumption and investment in children. However, we cannot rule alternative explanations, including parents overestimating the quality of care that their children receive in child care or pre-school, as found in previous studies (see e.g. Cryer and Burchinal, 1997). In addition, peer effects could help explain our findings, if subsidized child care facilitates social interactions between advantaged and disadvantaged children and such interactions are beneficial (detrimental) for children of low (high) income parents. However, existing research suggests that exposure to children of low income parents has little impact on the outcomes of children of high income parents (see e.g. Angrist and Lang, 2004). Another limitation of our study is that we cannot tell whether the differential effects both across the outcome distribution operate through differences in child care take-up or differences in the impacts of uptake (depending on the quality of the child care center and the counterfactual form of care). Distinguishing empirically between these two sources to heterogeneity would be interesting, but requires data we do not have and an assumption about the policy not shifting the ranks of children in their potential outcome distribution (see Heckman et al., 1997)

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Most Evidence Used For Universal Programs Is Drawn From Targeted Programs - This Is A Mistake And Supports Targeted Not Universal Programs

Baker 11 [Michael Baker, Economics @ University of Chicago, “Universal early childhood interventions: what is the evidence base?” Canadian Journal of Economics, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1540- 5982.2011.01668.x] /Triumph Debate Given the evidence base for universal programs is so small and the results so often mixed, the case for universal children’s programs is often drawn to the research base for interventions into the lives of disadvantaged children. For example, background reports and policy documents in support of the recent full-day kindergarten initiatives in British Columbia and P.E.I. and the full-day. junior (for 4-year-olds) and senior (for 5-year-olds) kindergarten (JK and SK) initiative in Ontario give some prominence to the results of the Perry Preschool Program or similarly targeted programs.6 Of course, disadvantaged as well as advantaged children are served by universal programs, so it makes some sense that part of the evidence base should speak to this group. Nevertheless, there are at least two reasons why the use of this evidence in the evidence base for universal programs is potentially problematic. First, as a basis for predicting the impact of universal programs on disadvantaged children, it is important to keep in mind that the experimental early childhood interventions so often cited were expensive and involved high-quality treatments. For Perry Preschool, Heckman et al. (2010) report a program cost per child of $17,759 (2006 USD). At this cost, children aged 3 and 4 received a 2.5 hours per day preschool program delivered 8 months per year for up to 2 years. It was delivered by teachers with university degrees, certified to teach in elementary, early childhood, and special education. There were 4 teachers for every 20–25 students. The parents of these children received weekly home visits of 1.5 hours and participated in monthly group meetings facilitated by program staff (Schweinhart 2004). Masse and Barnett (2002) report an annual average cost per child of the Abecedarian project of $13,900 (2002 USD). In this program there were teacher/child ratios of 1:3 for infants and toddlers and 1:6 for older children (up to age 5). The preschool centres were open from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. 50 weeks per year. Children received a special individually designed curriculum as well as medical and nutritional services (Campbell and Ramey 1994). In contrast, universal programs are likely to provide less differentiated instruction in larger groups and at lower costs. For example, the Ontario full-day JK and SK initiative is designed for classrooms that average 26 students, one teacher, and one early childhood educator. The program runs for the standard school day over the school year. Definitive estimates of costs per student are hard to ascertain, but Ontario funds the instructional component of grades JK through grade 3 at $5,523.59 per pupil in 2011 (Ontario Ministry of Education 2011). Funding for all purposes per pupil across the entire education system is projected at $10,730 in 2010/11 (Ontario Ministry of Education 2010). Funding per student in the B.C. public education system is $8,357 for 2010/11 (British Columbia Ministry of Education 2011). There, kindergarten classes are capped at 22 students and have one teacher. These comparisons raise the important question of whether universal programs deliver the same instruction and support to at-risk children, which have the benefits documented in the experimental research. Ultimately, this is an empirical question, but it is clear that prima facie universal programs may provide very different treatments from those in the widely cited targeted interventions. The other reason why the use of the evidence base for targeted interventions for universal programs raises questions is the possibility of treatment response heterogeneity. One of the lessons of research on the returns to education over past decades is that segments of a population may respond differently to a common treatment (see, e.g., Card 1999 for a summary of some of this research). In application here the question is whether more advantaged children would benefit from the care and instruction provided in the targeted programs as the at-risk children did. To a certain extent this question is academic because, as just argued, universal programs do not typically deliver the same treatment. But as a matter of evidence it is worth asking whether, if universal programs were made more like the targeted ones, we could expect similar benefits. Again the answer to this question is ultimately empirical, but a relevant consideration is differences between the at-risk children targeted by Perry Preschool and similar programs and the majority clients of universal programs. The experimental programs were typically targeted at children whose observable characteristics strongly signalled future problems. A sense of how large these problems would be can be gained by focusing on the outcomes of the control group in the Perry Preschool Program. Figure 3 provides a view of some of the outcomes of the control group. What is quickly apparent is that the children targeted by the program were quite dramatically at risk. Their portfolio of life outcomes contrasts significantly with the average outcomes one would expect to see in a sample of Canadian children. While it does not follow logically that therefore what worked for the children of Perry Preschool would not work for the average Canadian child, one could easily suspect that Perry Preschool children had unique needs that their program specifically addressed. This is not to say that more advantaged children do not have problems, and that their problems would not be attenuated by some intervention. Rather, the point is that, based on the wide differences in characteristics and outcomes of these two groups, their problems and responses to a common treatment would be different.

