Who uses early childhood education and care services? Comparing socioeconomic selection across five western policy contexts

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.

Early childhood child care and disruptive behavior problems during adolescence: a 17‐year population‐based propensity score study

“…However, population‐level interventions targeting low socioeconomic status (SES) families are expensive and challenging to implement. Child‐care services, which have become widely used over the past decades (60%–90% in Europe and North America; Petitclerc et al., ), have been promoted as an efficacious way to counteract early exposure to high‐risk home environments (Côté, Borge, Geoffroy, Rutter, & Tremblay, ; Côté et al., ; Herba et al., ; Laurin et al., ).…”

Deciding on the timing of early public childcare in Germany. An application of rational choice theory.

“…Generally, findings suggest that the use of childcare services is more common among families with higher educated mothers in the US (Coley, Votruba-Drzal, Collins and Miller, 2014;Crosnoe, Purtell, Davis-Kean, Ansari and Benner, 2016) as well as in European countries (Petitclerc et al, 2017;Zachrisson, Janson and Naerde, 2013). Furthermore, children with highly educated mothers attend childcare at younger ages (Petitclerc et al, 2017) and also spend more hours in ECEC settings (Early and Burchinal, 2001). Educational differences regarding childcare usage are also found in the German context: Low-educated mothers tend to enroll their children at older ages or do not register them at all (Büchner and Spiess, 2007;Krapf, 2014;Kreyenfeld and Krapf, 2016;Schober and Spiess, 2013;Schober and Stahl, 2014;.…”

“…Generally, findings suggest that the use of childcare services is more common among families with higher educated mothers in the US (Coley, Votruba-Drzal, Collins and Miller, 2014;Crosnoe, Purtell, Davis-Kean, Ansari and Benner, 2016) as well as in European countries (Petitclerc et al, 2017;Zachrisson, Janson and Naerde, 2013). Furthermore, children with highly educated mothers attend childcare at younger ages (Petitclerc et al, 2017) and also spend more hours in ECEC settings (Early and Burchinal, 2001).…”

Starting Strong Teaching and Learning International Survey 2018 Conceptual Framework

“…Barnett, 2011, Camilli et al, 2010, Dearing et al, 2009, Melhuish et al, 2008b, Zachrisson and Dearing, 2015. Although some countries have implemented targeted equity policies such that disadvantaged children can experience higher quality ECEC (Leseman et al, 2017, Slot et al, 2015a, it is a paradox that in other countries there still remains social selection into ECEC and ECEC quality, with socio-economically disadvantaged children being the least likely to attend high-quality ECEC (Petitclerc et al, 2017). This includes countries with market-based and targeted programmes (e.g.…”