Transcript The role of childcare services on family

The role of childcare services on family
and work outcomes
Olivier Thévenon
INED
Brussels - EFSI
7 november 2014
Outline
1. The provision of childcare service as a
component of family policies
2. Childcare services: a key role to reconcile
work and family
>0 influence on female labour force participation, fertility
and child development
3. Collective returns from investments in
childcare services?
4. Conclusions
Focus on childcare services
• CC services include : childcare at a day-care centre, childcare
by a professional child-minder at child's home or at a childminder's office, and education at pre-school or equivalent
(e.g. kindergarten, nursery school, assilo nido).
• Different approaches to the development of childcare and
education services, because it is a policy area at the
intersection of :
– Child Well-being and development (cognitive and non-cognitive
skills – emotional, conative skills)
– Alleviation inequalities in performances at school due to social
inequalities and/or to poverty
– Work and family life reconciliation (with concerns about the
development of female employment, gender equality and fertility)
Public spending on families has increased in
many OECD countries since 2001
Public spending on family benefits % of GDP
Cash benefits - 2009
4,5
4,0
3,5
3,0
2,5
2,0
1,5
1,0
0,5
0,0
Source: OECD Family database
Benefits in kind - 2009
Tax breaks for social purposes - 2009
2001
Slight average increase in expenditures in ECEC
services, but huge increase of participation rates
of children under 3 years of age
OECD average OECD standard deviation OECD change
2000 2 2010 3 2000 2 2010 3
2000-10 3
Public spending on childcare and preschool for children aged 0-5 years 0,5
Childcare enrolment rate among children aged 0-2 years
20,5
Childcare and preschool enrolment rate among children aged 3-5 years 70,8
0,7
32,6
76,9
0,3
15,2
23,7
0,4
17,8
20,5
+30/33
+22/22
+22/29
Source: Adema W., Ali N., Thévenon O. (2014), “Changes in Family Policies and Outcomes: Is there Convergence?”,
OECD SEM Working Papers, 157, OECD Publishing.
1
Public spending on childcare and preschool
services
Percentage of GDP for children aged 0-5 years
2009
1,8
1,6
1,4
1,2
1,0
0,8
0,6
0,4
0,2
0,0
Source: OECD Family database
1998
Variations in spending for children under age 3, and
children of preschool age (3 to 5)
% GDP
Childcare spending as a % of GDP
1.6
1.4
1.2
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
Source: OECD Family database
Pre-primary spending as a % of GDP
Differences in coverage rates of services for
children under age 3.
Percentage of children in formal care or pre-school
80
60
40
20
0
Source: OECD Family database
FTE
Family policy regimes across the OECD
Source: Thévenon (2011), « Family Policies in OECD countries: A Comparative Analysis », Population and
Development Review, 37(1):57-87.
Key role of childcare services in the policy
mix
• A positive influence of childcare service coverage for children
under age 3 on female labour force participation
→ From 1980s to 2007, large effect of increase in CS coverage on the
trends in FLFP (Thévenon, 2013) : an increase of 0.2 percentage point
in the coverage of childcare services has produced a 2.8 per cent
increase in female labour force participation rates.
→ greater effect in countries with comparatively long paid leave and/or a
high degree of employment protection.
→ but its effect varies across family policy regimes:
– stronger in Nordic and English-speaking regions (and supporting full-time work in
the North);
– weaker in continental and southern European countries where the expansion
childcare services may have merely changed informal into formal provision and
have made it somewhat more likely for women to work part-time work.
→ seems to have had an impact only for medium and high educated
women (Cipollone et al., 2013)
• A positive influence of childcare service coverage on fertility
trends
→ The effect of coverage of childcare services for children under age
three on fertility rates is found to be positive in all welfare states (LuciGreulich and Thévenon, 2013)
• A positive influence of early enrolment in care and education
services on child development
→ Clear evidence on the positive effect on performance at primary
school
→ Long-lasting effect? expansions of early education generally yield
benefits at school entry, adolescence, and for adults particularly for
disadvantaged children (Ruhm and Waldfogel, 2011)
2 examples:
For France: Dumas and Lefranc evaluate long-term effects of the
preschool expansions that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s (a
period when the share of 3 year olds enrolled in preschool rose
from 35 percent to 90 percent, while the share of 4 year olds
enrolled grew from 60 percent to 100 percent:
• positive impacts of preschool on grade repetition, test scores,
high school graduation, as well as on adult wages.
• These effects are particularly large for children from
disadvantaged or intermediate (rather than advantaged)
backgrounds
For Norway: Havnes et Mogstad (2011) find that the strong
expansion of childcare provision in the late 1970s had a positive
influnece on school performance, labour force participation and
reduced welfare dependency.
Collective economic benefits from investments
in childcare services? One evaluation for Austria
Conclusions
• Investing in childcare services is key for economic
development since it has a positive influence on a set of
interdependent employment and family outcomes
• Big concerns about cuts in spending on childcare services, as
done, for instance in the Netherlands where public spending
in this sector rose from 667 million euros in 2006 to a peak of
3.3 billion in 2010 before dropping back to 2.3 billion in 2013.
At the same time, the number of children covered by
childcare services dropped from 52% of children under age 3
in 2010 to 48% in 2013.
Thank you for your attention!
• Further reading:
• Thévenon, O. (2013), "Drivers of female labour force
participation in OECD countries”, OECD Social, Employment
and Migration Working Papers, No. 145, OECD Publishing,
Paris (www.oecd.org/els/workingpapers).