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Universal Child Allowances CP

Child Allowance Is Preferable To Universal Child Care

Hammond 2017 [Samuel Hammond, Policy analyst in the Poverty and Welfare Program at the Niskanen Center, May 31st 2017, Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, https://spotlightonpoverty.org/spotlight-exclusives/libertarians- conservatives-see-child-allowance/ ] /Triumph Debate

The argument for a child allowance is straightforward: giving families cash is one of the most effective means for reducing poverty and promoting child well-being, as evidenced by the experience of over 20 countries around the world that have instituted some form of periodic, per-child cash payment to needy families. With few or no conditions on how the money can be used, parents end up making surprising – and surprisingly effective – choices. In addition to leading to increased spending on direct inputs, like education or pediatric health care, research has found per-child cash benefits increase spending on so-called “household stability items.” Covering these less obvious expenses, including routine bills and household goods, helps to dramatically reduce parental stress and create an overall healthier household. That should come as no surprise to a libertarian. Libertarians and classical liberals from J.S. Mill to F.A. Hayek designed their philosophies around the immense variety of human wants and needs, and there is no reason to believe that human diversity is any less in the case of children. The libertarian motto should be to “leave paternalism to the parents,” not just because paternalism by the government is wrong, but because parents are in the best position to harness their local knowledge and direct scarce resources to their highest valued use. The conservative appeal of a child allowance is even more obvious, with conservative governments historically being the ones to introduce child allowances in the countries that have them. That includes the United States, whose Child Tax Credit (CTC) was championed by Newt Gingrich based on the rejection of the idea that, as he put it, “the bureaucrats deserve the money more than the parents.” It was later expanded under George W. Bush, and more recently, Republican Senators Mike Lee and Marco Rubio have advanced proposals to expand it even further—although all have been shy of full refundability. In the shadow of the Tea Party movement’s anti-government fundamentalism, more family minded conservatives are slowly rediscovering the CTC. Reihan Salam has argued a fully refundable CTC should be part of a policy package for the Republican party to re-engage traditional families. And Patrick Brown has suggested a more generous CTC would be an effective, but less contentious, strategy for reducing abortion rates. Canada has what may be the world’s most generous child allowance in the world, at $6,400 per year for children under the age of six, and $5,400 per year for children under the age of 18. While its recent expansion occurred under a Liberal government, the benefit itself was established by the Conservative Party in order to undercut calls for a national daycare program. A national daycare program, the argument went, would impose a particular way of life on single-earner families and families who rely on relatives for child care. Cash, on the other hand, provided a neutral medium for supporting families from a variety of backgrounds, and in turn created a powerful political wedge to break the opposition parties’ monopoly over child welfare issues.

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A Universal Childcare Can Be Implemented Via Conversion of CTC, On A Monthly Schedule, Using Cash Assistance

VerValin 2018 [Joe VerValin, first-year CIPA fellow concentrating in Social Policy with a focus on healthcare policy in the United States, October 5th 2018, “The Case for a Universal Child Allowance in the United States”, Cornell Policy Review, http://www.cornellpolicyreview.com/universal-child-allowance/?pdf=4731 ] /Triumph Debate

The United States is unique among developed nations for its high rate of child poverty. Numerous reports using the supplemental poverty measure, which includes refundable tax credits, asset-based assistance programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and other near-cash benefits, indicate that the nation has a poverty rate of twenty-one percent. [1] While the country’s poor performance in this area is likely due to a host of factors, a major reason why it is outperformed by many of its counterparts in the developed world is because those countries provide a universal child benefit— a cash grant given to all families with children to cover the costs of childcare. [2] Some countries implement their programs through traditional welfare programs and others through the tax code, but they all share one notable trait in common— universality. These universal child benefit plans are accessible to all families with children regardless of their parents’ work status or income level. [3][4] In contrast, the United States currently uses a patchwork system of subsidies to help cover the costs of childcare that is administered through the federal tax system. The Child Tax Credit offers a refund of $1,000 per child per year, and the Child Tax Exemption offers $4,000 per child per year. While these exemptions can be of great aid to the families who receive them, they are by no means a universal safety net. A 2016 analysis of these programs by the Tax Policy Center found that they mostly go to families with incomes well above the poverty line. [5] Other studies found that, due to the work-based nature of these tax subsidies, they are not available for families in which the parents are unemployed or irregularly employed. [6] In effect, while the federal government does subsidize childcare at an annual cost of $100 billion a year, these limitations have made these tax credits nonexistent to the American families that need cash assistance the most. [7] Given these limitations, an effective strategy for reducing child poverty among families with children in the United States is to emulate other countries and convert the Child Tax Credit and child tax exemption into a child allowance that is distributed to families with children on a monthly schedule. With the nation’s laws already recognizing the significant costs that families incur in childcare every year, a universal child allowance is the next logical step in ensuring the security and well-being of the nation’s children.

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Child Allowance Is More Effective, Interchangeable, And Leads To Large Improvements In Child Outcomes

Hammond & Orr 2016 [Samuel Hammond Policy and Welfare policy Analyst for the Niskanen Center and Robert Orr Intern within the Poverty and Welfare Program, October 25th 2016, “Toward a Universal Child Benefit”, Niskanen Center, https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/old_uploads/2016/10/UniversalChildBenefit_final.pdf ] /Triumph Debate

