Many studies have shown that early childhood education and care have long-term personal and societal benefits for children. But for many low-income parents, accessing both affordable and quality child care is out of their reach
Hsin-Chen Lin and Jane Dunnett (BScF'81, MBA'88), marketing professors in the faculty of business administration at UNB’s Fredericton campus, have completed a study centred on how parents in New Brunswick, with differing income levels, choose child care services.
“The research has implications for government policy-makers as it can clarify the preferences and needs regarding child-care services for low-income parents,” says Lin and Dunnett.
One of the biggest barriers to parents’ use of child-care facilities is a lack of awareness of government support. According to the data collected by Lin and Dunnett, only 62.5 per cent of eligible families were aware of the government assistance programs available to New Brunswick families whose annual income is lower than $55,000. Through this program, assistance is paid directly to the child-care facilities, and the parents are responsible for finding the licensed child-care locations that accept the programs. Yet, the research shows that just 20 per cent of the eligible recipients who participated in the study actually received the subsidies.
Another potential barrier is the mismatch between the preferences of low-income parents and the available options. For instance, low-income parents have been found to prefer the lowest price point child-care service, regardless of location or convenience, whereas high-income parents prefer the lowest price point, but will pay more if the facility is conveniently located near their home or workplace. The fact that child-care providers often meet the convenient location preferences of the high-income parents, although at a higher price point, can create a situation where there are fewer affordable options for lower income families.
These barriers are likely to have a significant impact because, according to Lin and Dunnett, enrolling children in child-care services has been linked to better academic and career success later in life. These results also suggest that if government policy makers are concerned with reducing education and financial inequality within Atlantic Canada and other similar regions, they should develop and promote assistance programs that are accessible and appealing to low-income families.
“If child-care providers target services to meet the preferences of high-income parents, for example, by sacrificing a low price point for a greater convenience, low-income parents might avoid child-care services due to the lack of desirable and/or affordable options.”
Lin and Dunnett hope that their study will promote better communication of child-care services, with preferences on lower-income families and better coordination between policy makers and child-care providers.
Lin suggests that, “governments and child-care providers should work together to synchronize assistance programs, whereby policy makers work with appropriate child-care service providers. They should also work together to market the availability of the programs and promote locations that would be most appealing to the recipients of child care support. These promotions should occur across multiple channels that would increase exposure to the families that would use the support, like social media as an example.”
On the academic side, the professors hope that this study will lead to further investigation of the impact of government investment in child-care services and the benefit they have on children over time.
Lin suggests that, with New Brunswick’s declining population, the province would benefit greatly from a dedicated focus on human capital development, and promoting broader child-care awareness, accessibility, and involvement for parents across the economic spectrum would give them a head start in this development.
“Children are the users of the daycare and the parents are the decision makers of the child-care services. We focus on the parents, policy makers, child-care service providers and researchers in our study with the hopes that children from lower income families will have more opportunities to enrol in the child-care programs and have better academic and career success in the future.”
The full article by Lin (right) and Dunnett, An exploration of parental preferences for child care services in Canada, was published in Services Marketing Quarterly in 2018.
