Social Investment in Childcare: Exploring the Role of Education, Income and Public Expenditure on User Satisfaction

Social investment in children through the provision of high-quality childcare is high on political and academic agendas across the European Union. There are two distinctive themes in the SI and childcare literature: childcare program quality at the country level examining ‘Matthew Effects’ and the individual experiences of service users, namely, individuals with small children. However, studies have been mainly focused on childcare accessibility and use, which is one of the major disadvantages in SI and childcare literature. Yet, little is known about what people think about childcare quality, as this issue is under-researched in the literature and focuses on relatively broad socio-economic characteristics. How do ‘Matthew Effects’ in childcare drive satisfaction with childcare quality among formal childcare users? Current research takes a top-down approach by looking at public investments in childcare and finds that higher investments tend to flow to better-off people, leading to higher participation rates in formal childcare services (Cantillon 2011; Pavolini and Van Lancker, 2018; Van Lancker and Ghysels, 2012). However, existing literature does not ask how satisfied better-off people, who benefit more from childcare programmes, are with the quality of childcare services. Drawing on analysis of data from Eurofound’s European Quality of Life Survey 2016, this study contributes to these debates by investigating individual satisfaction with childcare services’ quality using a bottom-up approach for the EU (27) and the UK. The research examines the extent to which educational background and income - two variables closely associated with socio-economic status - are associated with individual satisfaction with childcare quality. The analysis of formal childcare users suggests that existing Matthew Effects in childcare use do not necessarily mean more satisfaction with childcare quality. We also find that higher educational background is inversely related to user satisfaction with childcare. This suggests that more-educated individuals have higher expectations about quality, and they also adapt these expectations in response to their experience with childcare services over time. We also explore a variable central to the approach - whether higher public expenditures on childcare lead to higher individual satisfaction with childcare quality. The findings show that childcare expenditure matters, but what matters more is the public spending context: individuals in low-and high-spending countries have higher levels of satisfaction, compared to those in medium-expenditure countries. The findings are important to the existing Social Investment and childcare literature examining Matthew Effects and suggest that childcare quality should be analysed more broadly, taking both a top-down and bottom-up approach.