Assistance to children is a rare issue with the potential to unite conservatives and liberals. On the right, conservatives see support for children as undeniably pro-family. 6 Children are further exempt from familiar worries about the ―deserving and undeserving poor,‖ and the negative impact of welfare on work incentives. On the left, targeted transfers to children are seen to have the benefit of filling a gap in the safety-net created when TANF supplanted traditional welfare, much of which went to poor women with children. Nonetheless, there are better and worse ways of providing child assistance. One strategy is to pursue a constellation of in-kind programs that provide subsidized day care, school lunches, pediatric services, and so forth. A more streamlined alternative is to provide a direct cash supplement to families with children with the understanding that parents and guardians are far more likely to know how best to address their family’s specific needs than Washington bureaucrats. Cash is Cost-effective We now know from a large number of rigorous evaluations that direct cash benefits like the CTC and EITC are highly cost-effective programs for improving child outcomes in areas like health, educational attainment and general well-being—often several times more effective than their inkind counterparts.7 Take, for example, the recent finding that the EITC adds a quality-adjusted life year (QALY) to the recipient at an average cost of $7,686. QALYs gained is an important measure of the effectiveness of health interventions. For comparison, Medicaid is considered cost effective at $66,000/QALY gained, which implies that expanding cash transfers through the EITC is more than eight times more cost effective as a health intervention than direct spending on low-income healthcare.8 Cash is Fungible Cash is fungible, meaning it can be used interchangeably for any purpose. Proponents of inkind benefits therefore worry that a cash supplement to parents will be spent on things other than their children. However, the best evidence shows that, far from undermining the goal of child assistance, ancillary spending often explains why cash is so effective. A 2015 study of expansions to Canada Child Benefit makes this point very clear. Previous research confirmed that its expansion led to large improvements in child outcomes, like physical and mental health, but this left open the question of ―how.‖ By studying household consumption patterns before and after the expansion, researchers found that outcomes for children improved through two distinct channels: by increasing direct expenditures on inputs like education and health (―the resource channel‖), and by helping pay for general household items that reduced stress and improved family stability—what the authors refer to as ―household stability items.‖ For every dollar the child benefit increased, the average household spent 13 cents more on education inputs like computers and school supplies, but also 17 cents more on rent, 8 cents more on food, and 6.5 cents on transportation. Perhaps the most surprising result is that increases in the child benefit caused a significant drop in the consumption of tobacco and alcohol products. It’s hard to say why an extra dollar would lead households to spend 6 and 7 cents less on cigarettes and booze, but one obvious possibility is that reducing a household’s financial stress reduces its need for stress relief.9 Alternatives to Cash Can Have Bad Effects Canada also provides one of the best examples of the unintended consequences of structuring child benefits in forms other than cash. Between 1997 and 2000, the Canadian province of Quebec extended generous subsidies to all children ages four and under that fixed the cost of daycare to $5 a day (by age five children enter kindergarten). Naturally, parents greatly increased their consumption of daycare, and female labor force participation rose. However, in the years that followed, child outcomes in Quebec deteriorated rapidly relative to the rest of Canada. Researchers tracked the daycare cohort and found alarming trends in a number of important behavioral measures, like aggression and fine motor skills, as well as a sharp rise in child anxiety of between 60-150%.10 Family relationships also appeared to suffer, as mothers reported lower relationship satisfaction and less consistent parenting. 11 A follow-up study published in 2015 found the negative effects on cognition persisted well into adolescence, with the daycare cohort exhibiting higher crime rates and worse mental health overall.12 The authors connect their finding to previous research showing that a child’s time away from their parent in their first 4.5 years is a predictor of disobedience and aggression, independent of family backgrounds.13 The upshot of the last two decades of rigorously evaluated experiments in childcare policy is clear: It is incredibly hard to improve on cash and incredibly easy for non-cash alternatives to cause lasting damage. Attempts to micromanage child expenditures through in-kind benefits are often described as paternalistic, and in one sense they are. However, the term is misleading to the extent that in-kind benefits actively cut against the nuance and subtlety of genuine parental choice. Paternalism is no substitute for parenting. No bureaucracy has the fine-grained knowledge of which household items will best support child well-being and family stability. On the contrary, one-size-fits-all in-kind benefits are demonstrably less effective than cash in parents’ pockets.

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Child Allowance Improves The Well-Being Of Children – Increased Access To Childcare, Food, Rent, And Transportation

Jones et al. 15 [Lauren E. Jones University of Toronto, Kevin S. Milligan Vancouver School of Economics, Mark Stabile University of Toronto, April 2015, “Child Cash Benefits and Family Expenditures: Evidence from the National Child Benefit”, National Bureau of Economic Research, https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w21101/w21101.pdf ] /Triumph Debate

This paper builds on previous research that identifies the positive outcomes associated with child benefit programs by examining in detail how exactly families use benefit income in order to improve both child health and educational outcomes. Using variation in benefit generosity across years, provinces and family size, we identify changes in total family expenditures and changes in the probability of expenditure across a number of categories. The results contribute to our understanding of how families use benefit income to improve the well- being of their children. Our results reveal some interesting patterns. There is evidence that, among low-income families, the benefits are used across a wide variety of expenditure categories, consistent with both the “resource channel” and the “family process channel”. We observe direct investments in education, especially for lower income families. There is a clear pattern that some of the resources provided by benefit programs are being used to directly improve learning. We also uncover evidence in favour of the family process hypothesis. For example, we see increases in purchases of child care, food, rent and transportation (non-durables)— general expenditures required by low-income families. We also see evidence that the benefits may cause families to reorganize their budgets, with less spending on food in restaurants and, especially among the full sample, alcohol and tobacco. These results contradict anecdotal comments that unconditional cash transfers result in increased spending on tobacco and alcohol (see, for example, CBC 2005). It appears that among the population receiving child benefits, the opposite is true. Our results fit well with several recent papers that show that alcohol and tobacco consumption may be tied to financial hardship. Hoynes et al. (2015) look at the effect of the EITC on infant and maternal health outcomes, and find evidence of a reduction in maternal smoking for women receiving EITC, consistent with our findings. Our finding is also consistent with evidence on the relationship between unemployment and risky behavior where recent evidence shows an increase in maternal smoking with increases in unemployment (Currie et al 2014). A decrease in spending on alcohol and tobacco products is certainly consistent with a decline in the overall stress levels in the household as both alcohol and tobacco are often used to relieve stress. While it is not possible to say for certain how these changes in spending patterns drive improvements in child outcomes, it is likely that benefit income may be helpful in reducing financial stress (and hence reducing consumption of items like alcohol and tobacco) thereby providing an improved learning environment for children

