Policymakers Used to Ignore Child Care. Then Came the Pandemic.
“It explained how the care sector — defined as economic activity in the home and the market — was a crucial part of the economy but operated differently than other types of businesses. You can’t measure the productivity of a child-care center the way you would, say, a car factory, she explained. The incentives are…
Rosie Could Be a Riveter Only Because of a Care Economy. Where Is Ours?
In Her Words–Child Care in Crisis: Can Biden’s Plan Save It?
“At the root of this crisis is America’s relationship with child care itself. Unlike every other developed country, the United States has never, with the exception of a few years during World War II, treated child care as an essential service. Since at least the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon vetoed a bipartisan effort to implement…
Why Are Our Most Important Teachers Paid the Least?
Former Lawmakers Set Aside Policy Differences for Early-Childhood Initiative
Another example of the potential for bi-partisan support of early childhood programs (in line with A Purple Agenda for (Early) Education). From Education Week’s Early Years blog: “Proving that leaving Congress sometimes makes it easier to find bipartisan accord, former Democratic Rep. George Miller, of California, and former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, of Pennsylvania, have come…
Economists Highlight Another Benefit of Investing Early: Encouraging Work
As Paul Reville says, “What we actually have now is a felicitous dovetailing of our moral obligations and our economic imperatives.” Here is another case in point countering the idea that all social services discourage work. From “Supply-Side Economics, but for Liberals” in the New York Times: “Economists have often taken it as a given that…
Child Care Expansion Takes a Toll on Poorly Paid Workers
While the scramble to find affordable child care has drawn a lot of attention, prompting President Obama to label it “a must have” economic priority, the struggles of the workers — mostly women — who provide that care have not. Yet the fortunes of both are inextricably intertwined. “You can’t separate the quality of children’s…
Introducing the New “Transforming the Workforce” Report
For an introduction to the important new report, Transforming the Workforce For Children Birth through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation, see this post by Lisa Guernsey, who served on the report’s committee. From Guernsey’s post: At the report’s heart is the recognition that supporting the growth and development of young children from birth through age…
“You Undermine the Very Thing that Produces that Value”
NPR’s story on the recent report, Worthy Work, STILL Unlivable Wages, includes several quotations from Deborah Phillips, one of the co-authors of the study: “There’s a disconnect between our 21st-century knowledge about early childhood teaching and these 20th-century wages,” says Phillips. “We desperately need educated young people to be working with young children, but they look at…