Who reaps the benefits? The social distribution of public childcare in Sweden and Flanders
The main goal of this paper is to unravel the social distribution of childcare policies: who benefits from government investment on public childcare? If childcare policies are mainly used by those already working, and (scarce) budgetary resources thus end up with the higher income brackets, genuine concern arises about the distributional consequences of childcare policies on the one hand, and its effectiveness as an instrument to activate mothers with young children into the labour market on the other. Answering this question is a complex endeavour, because one has to simultaneously take into account the (possibly income-differentiated) tariff structure of childcare services and private childcare costs (parental fees), government expenditures (subsidies to childcare providers) and tax concessions. In this contribution, we develop a fine-grained analysis to reveal the distributional impact of public childcare for two countries (Flanders/Belgium and Sweden) already reaching the Barcelona targets for under 3s and interpret the results in a European perspective. We find that, although both cases report high coverage rates, Sweden and Flanders have very different and even opposite distributional outcomes. Both examples provide us with valuable lessons on the redistributive nature of “new risk policies” and the effectiveness of childcare as an instrument of labour market activation.
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| Date of creation: | Apr 2011 |
| Handle: | RePEc:hdl:wpaper:1106 |
| Contact details of provider: | Web page: http://www.centreforsocialpolicy.eu Email: More information through EDIRC
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References listed on IDEAS
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- Danièle Meulders & Jérôme De Henau & Sile Padraigin O'Dorchai, 2007. "Making time for working parents: comparing public childcare provision," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/7708, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
- Rickard Eriksson & Magnus Nermo, 2010.
"Care for Sick Children as a Proxy for Gender Equality in the Family,"
Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement,
Springer, vol. 97(3), pages 341-356, July.
- Eriksson, Rickard & Nermo, Magnus, 2008. "Care for sick children as a proxy for gender equality in the family," Working Paper Series 1/2008, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
- Mörk, Eva & Sjögren, Anna & Svalelryd, Helena, 2008. "Cheaper child care, more children," Working Paper Series 2008:29, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
- Eva Mörk & Anna Sjögren & Helena Svaleryd, 2009. "Cheaper Child Care, More Children," Working Papers 2009/2, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
- Mörk, Eva & Sjögren, Anna & Svaleryd, Helena, 2009. "Cheaper Child Care, More Children," IZA Discussion Papers 3942, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
- Esping-Andersen, Gosta, 1999. "Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198742005.
- Anna Brink & Katarina Nordblom & Roger Wahlberg, 2007. "Maximum fee versus child benefit: a welfare analysis of Swedish child-care fee reform," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 14(4), pages 457-480, August.
- Joris Ghysels & Gerlinde Verbist & Josefine Vanhille, 2010. "Taxing Care : enhancing the childcare time in the dual earner era," Working Papers 1001, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp. Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)
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