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Universal Child Allowance Has Multiple Advantages – Provides Income Floor & Safety Net, Eliminates Stigma, Reduces Hassle, Cuts Child Poverty By Over 40%

Shaefer et. al 18 [H. Luke Shaefer, Sophie Collyer, Greg Duncan, Kathryn Edin, Irwin Garfinkel, David Harris, Timothy M. Smeeding, Jane Waldfogel, Christopher Wimer, Hirokazu Yoshikawa. Shaefer is a Researcher at the University of Michigan. Collyer is a Researcher at Columbia University. Duncam is a Researcher at University of California, Irvine. Edin is a Researcher at Johns Hopkins University. Garfinkel is a Researcher at Columbia University. Harris is a Researcher at the Columbia Population Research Center. Smeeding is a Researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Waldfogel is a Researcher at Columbia University. Wimer is also a Researcher at Columbia. Yoshikawa is a Researcher at New York University. February 2018, “A Universal Child Allowance: A Plan to Reduce Poverty and Income Instability among Children in the United States”, : https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7758/rsf.2018.4.2.02] /Triumph Debate

Through its child tax exemption and Child Tax Credit, our nation recognizes the value of assisting parents in paying for the costs of raising children. At nearly $100 billion per year, these tax-based benefits represent, in effect, sizable annual child allowance payments to middle income families. We have argued that the structure of these two programs is not in keeping with a principled approach to supporting our nation’s children. They omit the lowest (and highest) income families and, in the case of the child tax exemption, benefits generally increase with income. Their once-yearly payment schedule is poorly suited to the growing number of families with month-to-month income instability. Transforming the Child Tax Credit and child tax exemption into a universal child allowance for all American children would reflect the implicit recognition embedded in the tax code that families incur significant expenses when raising children. In addition, our universal child allowance would provide a base-level source of cash support—an income floor—for our most vulnerable families, and indeed all families with children. It would complement our nation’s work-based safety net because the child allowance would not be reduced as earnings increase. And because it would be available to all children, its benefits would not suffer the stigma attached to existing means-tested income transfer programs or the hassle of recertification of benefits, except at tax time. Our simulations of a universal child allowance show that child poverty would be cut by over 40 percent over current levels, and deep child poverty would be cut by half. Extreme, $2 per day, poverty among children would be eliminated. To be sure, the costs involved would be substantial. But this investment would lead to large and direct reductions in child poverty, and might also have a significant effect on the poverty and well-being of future generations.

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*Capitalism Kritik

Discourses Of Investment In ECE Form The Basis of “Edu-Capitalism” – Shifting Views Of Education From Collective Affairs To Individualistic Ones In Favor of Capital

Smith et al. 16 [Kylie Smith, Early Childhood Studies @ University of Melbourne, Marek Tesar, Education & Social Work @ University of Auckland, Casey Myers, Education @ Kent State University, “Edu-capitalism and the governing of early childhood education and care in Australia, New Zealand and the United States,” Global Studies of Childhood, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2043610615625165] /Triumph Debate

Neoliberal influences on early childhood education are well documented in numerous studies (see, for example, Mitchell, 2013; Moss, 2014; Penn, 2013). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), through its policies, is the influential driver that perceives early childhood education and care as a worthy investment with economic outcomes and purposes and uses discourses of investment in and outputs from early years education. These discourses determine what is quality and what are good standards, and how they are linked to the notion of a productive citizen, in this instance a child and family. For example, the OECD (2004) document Babies and Bosses, determines women’s return to the workforce and combining motherhood and working life. Peter Moss (2014) sums up the story of the effects of neoliberalism in early childhood: It is a story of control and calculation, technology and measurement that, in a nutshell, goes like this. Find, invest in and apply the correct human technologies – aka ‘quality’ – during early childhood and you will get high returns on investment including improved education, employment and earnings and reduced social problems. A simple equation beckons and beguiles: ‘early intervention’ + ‘quality’ = increased ‘human capital’ + national success (or at least survival) in a cut-throat global economy. Invest early and invest smartly and we all live happily ever after in a world of more of the same – only more so. (p. 3) Human Capital Theory is concerned with the site of the individual, her or his skills, knowledge, competencies and behaviours and how these contribute to the productivity of the nation or country. Human Capital Theory has shaped neoliberal education policies and influenced social investment (i.e. government spending), particularly in early childhood education. The investment in early childhood programmes is an intervention targeted particularly at ‘vulnerable’ families or families living in poverty as a way of creating productive future citizens who contribute to the economic viability of the country within a global economy has come to typify neoliberal educational policies and practices (Penn, 2008, 2010, 2013). Who ‘is vulnerable’ or what it means to be ‘vulnerable’ is determined by the economic and White dominant standards of Western countries. Moss (2014) describes these outcomes as a repayment for an investment. Connected to the discourses of poverty and vulnerability, Heckman and Masterov (2007) strongly advocated for investment in early education as a way of reducing unemployment, single parenthood, welfare dependency and crime. This is reminiscent of the 1960s US HighScope Perry Preschool Study. Further still, histories of the establishment of early childhood services, particularly kindergartens, document the formation of these services as charitable organisations, as places for moral reform for children and families living in poverty in New Zealand (May, 1997) and Australia (Brennan, 1998). For others, education is seen as critical to economic growth and ‘underperformance’, or poor educational outcomes are understood as an economic cost or drain (Savage et al., 2013). Neoliberal education policy entwined with principles of Human Capital Theory has strongly framed what Jill Blackmore calls ‘Edu-capitalism’ (Blackmore, 2014). Human Capital Theory and economic productivity are clearly evident in key Australian, New Zealand and American early childhood policy texts. In July 2009, the Council of Australian Governments endorsed the National Early Childhood Development Strategy, Investing in the Early Years, to support all children to have the best start in life: The strategy will guide Australia’s comprehensive response to evidence about the importance of early childhood development and the benefits – and cost-effectiveness – of ensuring all children experience a positive early childhood, from before birth through the first eight years of life. It will also support Australia to better meet the diverse needs of today’s families and focus on improving child outcomes and foster the health and wellbeing and productivity of our next generation. National effort to improve child outcomes will in turn contribute to increased social inclusion, human capital and productivity in Australia. It will help ensure Australia is well placed to meet social and economic challenges in the future and remain internationally competitive. (Council of Australian Governments, 2009: 4) In 2013, the New Zealand Government set 10 challenges for the public sector to achieve over the next 5 years, including one for early childhood education. The early childhood education challenge was focused particularly on supporting vulnerable children: We know there is a link between early childhood experiences and adult mental health, drug and alcohol abuse, poor educational outcomes and unemployment. Too many children are at risk of poor outcomes because they do not get the early support they need. The human and financial costs of not facing up to these challenges are too high. We know that remedial spending is often less effective, and more costly, than getting it right the first time. For example, treating rheumatic fever alone costs an estimated $40million a year in New Zealand. Early intervention brings benefits in terms of reduced imprisonment and arrest rates, higher employment and higher earnings later in life. By doing better for vulnerable children, we could set them on a pathway to a positive future, and help build a more productive and competitive economy for all New Zealanders. (State Services Commission, 2013: para 1) In the State of the Union Address in 2013, President Obama proposed an early learning agenda noting, The beginning years of a child’s life are critical for building the early foundation needed for success later in school and in life. Leading economists agree that high-quality early learning programs can help level the playing field for children from lower-income families on vocabulary, social and emotional development, while helping students to stay on track and stay engaged in the early elementary grades. Children who attend these programs are more likely to do well in school, find good jobs, and succeed in their careers than those who don’t. And research has shown that taxpayers

