Who Looks after the Kids? The Effects of Childcare Choice on Early Childhood Development in China*
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Author | Jing Zhang,Simon Appleton,Lina Song,Bing Liu |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/obes.12410 |
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©2021TheAuthors.OxfordBulletin of Economics and Statistics published by Oxford University and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Thisis an open access article under the ter ms of the CreativeCommons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided
the original work is properlycited.
OXFORD BULLETIN OF ECONOMICSAND STATISTICS, 83, 3 (2021) 0305–9049
doi: 10.1111/obes.12410
Who Looks after the Kids? The Effects of Childcare
Choice on Early Childhood Development in
China*
Jing Zhang,†Simon Appleton,‡,§ Lina Song†,†† and Bing Liu‡‡
†Business School, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG8 1BB, UK (e-mail:
j.zhang@nottingham.ac.uk)
‡School of Economics, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK
§School of Economics, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Ningbo, 315100, China
(e-mail: simon.appleton@nottingham.edu.cn)
††Business School, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Ningbo, 315100, China
(e-mail: lina.song@nottingham.ac.uk)
‡‡Aston Business School,Aston University, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK (email:
b.liu7@aston.ac.uk)
Abstract
This paper examines whether childcare choice affects the early childhood development of
children aged 7–59 months. Using the data from Chinese Family Panel Studies, we look
at household choices between parental and grandparental cares and the timing of four key
early life achievements – walking, talking, counting and toilet training.We conceptualize
early childhood development within a household production model, which enables us to
identify the impacts of childcare. Our results suggest that compared with parental care,
grandparental care delays the achievement of all four outcome measures. Grandparental
care is particularly disadvantageous for children who are ‘left-behind’by migrant parents.
I. Introduction
Child survival, growth and development are influenced by three underlying factors: nu-
trients, health and sanitation services, and childcare (UNICEF, 1990; Engle, Menon and
Haddad, 1999;Alderman, 2007). While there has been extensive literature examining the
impact of the first two factors on child development, research on the effect of childcare
JEL Classification numbers: J13; D13; I15.
*This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the former UK Department for
International Development, whichmerged with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office on 2 September 2020 to become
the Foreign, Commonwealth & DevelopmentOffice [grant number ES/M004333/1]. The authors are grateful to the
editor Anindya Banerjee and twoanonymous referees for their thoughtful and constructive comments. Additionally,
we thank participants in the 2017 International Conference on “China at the Crossroads” in Nottingham, the 2018
Chinese Economist Society North America Conference at the University of Georgia, and the 2019 International
Workshop on “Local Government and Human Development” at Makerere University, Kampala, for their helpful
feedback.
620 Bulletin
in developing countries is limited. Family’s choice of childcare determines child environ-
ments which would significantly shape children’s abilities and skill formation (Cunha and
Heckman, 2007). Scientific research finds that the early years are the most critical pe-
riod for children’s brain development. Various levels of such development are reflected in
children’s acquisition of physical abilities, social–emotional functionings and language-
cognition (Grantham-McGregor et al., 2007, 2014). Early childhood development influ-
ences wellbeing throughout life, affecting school attendance, wages, employment, early
motherhood and participation in crime, among other things (Irwin, Siddiqi and Hertzman,
2007; Bernal, 2008). The quality of childcare providedin early years is therefore important,
with evidence that maternal support in the first few years is strongly associated with child’s
brain development and mental health (Bowlby, 1951; Luby et al., 2016). This paper looks
at how the family’s childcare choice affects early childhood development in China.
The importance of maternal care raises an issue for many countries where women’s
labour market participation grows steadily. Dual-earner families usually seek support from
others to care for children while working fulltime.This challenge is more important for par-
ents in developing countries, where there are limited universally accessible and affordable
childcare provisions and little regulation for maternity protection (Stumbitz et al., 2018).
Evidence from China, the United Kingdom and several other countries shows that the
number of children in grandparental care has increased dramatically over the last decade
(Goodfellow and Laverty, 2003;Tan et al., 2010; Dong and Zhao, 2017). The contributing
factors in China include high female labour force participation (about 70% according to The
WorldBank, 2018), shor t average duration and low coverageof mater nity leave (Dong and
Zhao, 2017), low availability of formal group care provisions (e.g. nurseries) for children
under 3 years (Du and Dong, 2013) and unregulated non-group provisions (e.g. nannies).
Several studies of China find grandparental care is negativelycor related with child welfare
and health outcomes (Ye and Pan, 2011; Mu and de Brauw, 2015;Yue, Sylvia and Bai,
2016). This paper extends these studies by investigating whether there are adverse effects
of grandparental care on early childhood development in China. Some studies look at the
effects of non-parental, informal care (relatives, friends, non-relatives) as a substitute for
mothers’ care (Gregget al., 2005; Bernal and Keane, 2011). Relatively little is known
about the impact specifically of grandparental care on early childhood development (see
Hansen and Hawkes (2009) and Del Boca, Piazzalunga and Pronzato (2018) for analysis
of UK data). To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first study of the impact of informal
care (by grandparents) on early childhood development in a developing country.
Using the China Family Panel Studies in 2010, 2012 and 2014, we examine the impact
of childcare on the age in months when children achieve four key abilities – to walk, to
talk, to count and to use the toilet independently. Each of the four abilities respectively
represents the milestone of early development in physicalskills, language skills, numerical
skills and self-adaptive skills. Given the low availability of formal childcare for the young
age group in China, we only distinguish childcare between parents (mainly mothers) and
grandparents.
Estimating the impact of childcare on child development is problematic because such
childcare decisions are conditioned by manyother socioeconomic factors with direct effects
on children’s early development.With mothers being the traditional primary carer, conven-
tional income and substitution effects apply when considering their labour
©2021 The Authors. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics published by Oxford University and JohnWiley & Sons Ltd.
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