Increased childcare to promote mothers’ employment in selected EU countries

This paper provides evidence of the maternal labour supply effects of increased childcare availability in a set of EU Member States based on the behavioural microsimulation model EUROLAB, that uses a labour market equilibrium model to encompass the demand side. Our findings indicate that achieving higher childcare participation rates would result in an overall increase in the labour supply of mothers with children below 3, with variations across countries. Furthermore, the labour demand side moderates slightly the final employment effect, but employment is still expected to rise substantially vis a vis the baseline situation. In countries like Hungary and Poland, where formal childcare and female labour participation are low, the expected impact on employment is likely to be higher. Conversely, in countries like Portugal the changes in employment are more modest. These findings indicate that universal, one-size-fits-all targets may not be efficient in the EU, given significant variations across countries in terms of labour market participation and childcare systems. Thus, tailored childcare policies that account for country-specific contexts within the EU are recommended.