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receive a high average return on investments in high-quality early childhood education, with savings in areas like improved educational outcomes, increased labor productivity, and a reduction in crime. (Obama, 2013: para 1) The promotion of economic capital and a better life is evident on the US Department of Education website that promotes the promise for a ‘Middle class’ life style through the investment in high-quality preschool. The webpage titled Early Learning: America’s Middle Class Promise Begins Early cites a presidential speech: If we make high-quality preschool available to every child, not only will we give our kids a safe place to learn and grow while their parents go to work; we’ll give them the start that they need to succeed in school, and earn higher wages, and form more stable families of their own. By the end of this decade, let’s enroll 6million children in high-quality preschool. That is an achievable goal that we know will make our workforce stronger. (Obama, cited in Chicago Sun Times, 2014: para 52) These simple deterministic practices allow such neoliberal thinking to penetrate every corner of child care, with education being dissociated from the idealistic outcomes of early childhood curriculums such as New Zealand’s Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education, 1996) and Australia’s Belonging, Being and Becoming (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), 2009). Furthermore, the creeping edu-capitalism shifts early years education and care further from a socialist endeavour and collectivism to individualistic capitalism under corporate business models, for profit, and to seeing childhood and education as a new, profitable investment.

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Edu-Capitalism Invests In “Equality Of Opportunity” That Lets The Government Off The Hook For Continuing Injustices And Poverty While Masking The Continued Violence Of Neoliberalism

Smith et al. 16 [Kylie Smith, Early Childhood Studies @ University of Melbourne, Marek Tesar, Education & Social Work @ University of Auckland, Casey Myers, Education @ Kent State University, “Edu-capitalism and the governing of early childhood education and care in Australia, New Zealand and the United States,” Global Studies of Childhood, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2043610615625165] /Triumph Debate

In New Zealand, public policy is torn between the tension of the curriculum framework that has been argued as contesting neoliberal policies (Ministry of Education, 1996) and everyday performances of the control, shaping and moulding of childhoods. The ideal child has particular qualities, and children who are labelled as ‘vulnerable’, meaning ‘other’, from less ‘functioning’ environments and places are considered to be of a ‘lower quality’. The push of the neoliberal government is to remove children from the vulnerable families and spaces and to place them into compulsory child care in order for the parents to remain eligible for welfare payments (Early Childhood Council, 2013). These signs of edu-capitalism governing childhoods demonstrate how ideology penetrates every aspect of life and portray parents as unable to look after their own children because they are from a certain socio-economic background. They highlight ‘quality’ in early years centres as determined by international OECD economic indicators and elevate these indicators above the local and bicultural knowledge, relationships and partnerships that the early years curriculum is built on. The ‘vulnerable’ children thus become the Havelian (1985) victims and supporters of this edu-capitalist system. Through this edu-capitalist lens, the individual continues to be responsible for the choices in what she or he chooses to ‘consume’ to ensure success, and if ‘success’ in economic achievement is not met, the responsibility of this sits with the individual. This removes all responsibility from the state and pushes it onto the individual family. The family needs to publicly display signs of wealth so as not to stigmatise children as reproducers of their social class and of what it represents. Issues of redistribution of wealth and other resources do not need to be addressed by governments as they do not deem themselves as ‘responsible’ or obligated to achieving equity (Rawolle, 2013). The outcome is that the same inequity narratives continue to be retold. Neoliberalism pretends to provide ‘equal’ and ‘fair’ opportunities for ‘all’ to achieve ‘success’ while it has re- inscribed, intensified and continued to create injustices and inequity. This occurs because neoliberalism conceptualises power as a product that can be gained or received and placed at the site of the individual. In this context, an individual can obtain power through the accumulation of knowledge and skills within education. It is possible for anyone to gain ‘power’ if they work hard enough where equity is understood as ‘equity of opportunity’ (Savage et al., 2013: 162). Drawing on Foucault’s conceptualisations of power opens up other ways of understanding the discourses in operation within neoliberal education policy. The identification of the individual in the modern gaze resulted in a citizen being observed, assessed, transformed and monitored (Faubion, 1994; Foucault, 1977; Rabinow, 1984). Foucault (1977) argued that within the classical age the discovery of the body as an object and the concept of individuality of the body can be analysed through observation and manipulated as a form of social discipline, normalisation and regulation. Foucault (1977) stated, ‘A body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved’ (p. 136).

