| Abstract: | There is a substantial and documented need for policies to provide comprehensive health, social work, and early education services for young children and their families. Public subsidies to support other enterprises deemed in the public interest are public transportation, higher education, and social security. Childcare would seem to be another such responsibility. The majority of parents with children under the age of five are in the work force, there is documentation of the importance of early experience to brain growth, and further evidence that current child care provisions are often mediocre to poor. This article presents a decision making matrix, which displays major policy options for early childhood and a range of criteria by which to judge the relative efficacy of those options. Several special issues connected with the decision making are discussed. |
