We use data from a sample of child care centers to estimate the relationships between cost and child care quality, and between revenue and quality. We use a measure of child care quality, designed by developmental psychologists, that is positively associated with child development. Taking the estimated cost-quality and revenue-quality relationships as given, we estimate the objective functions of firms and compute the quality supply function. The results indicate that the supply of quality is moderately elastic with respect to price and the wages of child care center workers. Implications of the results for child care policy are discussed.

We estimate the impact of employer-provided retiree health insurance (EPRHI) on the labor force transitions of men aged 51 to 62. Data from the Health and Retirement Survey provide detailed and accurate measures of retiree health insurance. Availability of EPRHI increases the rate of exit from employment by two percentage points per year if the individual shares the cost of the insurance with the firm, and by six percentage points if the firm pays the entire cost. The impact of cost-shared EPRHI on the annual rate of labor force exit increases with age, reaching 7.5 percentage points by age 61.

This study presents estimates of the effect of parental income on children's cognitive, social, and emotional development. The effect of current income is small, especially when income is treated as endogenous. The effect of “permanent” income is substantially larger, but relatively small when compared to the magnitude of recent policy-induced changes in income. Family background characteristics play a more important role than income in determining child outcomes. Policies that affect family income will have little direct impact on child development unless they result in very large and permanent changes in income.