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It’s not that there are any significant differences in average outcomes between boys and girls in various measures of ability and well-being as a result of $5-a-day (now $7.50 a day) daycare. There aren’t, the authors concluded, after some sophisticated econometrics. But the distribution of some outcomes does change in statistically significant ways, with boys spreading themselves out more along the spectrum in their experience of hyperactivity, inattention and physical aggression. That’s not good, because extreme values on these three scales are reasonable predictors of problems later in life.

Parents significantly decreased the amount of time spent doing activities with their child

How parents parent also seems to change as a result of cheap daycare, though not for the good, a consequence I doubt policymakers anticipated when they were introducing the policy.

Lehrer and Kottelenberg’s study is based on detailed, one-to-two-hour, face-to-face interviews StatCan does every two years with tens of thousands of parents, so the data are pretty rich. And they’re linked with kids’ scores on tests of motor skills, social development, vocabulary, hyperactivity, attention, separation anxiety and so on.

What are the apparent effects of Quebec’s daycare policy? Moms do end up working outside the home more. Kids get more of their care outside the home, with boys getting more care in institutional daycare centres than girls do. And, as mentioned, parents’ interaction with their kids changes. In fact, girls are most hard done by as a result. As the authors write, “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. [Quebec discourages laughter! You read it here first.] These estimated declines are approximately twice as large for girls relative to boys.” That sounds bad for girls but in fact it merely eliminates a bias that previously had parents focusing these activities three to four per cent more on girls before the introduction of the policy. (Who knew? Not the policymakers, I bet.)