Child Care Quality: Does It Matter and Does It Need to Be Improved?

ABSTRACT

This report aims to provide an answer to an important policy question: Is there an economic justification for public intervention to improve the quality of non-parental child care, especially for children from lower-income families? The bulk of the evidence argues that the answer is yes. In this report the authors adduce evidence from large- and small-scale studies of the effects of child care on children’s development, and set out the economic rationale that emerges from that evidence.