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Economic Framing Subverts The Feminist Origins Of UCC – The Business Case Abandons Marginalized Adults, Mothers, And Childcare Workers While Claiming The Problem Is Solved

Prentice 09 [Susan Prentice, Government @ University of Manitoba, “High Stakes: The “Investable” Child and the Economic Reframing of Childcare,” Signs, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/593711?journalCode=signs] /Triumph Debate

In Don’t Think of an Elephant! linguist George Lakoff (2004) uses President Richard Nixon’s very unwise cry—“I am not a crook”—to illuminate a basic principle of framing: when you are arguing with the other side, Lakoff warns, “do not use their language. Their language picks out a frame—and it won’t be the frame you want” (3). Frames are more than neutral vehicles that simply reflect reality. They also play an active role in shaping how we think. The business case for childcare both is subject to ideational expectations and generates ideational expectations. There is a logic to the economization of childcare that is bigger than just the advocacy-inflected “you’ll-get-a-return-on-the-spending” argument. Under the business case for childcare, programs are being developed, usually as a part-day or part-week service provided by the commercial or voluntary sector and rarely by the state. Yet such newly expanded care, while often beneficial to children, does little to address the needs of working mothers for full-day, year-round care. Such a system, in Sonya Michel’s formulation, may go some way toward recognizing children’s interests but will do little to address mothers’ rights (Michel 1999). Moreover, the predominately female childcare providers are unlikely to find a remedy for their low pay, bad working conditions, and high turnover rates, or to see improvements in the quality of care they provide. The acceleration of corporatized childcare services will exacerbate these poor conditions. Under feminist visions, universal childcare was designed to be good for children and their mothers, as well as for the staff who provided care. Childcare as conceived of by the business case is designed merely for children, and even then it is only designed to be implemented in the most minimal dose, most often as part- day preschool. It is a case of placing children, but not women, first (Lister 2006). The net effect is that children’s needs are put ahead of mothers’ needs, a sadly familiar hierarchy. Stubbornly persistent unequal social, political, and economic relations of gender, class, and race are erased in favor of the catch-all category of the investable child, whose family, it would seem, has no needs—nor potential—of its own. Although children are now considered a good investment, we can deduce that women and mothers are not. Mothers’ needs are being written out of the central purpose of childcare. This insight exposes a limitation of the social investment frame—the assumption that only good investments have social and political legitimacy. As older notions of welfare are being replaced by the ideal of the social investment state, governments invest in human capital rather than directly in economic provision (Giddens 1998, 117). Such a shift may work well for those with reliable current and future productivity—children chief among them. It bodes very badly, however, for those whose prime productivity has passed (such as older people, including older women) or those who were or are blocked from productivity and labor force participation for reasons of health status, inadequate education, social marginalization, residency in depressed regions, or other barriers. As Jennifer Sumsion has found in her disturbing review of the corporatization of childcare in Australia, the “narrower the definition of the core purpose of childcare provision, the more readily limitations of a particular form of provision, or the supposedly peripheral benefits of alternatives, can be disregarded” (2006, 106). Women are citizens, and they have claims on fairness and social justice. Conflating women and children, or subordinating women to children, evades or eviscerates women’s independent claims as rights-bearing citizens. The oversight—or worse—of women is even more inexplicable given the focus on paid employment and the importance of paying one’s own way to governments motivated by the paradigm of social investment. A sympathetic Canadian newspaper editorial recently observed that one of the hardest-learned lessons for childcare advocates is that, when the political winds turn against them, they have to tack. “Zigzagging into a headwind is slow, exhausting work. Sometimes the goal doesn’t seem to be getting any closer. But compared with the alternatives— standing still, slipping back or capsizing—it’s not a bad choice” (Toronto Star 2006, A18), the column observes. Feminists alert to the risks of the business case might want to disagree. Cynthia Enloe (1990) argues that, under patriarchy, women and children merge into a single object: “womenandchildren.” A long history of maternal regulation has regularly led to the condition of compulsory altruism (Land and Rose 1985), in which women’s needs become subordinated to the needs of their children, a tendency displayed par excellence in the business case and in the economization of childcare.

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The Economic Reframing Of Childcare Overwrites Any Potential Political Ramifications – The Proponents Of Modern UCC Do Not Seek Justice, But Economic Gain

Prentice 09 [Susan Prentice, Government @University of Manitoba, “High Stakes: The “Investable” Child and the Economic Reframing of Childcare,” Signs, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/593711?journalCode=signs] /Triumph Debate

