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The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development, or OECD for short, has pointed out that helping kids with
stuff like daycare and early learning is super important for a country's
money situation and for people living good lives. They've been keeping
tabs on how well countries are doing this since 1996, using a big pile
of stats from all over the world. Now, Canada's pretty well off, but
guess what? We've got about 15% of our kids living in poverty, which is
a bit sad. The OECD and this group called UNICEF say it's partly because
we don't spend enough of our country's total income (just 0.3%) on child
care and early learning stuff.
They've looked into it a lot and found that if we
want to really make a dent in child poverty, we need to focus on both
giving families more money and making sure they've got good child care
options. Just throwing money at families without fixing child care
hasn't really worked, according to these big studies that followed kids
for a long time.
So, back in 2011, we did something big. We moved
child care decisions from one group of government folks to the Ministry
of Education. The OECD suggested this cool idea. It's like saying, "Hey,
let's think of child care like it's part of school," which helps a ton.
This way, it's not just about giving families a break, it's about giving
kids a good start in life. And, it's better for our wallets in the long
run.
The World Bank is all for this too. They say if we
invest in little kids now, it's like planting a seed that'll grow into a
strong, healthy tree of a society. It's way cheaper than fixing problems
later on with older kids and adults. Plus, it's a win-win because it'll
help our economy.