Abstract
AbstractThis paper examines whether childcare choice affects the early childhood development of children aged 7–59 months. Using the data from Chinese Family Panel Studies, we look at household choices between parental and grandparental cares and the timing of four key early life achievements – walking, talking, counting and toilet training. We conceptualize early childhood development within a household production model, which enables us to identify the impacts of childcare. Our results suggest that compared with parental care, grandparental care delays the achievement of all four outcome measures. Grandparental care is particularly disadvantageous for children who are ‘left‐behind’ by migrant parents.
Highlights
Child survival, growth and development are influenced by three underlying factors: nutrients, health and sanitation services, and childcare (UNICEF, 1990; Engle, Menon and Haddad, 1999; Alderman, 2007)
Respectively, where G is the childcare choice dummy taking a value of 1 if a child is cared by a grandparent and 0 by a parent; E refers to parental education, I is household income, and Z is a set of instrumental variables as discussed above
We have used the information on children aged 7 to 59 months from the China Family Panel Studies to examine the impact of different childcare choice on early childhood development, focusing on the timing of four milestone achievements – walking, talking, counting and toilet training
Summary
Growth and development are influenced by three underlying factors: nutrients, health and sanitation services, and childcare (UNICEF, 1990; Engle, Menon and Haddad, 1999; Alderman, 2007). This paper looks at how the family’s childcare choice affects early childhood development in China. Dual-earner families usually seek support from others to care for children while working fulltime This challenge is more important for parents in developing countries, where there are limited universally accessible and affordable childcare provisions and little regulation for maternity protection (Stumbitz et al, 2018). Several studies of China find grandparental care is negatively correlated with child welfare and health outcomes (Ye and Pan, 2011; Mu and de Brauw, 2015; Yue, Sylvia and Bai, 2016) This paper extends these studies by investigating whether there are adverse effects of grandparental care on early childhood development in China.
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