Abstract
Growing evidence suggests that children’s participation in early childhood education and care (ECEC), especially center-based services, is associated with positive outcomes, particularly for children over one year of age and children of low socioeconomic backgrounds. This signals an important opportunity for reducing socioeconomic disparities in young children’s development. Many western countries have adopted policies to encourage maternal employment, facilitate ECEC service use, or both, often focusing on disadvantaged families. Yet few studies to date have tested the impact of these policies for reducing socioeconomic selection into ECEC. This study integrates data from five cohorts of children living in different western, high-income countries (UK, USA, Netherlands, Canada, and Norway; total N = 21,437). We compare participation rates and socioeconomic selection into ECEC across the different policy contexts in infancy (5–9 months) and early childhood (36–41 months). Policy environments where parents had access to at least 6 months of paid maternity/parental leave had lower ECEC participation in infancy but higher participation in early childhood. Higher participation rates were also associated with universal ECEC subsidies (i.e., not targeted to low-income families). In general, low income, low maternal education and having more than one child were associated with reduced use of ECEC. Selection effects related to low income and number of children were reduced in countries with universal ECEC subsidies when out-of-pocket fees were income-adjusted or reduced for subsequent children, respectively. Most socioeconomic selection effects were reduced in Norway, the only country to invest more than 1% of its GDP into early childhood. Nevertheless, low maternal education was consistently associated with reduced use of ECEC services across all countries. Among families using services however, there were few selection effects for the type of ECEC setting (center-based vs. non-center-based), particularly in early childhood. In sum, this comparative study suggests wide variations in ECEC participation that can be linked to the policy context, and highlights key policy elements which may reduce socioeconomic disparities in ECEC use.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 3 |
| Journal | International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 1 2017 |
Funding
The UK Millennium Cohort Study is core funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and a consortium of Government departments. Permission to use the UK Millennium Cohort Study given by the ESRC Data Archive at Essex is gratefully acknowledged. The SECCYD was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The Generation R Study is conducted by the Erasmus Medical Centre in close collaboration with the Municipal Health Service Rotterdam area, the Rotterdam Homecare Foundation, and the Stichting Trombosedienst & Artsenlabo-ratorium Rijnmond (STAR), Rotterdam. The authors gratefully acknowledge the contribution of general practitioners, hospitals, midwives, and pharmacies in Rotterdam. The present study was supported by an additional grant from the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw, ‘Geestkracht’programme 10.000.1003). The QLSCD study was funded by the Ministry of Health and Social Services and the Ministry of Families (Québec, Canada), the Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Ste. Justine’s Hospital Research Center, the Fondation Lucie et André Chagnon, and the Université de Montréal. The authors thank the Quebec Institute of Statistics (ISQ) for their financial support of ELDEQ, data collection, and management. This paper was initiated while AP was at the UCD Geary Institute, University College Dublin, with support from a postdoctoral fellowship from Quebec’s Fonds Société et Culture and completed while at Teachers College, Columbia University, with support from a postdoctoral fellowship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. MB is supported by the Canada Research Chair Program. HT was supported by the VIDI grant of ZonMW (2009-017.106.370). Under the Family Support Act (FSA; enacted in 1988), parents receiving welfare (Aid for Families with Dependent Children), who were predominantly single parents, were required to participate in job training, education, or employment, as soon as the child reached three years of age (and as early as one year of age in some states), in order to receive benefits. The FSA, in exchange, guaranteed ECEC for these parents, offering them subsidies that could be used for any center-or family-based settings (Kagan and Reid 2008). For low-income working families, ECEC subsidies were available from the states through block grants under the Childcare and Development Block Grant program, or through matching grants-in-aid, via the At-Risk Childcare Program (Title IV-A). This last program, however, was under-utilized by the states due to tight budgets (Chilman 1993). Despite governmental efforts to assist low-income families, a sizeable proportion of eligible families did not access subsidized ECEC due to insufficient funding, to families’ lack of awareness about their eligibility or to their confusion about the different assistance programs (Phillips 1995). While the supply of ECEC was sufficient in terms of number of places, cost remained an issue for low-income families, and almost a quarter of families using non-center-based ECEC would have preferred a place in a center (Hof-ferth 1992). Finally, for working families with moderate to high incomes, non-refundable tax credits for ECEC were available (Chilman 1993).
Keywords
- Center-based child-care
- Cross-country analysis
- Early childhood education and care
- Family policies
- Socioeconomic factors
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Pediatrics, Perinatology, and Child Health
- Education
- Sociology and Political Science
- Pediatrics
- Community and Home Care