A further effect of the economic reframing of childcare is to figure opponents of childcare investment as being blind to the self- evident economic good of childcare. Under economic reframing, the business case reverses the conventional associations of social welfare spending. According to this frame, detractors irrationally neglect to take advantage of the future gains available for the reaping; opponents of childcare fail Benjamin Franklin’s thunderous injunction to waste neither time nor money. Such disregard for reliable returns can only signal profligate spendthrifts. Wastefulness becomes associated with those who perversely avoid the economic returns available from investing in early childhood instead of flying with those who advocate more services. Thus, a key effect of the business-case frame for childcare is that it largely eliminates fiscal objections to childcare spending. Such economic reframing is swiftly constructing a new common sense: that it is irrational to oppose the expansion of childcare. In the United States, this underwrites a nationwide universal prekindergarten (pre-K) movement that wields significant “political traction” (Fuller 2007, 33). Economic reframing has led to alliances between children’s advocates and the corporate sector. It further helps to explain the otherwise curious fact that, under President George W. Bush’s watch, the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) held hearings titled “Investing in Young Children Pays Dividends: The Economic Case for Early Care and Education.” The JEC’s media advisory noted that the hearings would discuss how “investments in early childhood programs can improve child outcomes, ease the burden on public resources, enable higher labor force participation, and lead to higher future productivity and economic growth” (Joint Economic Committee 2007). Vice-Chair Carolyn Maloney opened the forum by noting: “Estimates show that the return on investing in early care and education is between 7 to 18 percent annually. If this were a stock, all of Wall Street would be buying” (Maloney 2007, 1). Much of the economic literature making the business case for childcare in Canada and the United States is equally boosterish. The high-profile U.S.-based Fight Crime: Invest in Kids Coalition enthuses about “estimated rates of return that would make a venture capitalist envious” (Fight Crime: Invest in Kids 2003, 2). Moreover, with recent report titles such as “Exceptional Returns” (Lynch 2004), “Early Childhood Development: Economic Development with a High Public Return” (Grunewald and Rolnick 2006), and “Investing in Our Children Is Good Public Policy” (Vancouver Board of Trade 1999), the message is purposive. The Committee for Economic Development similarly summarizes the case for enhanced childcare: in addition to preparing children for school success, “investing in high-quality early education also offers promising ways to strengthen the future economic and fiscal position of states and the nation” (2006, 1). It further underscores the point: “Today’s business leaders see that early childhood education is important to future U.S. economic competitiveness and a worthwhile investment” (1). These new arguments that frame childcare as a vehicle for capitalist accumulation and profit are sharply at odds with an earlier moment of feminist activism. Historians of the women’s movement have noted that, like many movements rooted in the 1960s and 1970s, “second-wave feminism mobilized around a paradigmatic frame of injustice” (Hobson and Lindholm 1997, 483). The demand for what was then called day care— much like the call for ready access to abortion, equal pay, or an end to sexual harassment—was to remedy gender injustice. Feminist advocacy for childcare was a political intervention, part of a campaign for fundamental changes to an economic structure that systematically produced inequality. This mobilization was expressly designed to be part of social change, not capitalist accumulation and legitimation.2 Yet economic reframing displaces the justice-based rationale for childcare. In Canada, as in the United States, the human capital approach is today “one of the main drivers” for early learning and childcare (Friendly 2006, 8). Economic reframing provides a resource for the mobilization for childcare, but it sidesteps the problem of social inequality, including gender inequality. The business case for childcare builds an ideological/ conceptual bridge to contemporary wealth production, not to social transformation. Rather than embed it in broader questions of justice, the economic frame condenses childcare service to instrumental questions of monetary value. The political dimensions of childcare are overridden in a business-case frame that positions profitability, effectiveness, and calculation as the prime goods.

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UCC Discussions Framed By Economics Only Serves To Erase Focus On Existing Forms Of Inequality By Reinforcing The Narrative That Individual Choices Lead To Poverty

Bundy 12 [Jessica Bundy, Sociology @York University, “Rendering (gender) invisible: early childhood education and care in Ontario as a biopolitical social investment apparatus,” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01596306.2012.692964?scroll=top&needAccess=true] /Triumph Debate *** SIS = Social investment state *** ECEC = Early childhood education and care *** ELP = Early Learning Programs

