IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v27y1992i3p472-484.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Quality and Cost in Early Childhood Education

Author

Listed:
  • Irene Powell
  • James Cosgrove

Abstract

This paper uses a unique survey of 205 child care centers conducted by the U.S. General Accounting Office to estimate flexible-form cost functions for child care. Our model allows us to estimate the tradeoff between cost and such quality factors as the child/staff ratio, child group size, and staff characteristics. The coefficient on the child/staff ratio indicates that decreasing the average child/staff ratio from, for instance, an 11 to 1 ratio to a 10 to 1 ratio, would lead to an increase in costs of roughly 3.4 percent. Staff turnover, education, and experience also had statistically significant effects on cost.

Suggested Citation

  • Irene Powell & James Cosgrove, 1992. "Quality and Cost in Early Childhood Education," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 27(3), pages 472-484.
    • Handle: RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:27:y:1992:i:3:p:472-484
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/146172
    Download Restriction: A subscripton is required to access pdf files. Pay per article is available.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Luigi Brighi & Paolo Silvestri, 2016. "Inefficiency in Childcare Production.Evidence from Italian Microdata," Department of Economics 0079, University of Modena and Reggio E., Faculty of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    2. Luigi Brighi & Paolo Silvestri, 2016. "Inefficiency in Childcare Production.Evidence from Italian Microdata," Center for the Analysis of Public Policies (CAPP) 0135, Universita di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Dipartimento di Economia "Marco Biagi".
    3. Blau, David & Currie, Janet, 2006. "Pre-School, Day Care, and After-School Care: Who's Minding the Kids?," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 20, pages 1163-1278, Elsevier.
    4. Robert Fenge & Wolfgang Ochel, 2001. "Die Vereinbarkeit von Familie und Beruf: der Schlüssel für eine kinderreiche Gesellschaft," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 54(12), pages 17-29, November.
    5. Mocan, H Naci, 1995. "Quality-Adjusted Cost Functions for Child-Care Centers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(2), pages 409-413, May.
    6. David M. Blau & H. Naci Mocan, 2002. "The Supply Of Quality In Child Care Centers," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(3), pages 483-496, August.
    7. Joëlle Noailly & Sabine Visser & Paul Grout, 2007. "The impact of market forces on the provision of childcare: Insights from the 2005 Childcare Act in the Netherlands," CPB Memorandum 176, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    8. Ollinger, Michael & Ralston, Katherine L. & Guthrie, Joanne F., 2011. "School Breakfast and Lunch Costs: Are There Economies of Scale?," 2011 Annual Meeting, July 24-26, 2011, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 103191, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    9. Cho, Yoonyoung, 2008. "An Evaluation of A Pronatal Subsidy Program in Korea: A Quasi-Experimental Approach," MPRA Paper 25958, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Luigi Brighi & Paolo Silvestri, 2016. "Inefficiency in Childcare Production. Evidence from Italian Microdata," Center for Economic Research (RECent) 117, University of Modena and Reggio E., Dept. of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    11. Luigi Brighi & Paolo Silvestri, 2019. "Inefficiency in Childcare Production: Evidence from Italian Microdata," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 5(1), pages 103-133, March.
    12. Bönisch Peter & Tagge Sven, 2012. "The Optimal Size of German Child Care Centers and the Impact of Regulation: Estimating the Cost Function of a Regulated Multi-Product Firm," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 232(5), pages 545-566, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:27:y:1992:i:3:p:472-484. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://jhr.uwpress.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.