Quality Adjusted Cost Functions for Child Care Centers

No 5040, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Using a newly compiled data set, this paper estimates multi- product translog cost functions for 399 child care centers from California, Colorado, Connecticut, and North Carolina. Quality of child care is controlled by a quality index, which has been shown to be positively related to child outcomes by previous research. Nonprofit centers that receive public money, either from the state or federal government, (which is tied to higher standards), have total variable costs that are 18 percent higher than other centers, keeping quality of services constant. No statistically significant differences between general categories of for-profit and non-profit centers are detected. Furthermore, various types of nonprofits are not distinguishable from their for-profit counterparts. In agreement with previous studies, the data show that the average quality of center-based child care is between 'minimal' and 'good', and it costs 13 cents per hour per child to increase this average quality to the level considered developmentally appropriate by child care experts.

JEL-codes: J13 L30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: Written 1995-06
Note: HE LS
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Published as American Economic Review, vol. 82, no. 2, pp. 409-412 (May 1995).

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w5040.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Journal Article: Quality-Adjusted Cost Functions for Child-Care Centers (1995)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w5040
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().