Quality and Cost in Early Childhood Education

Irene Powell and James Cosgrove

Journal of Human Resources, 1992, vol. 27, issue 3, 472-484

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.

Date: 1992
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/146172
A subscription is required to access pdf files. Pay per article is available.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:27:y:1992:i:3:p:472-484

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Human Resources from University of Wisconsin Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().