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The article discusses the proposed tax benefits related to child care for the low-income families and working class by the U.S. President Donald Trump. Topics mentioned include the importance of subsidized child care and paid family leave to improve health and well-being of the families, to build time and resources for caring the families to promote high-quality child care as a long-term investment for economic growth and to provide income and job security for mothers and children from poverty wherein child care costs have increased.

Children are expensive to raise. Ensuring that they are raised in such a way that they are able to lead a minimally decent life costs time and money, and lots of both. Who is responsible for bearing the costs of the things that children are undoubtedly owed? This is a question that has received comparatively little scrutiny from political philosophers, despite children being such a drain on public and private finances alike. To the extent that there is a debate, two main views can be identified. The Parents Pay view says that parents, responsible for the existence of the costs, must foot the bill. The Society Pays view says that a next generation is a benefit to all, and so to allow parents to foot the bill alone is the worst kind of free-riding. In this article, I introduce a third potentially liable party currently missing from the debate: children themselves. On my backward-looking view, we are entitled to ask people to contribute to the raising of children on the basis that they have benefited from being raised themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) provides cash reimbursement to family day care, child-care centers, homeless shelters, and afterschool programs for meals and snacks served to children. Despite young children's known vulnerability to fluctuations in nutritional intake, prior literature has largely neglected the contributions of the CACFP to reducing household food insecurity. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), we examine the association between CACFP provider participation and food insecurity, controlling for the nonrandom selection process into child-care centers that participate in CACFP. We find that accessing child care through providers that participate in the CACFP results in a small reduction in the risk of household food insecurity. Given the known cognitive and health consequences associated with food insecurity during early childhood, our results indicate the importance of improving access to the CACFP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theoretically studies how unfunded pay-as-you-go social security affects economic growth, the fertility rate, and welfare in a neoclassical growth model. In addition, this paper considers a more general form of child-rearing cost, which is a mixture of time and money. The first observation is that whether the fertility rate increases or not by the expansion of the pay-as-you-go social security depends on (1) the size of the monetary child-rearing cost relative to the time spent on child-rearing and (2) the current fertility and interest rate in laissez faire. The second observation is that income per worker can increase by an expansion in pay-as-you-go social security when the output elasticity of capital is sufficiently small and the payroll tax rate is high. The last finding is that welfare can be improved even though capital is underaccumulated in an economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between welfare reform and child care costs among low-income single mothers and the effects of post reform child care subsidy receipt on the status and duration of these mothers'' employment. A two-step model analysis of data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (1993, 1996, and 2001 panels) revealed marginal effects of welfare reform on child care costs, indicating that child care costs increased significantly among low-income single mothers after welfare reform. Results from a Tobit model revealed that child care subsidy receipt also had significant effects on employment status. Finally, families with only a mother and children in the household had a higher probability of using paid child care and spent more on care than mothers with other adults in the household. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Objective: Child-care providers have a key role to play in promoting child nutrition, but the higher cost of nutritious foods may pose a barrier. The present study tested the hypothesis that higher nutritional quality of foods served was associated with higher food expenditures in child care homes participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). Design: In this cross-sectional study, nutritional quality of foods served to children and food expenditures were analysed based on 5 d menus and food shopping receipts. Nutritional quality was based on servings of whole grains, fresh whole fruits and vegetables, energy density (kJ/g) and mean nutrient adequacy (mean percentage of dietary reference intake) for seven nutrients of concern for child health. Food expenditures were calculated by linking receipt and menu data. Associations between food expenditures and menu quality were examined using bivariate statistics and multiple linear regression models. Setting: USA in 2008-2009. Subjects: Sixty child-care providers participating in CACFP in King County, Washington State. Results: In bivariate analyses, higher daily food expenditures were associated with higher total food energy and higher nutritional quality of menus. Controlling for energy and other covariates, higher food expenditures were strongly and positively associated with number of portions of whole grains and fresh produce served (P50·001 and 0·005, respectively), with lower energy density and with higher mean nutrient adequacy of menus overall (P50·003 and 0·032, respectively). Conclusions: The results indicate that improving the nutritional quality of foods in child care may require higher food spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact of hyperbolic discounting on the timing and on the number of births. Using a simple three-period model, it shows that, without the opportunity to shift the burden of rearing children into the future, hyperbolic discounters will give birth to fewer children. If child-care costs can be shifted completely to later periods, the impact of hyperbolic discounting on births depends on the underlying motive for motherhood, namely, whether children are regarded as consumption or investment goods. A large-sample empirical analysis, which uses an inconsistent savings pattern as an indicator of time inconsistency, confirms the theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family, friend, and neighbor (FFN) caregivers play important roles in delivering subsidized noncustodial child care. Yet, little is known about these noncustodial caregivers. This article profiles the caregiving experiences, motivations, and resource needs of these providers, based on a survey of 301 randomly selected FFN providers in one state. Recommendations are offered for strengthening public supports to enhance the quality of this form of caregiving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If childcare policy has become topical in most OECD countries over the last ten years or so, actual developments display huge cross-national variations. Countries like Sweden and Denmark spend around 2 per cent of GDP on this service, and provide affordable childcare places to most children below school age. At the other extreme, in Southern Europe, only around 10 per cent of this age group has access to formal daycare. Against this background, this article aims to account for cross-national variations in childcare services. It distinguishes two dependent variables: the coverage rate and the proportion of GDP spent subsidising childcare services. Using a mix of cross-sectional and pooled times-series methods, it tests a series of hypotheses concerning the determinants of the development of this policy. Its main conclusion for the coverage rate is that key factors are public spending and wage dispersion (both positive). For spending, key factors are the proportion of women in parliaments (positive) and spending on age-related policies (negative). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of the introduction of market forces on child care provision in the Netherlands. In January 2005, the Dutch government introduced the Child Care Act, replacing the former financing system, which had elements of both supply- and demand-financing, with a fully demand-financing system. As a result, the provision of child care is now driven by market forces. Using data on the geographical location of child care facilities, this article compares the factors affecting the provision of child care in the Netherlands before and after the introduction of the Child Care Act. The results suggest that after the regulatory reform the provision of child care has shifted towards wealthy urbanised areas, characterised by high demand and high purchasing power. This shift has largely benefited for-profit providers particularly active in these markets. In parallel, the results indicate an important drop in child care provision by non-profit organisations, most pronounced in less wealthy rural areas. These findings suggest that the introduction of demand-financing may have implications for the accessibility of child care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies a budget standards approach to develop budgets for households with children living in rural China and uses them to estimate the costs of children. The budgets and the child-cost estimates cover all areas of household spending and vary with household size and the age and number of children. The research was conducted in Funan County, Anhui Province, and has been guided and informed by local data and the advice, information, and feedback obtained from a series of focus group discussions with parents. Different methods have been used to set a lower-bound on the costs of children that includes those items only consumed by children, and a comprehensive estimate that covers all costs incurred by the household. The lower-bound estimates vary between 265 and 303 yuan per month per child, while the comprehensive estimates vary between 366 and 435 yuan per month per child. Even after adjusting the cost estimates to allow for home-produced food, the cash costs of children far exceed existing income support (wubao) benefits, suggesting that these benefits are not adequate to support the needs of orphaned children living in rural China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]