Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Commenting on comments:

KenF: My children didn’t ask to be born into this world, it is a burden I placed on them...

You placed on them the burden of living in one of the richest countries in the world in hands-down the richest era of the world. I doubt they're going to grow up to hate you for that. On the other hand, they'll probably resent you for handing down your negative attitude toward existence.

KenF, again: I believe, rightly or wrongly, that paying a lot buys me that, especially since it helps them gain entrance into elementary schools that offer a similar promise.

First off, one of the points here is to figure out whether that belief is right or wrong; if it's wrong, you can save a bunch of money to use on other things. Second, I've done the whole competitive-schools thing (highly-regarded 7-12-grade school, Ivy League university—which was harder to get into than if I'd gone to a worse high school), but at the elementary school level? That doesn't sound the slightest bit insane to you?

JH: Is there a bigger “I care about my kids” signal than a stay-at-home mom?

In the case of my family, it's a signal that child care in a city for two children costs more than their mom made. And she had a meaningful job with very family-friendly policies: she brought our second son to work with her for a while when he was a baby.

Tomasz: If the long-run effects of somewhat better or somewhat worse child care are unclear, that's an argument for reducing investment in child care and directing it toward something whose benefits are clear. (It's not a binary choice between having kids tutored by Nobel laureates on the one hand and sitting in a dark, damp cage for six hours a day on the other.)

Finally, the article in question is a literature survey, not a single study; this gives it significantly more weight. Even so, you should always keep in mind that tossing five heads in a row gets you past the p > 0.05 barrier for publishing in a social science journal.

Expand full comment
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

You're right. All I have is the bayesian evdience that there occur to me several plausible criteria for choosing child care, and, aside from signalling, the study casts doubt on all but this one.

Expand full comment
19 more comments...

No posts