8 Comments

(Just read the top paragraph)

You should have a podcast! Where you interview authors of studies that you find interesting. I would totally listen to that. And love the naming idea (If I Understand Correctly). Just a thought!

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omg that would be so fun though. Dream job!

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the family in your photo clearly deserves to be investigated; they have cut off the one son's legs!

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sorry sorry i should have more self control

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Pre-K and time use! What a week!

With pre-K, the academic effects seem to track with other interventions - the big results we saw early from studies like Abcedarian seem like they made such a big difference because the treatment population was so disadvantaged and received such intensive (expensive) support. But it seems like for most kids, the “private” option (whether with parents or privately paid child care) and the public option are both going to produce fairly normal academic outcomes.

On the policy side, this always makes me wonder why we push so hard on childcare-as-intervention and not money-as-intervention (which could be spent on childcare). But to be fair, pre-K age is probably one where it’s more reasonable to talk about efficiency of assigning more kids to caregivers versus, say, infants. But studies like this one make me doubt sales for childcare policy on the claim that it will close the test score gap or the claim that kids at home/with relative caregivers/etc won’t do as well as kids in formal settings.

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I thought of you while reading through the housework gap study!

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On the pregnancy scare - it seems highly relevant that in order to have a pregnancy scare, it's a basic requirement that the couple be, well, fucking. And the more they are doing the deed, the more opportunities for a pregnancy scare. If a couple is on the downswing and going to break up within 30 days, chances are they aren't being intimate quite as much as a couple that's sticking together. Meaning this could be a case of correlation not causation -- couples in good, stable relationships are more likely to have more sex and therefore are more likely to have pregnancy scares.

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oh yeah that's a good point!

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