Review article
https://doi.org/10.3935/rsp.v20i1.1117
Child-care System as a Social Investment
Jelena Baran
; Department of Social Work, Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb
Abstract
The paper reviews available evidence on the impact of child-care centers attendance on children’s cognitive and social development as well as cost-benefit analyses related to compensatory programs for disadvantaged children. Most research found a connection between child-care centers attendance and more favorable cognitive development in terms of school readiness, in which the literature particularly emphasizes importance of cognitive-oriented curriculum and the group size. In the area of social development, outcomes depend on the quality of a child-care center and on the authors’ interpretation of a certain behavior as problematic or socially competent. Preschool programs targeted to very disadvantaged children obtained high rates of return as they managed to significantly improve life chances of their participants, while universal programs’ potential rate of return has been only roughly estimated and there is no an unambiguous answer as to whether do they produce an economic return on invested means.
Keywords
early childhood education and care; cognitive development; social development; compensatory programs; cost-benefit analysis
Hrčak ID:
100482
URI
Publication date:
15.4.2013.
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