Day Care Dilemma

Fall 2006, Volume 28, Number 1

Raquel Bernal

For working mothers, placing a child in the care of grandparents or other family members might be detrimental to the child’s later achievements, a study shows.

IPR Faculty Fellow Raquel Bernal, an assistant professor of economics, and Michael P. Keane of Yale University found that each year of child care is associated with a 2.9 percent reduction in academic test scores. However, the study also reveals that formal child care environments can compensate for this deficiency.

“The punch line is maternal time is important to produce high-quality children, but if the mother has to work, choosing the right kind of child care can offset the negative effects, which is good news,” said principal investigator Bernal.

The study used a sample of single mothers from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. From this data, researchers constructed the number of quarters (three-month periods) that children spent in child care after childbirth and gathered data from cognitive ability tests measuring vocabulary at ages 3, 4, and 5 and mathematic skills and reading comprehension at ages 5 and 6.

According to the study, formal, center-based settings offer the best kind of child care, since they generally have no detrimental effect on the child’s cognitive development. Bernal speculated that a child could benefit from interactions with peers and trained caretakers, more stimulating activities and more discipline.

In contrast, leaving children older than one in informal child care settings with family members or with nonrelative caregivers for an additional year is associated with a 3.5 percent reduction in test scores.

Consequently, Bernal said it is vital to provide women with adequate child care. In the context of labor economics, 30 percent of wage differences can be accounted for by education, IQ, experience and skill level, among other factors. The remaining 70 percent is believed to derive from a skill set accumulated before the child starts school, Bernal said. “Investments made in children early on may determine whether they are high achievers later in life.”

The working paper, “Child-care choices and children’s cognitive achievement: The case of single mothers,” is at www.northwestern.edu/ipr/publications/workingpapers.