Childcare at the Multilateral Development Banks: Expansion, Integration, and What’s Next

Since CGD’s 2021 review of childcare investments at multilateral development banks (MDBs), global attention to childcare has grown, driven by increasing recognition of its role in women’s economic empowerment, labor force participation, and broader development outcomes. This paper evaluates how childcare has evolved in this time by examining childcare-related projects approved by 10 MDBs between June 2021 and December 2024, supplemented by interviews with MDB childcare leads and project teams. We identify 163 new projects with childcare components, representing $20.94 billion in core financing and $2.7 billion in co-financing and grants – a 67 percent increase in funding for childcare since 2018. The findings point to a shift in how childcare is positioned: increasingly not only as an early childhood or human capital intervention, but as an enabler of women’s economic participation. Despite this strong overall momentum, measurement of childcare outcomes remains uneven, and some sectoral entry points are underutilized. Drawing on portfolio analysis and practitioner interviews, the paper identifies lessons for future MDB investments, including the importance of diagnostics and business-case evidence, cross-sectoral partnerships, context-specific models, adaptive implementation, and stronger attention to quality, financing, institutional ownership, and evidence. To sustain and deepen recent progress, MDBs should treat childcare as core economic infrastructure aligned with the jobs agenda, invest in diagnostics and evidence, strengthen coordination, local ownership, and financing, and improve measurement and accountability, particularly for outcomes related to women’s economic empowerment.