The SIS welfare state regime, as described by Saint-Martin and Mahon, is closely related to neo-liberal state policy, with certain differences emerging between the two frameworks. The main distinction between neo-liberalism and the SIS is that the latter ‘draws on social liberalism to support its case for social investment’ (Mahon, 2008, p. 345). In this regard the SIS differs from neo-liberalism, which seeks to minimise government involvement in the economy to the greatest possible extent, and allow markets to determine social programmes (Mahon, 2008, p. 344; SaintMartin, 2007, p. 282). The SIS is still oriented towards minimal government spending; however, it ensures what is spent should be an investment that will activate citizens for the future, instead of assistance to help needy populations in the present. Examples of these changes are the rise of welfare-to-work programmes and a new emphasis on job training (Jenson & Saint- Martin, 2003, pp. 8687; Mahon, 2008, p. 345). An interest of the SIS is ‘the intergenerational reproduction of human capital. States have a role to play here, investing in early childhood education as the foundation for lifelong learning and ‘‘helping parents to parent’’’ (Mahon, 2008, p. 345). The state interested in forming and maintaining the population at large, is focused on shaping both children and parents in order to develop a particular type of citizen for the future. Equality of opportunity is more relevant in the SIS than any other form of equality. The objectives are future oriented, and there is interest in investing to ensure a future return (Jenson & Saint- Martin, 2003, p. 92; SaintMartin, 2007, p. 285). Therefore, investing in early childhood education is determined as beneficial to the future of society since studies show spending on ECEC brings a greater return than spending on later life stages (Jenson & SaintMartin, 2003, p. 92; Saint-Martin, 2007, p. 292; UNICEF, 2008, p. 11). It is this focus on studies, research and science in ECEC that points to the importance of experts in creating the SIS apparatus. For example, the National Children’s Agenda, a government initiative for bettering the lives of children in Canada, emphasises: ...strong evidence, including scientific research, that what happens to children when they are very young shapes their health and well-being throughout their lifetime. Science has proven what we have intrinsically known all along healthy children grow into healthy, successful adults, who will shape our future.(National Children’s Agenda, 1997, quoted in Saint-Martin, 2007, p. 291. See also McCain & Mustard’s, 1999 science-based study of early childhood development.) An emphasis on science, particularly ‘neurobiology, developmental psychology and population health research’, is used to create a particular model of the child- citizen, promoting a singular idea of the needs of the child to develop an active, useful and responsible adult-citizen in the future (Saint-Martin, 2007, p. 291). The SIS apparatus is notable in the proposed changes to Ontario’s childcare and education. The purposes and reasons for needing an ELP are framed within the discourse of investment, equality of opportunity and the importance of childhood education, all of which are ‘proven’ through research and scientific study. This kind of legitimisation for new ECEC programmes is common in provincial, federal and even global commentary on childcare and education. The UNICEF report states the importance of investment; within the same paragraph, the report also claims the importance of equality of opportunity. One sentence asserts the importance of ensuring ‘that all children have the best possible start’ (UNICEF, 2008, p. 11); the next tells us there is a cost-benefit to investing in early childcare (UNICEF, 2008, p. 11). When faced with the juxtaposition of these two ideas there is a noticeable contradiction between ideals of equality and those of investment. Can the two coexist as the SIS advocates suggest, or does the positive provisioning of equality for all become cancelled out by the market-driven notion of a ‘good’ investment? If there is equality, it becomes only equality of initial opportunity, but then must devolve with age to an outcome of individualised identity, where inequality is based on one’s own life choices and chances, whether this is the reality or not. As McKeen (2007) points out, this hides important structural issues about the effects of poverty and social inequality that affects ones life chances (p. 152). Initialising a childcare programme that promotes itself as levelling the playing field and providing equal opportunities for disadvantaged children runs the risk of suggesting that such an approach, by providing one universal programme, can realistically eradicate differences between children, based on a variety of forms of inequality. Viewing ECEC as an approach that offers equality to all children does not recognise the real inequalities and barriers that poverty poses, not only just for children, but also for families more generally. Another problem with the SIS is that it only focuses on children, because they are seen as offering the best ‘return’ on investments; it has very little interest in anyone considered a bad investment or unimportant in market terms. Parents are only part of the discourse in so far as they relate to their children; there is no interest in understanding the effects of social programming for children on 123 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – MARCH/APRIL 2021

the families who are connected to the results. By concluding that investment in children offers equality of opportunity, there is the potential for further indifference to structural forces of inequality, such as class, race and gender. Therefore, by minimising the need to solve problems that impede inequality there is a crystallisation of the discourse of individual choice leading to poverty. The SIS also ignores the needs of women as mothers and workers, an important and problematic omission. By focusing solely on children and on equality of opportunity, there is no space made for the relevant discussion of gender inequality and how changes in childcare affect women. Women face numerous inequities based on unpaid care duties. There is the potential for universal childcare to alleviate these inequalities and create a valuable resource for single mothers, as well as mothers who have only been able to take on part-time work to correspond with their care work. However, gender equality is not a goal of changes in childcare, the only significance being women’s increased employment leading to economic benefits for the state (UNICEF, 2008, p. 6). By omitting the importance of gender equality, there is a devaluing of the care work that women still do and the gendered social construction of care work that transcends nine-to-five childcare in correspondence with full-time employment. The potential harm in leaving gender out of the picture is that if the interest in early childhood investment wanes in the political and policy development spheres, then the promising effects for women, such as greater employment opportunities, will disappear as well. Interest in gender equality can only be maintained if it is part of the discourse; otherwise there is no guarantee of future equality. Effects on women as workers and mothers as caregivers become inconsequential within the discourse of child investment.

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Contradictions Within Existing Proposals Betray The Biopolitical Nature Of ECEC Policy – Shaping Children For The Economy At The Expense Of Women Caregivers

Bundy 12 [Jessica Bundy, Sociology @ York University, “Rendering (gender) invisible: early childhood education and care in Ontario as a biopolitical social investment apparatus,” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01596306.2012.692964?scroll=top&needAccess=true] /Triumph Debate *** SIS = Social investment state *** ECEC = Early childhood education and care *** ELP = Early Learning Programs

There are several conflicts within the Pascal report’s that are evidence of the problems of ECEC as a biopolitical apparatus: (1) there is the assertion that the ELP will create ‘equality of opportunity’ for all children juxtaposed with the claims that poverty is an inadequate measure for anticipating children’s educational growth and development; (2) there is an interest in acknowledging gender in so far as this furthers the premises of the report’s arguments, such as the ability for mothers to maintain full-time employment, while the gendered nature of care work is ignored; (3) the intentions of the programme are meant to guide and educate children, yet there is a clear intent to train parents as well and (4) all of these efforts are intentioned as benefits for children’s health, happiness and well-being, yet, there is an emphasis on the importance of these changes for the economic health and prosperity of the province. These various problems all depict the changing perception of children and childhood, changes that are also meant to further new definitions of parenting and new definitions of social responsibilities. As Pascal constantly refers to ‘our society’, ‘our children’ and ‘our best future’ we may wonder just whose best future is being developed. Is it the best future of single mother families that may not have the time or energy after a full day’s work to give all their attention to reading and listening to music with their children? Is this the best future for mothers on social assistance who may be coerced into participating in the programme? Is this the best future for anyone if childcare and child-rearing is now scientifically prescribed, backed by doctors, neuroscientists and research? By setting a new standard for child education and parenting under the guise of science there is, in fact, an attempt to intervene in population growth and development; an intervention that promotes the training of parents and makes them implicit in their children’s educational health and development. Such a biopolitical mechanism, one that prescribes new duties and obligations for all citizens, changes standards for parenting in ways that will have real effects on women as the main caregivers.

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