Distributive justice and willingness to pay for municipality child care

With the aim of investigating factors affecting willingness to pay for municipality child care, a survey was undertaken in Sweden of 1840 parents living in five municipalities of different sizes. On the basis of the greed-efficiency-fairness hypothesis (Wilke, 1991) which is supported by results from experimental social dilemma research, it was hypothesized that perceived fairness of how the quality of child care is distributed (equal, proportional to need, or proportional to payment) as well as of method of payment (collectively by taxes or proportional to use by fees) would be important determinants of willingness to pay. Results showed that perceived fairness of how quality of child care is distributed played some role but that other factors had stronger effects. Perhaps also reflecting fairness considerations, willingness to pay by fees was on average higher than willingness to pay by taxes. Predicted from previous research, willingness to pay by taxes was furthermore found to increase with income and degree of use. However, willingness to pay by taxes showed an increase rather than the predicted decrease with municipality size.     

PARENT-CHILD OBSERVATIONS IN CUSTODY EVALUATIONS

Child custody evalutors need to increase the scientific foundations of their work, both for the benefit of clients and to address criticisms of the field. Observations of parents with children potentially yield huge amounts of data, and it is important for evaluators to consistently apply scientific and professional principles to make sense of all that information. Recommendations for observation sessions are made that integrate theory, research, and practice. These recommendations include the most important interactional dimensions to focus on, which family members to have present, the optimal level of stress, the number of sessions needed, and considerations about home visits.