Subjective Assessments of the Quality of Social Investment Interventions: Taking a Bottom-Up Approach to Childcare Services in European Countries

The topic of social investment (SI) in children through high-quality childcare provision remains high on the political and SI research agenda. It has generated research at both the individual and country level: childcare programme quality from a public funding angle (top-down) and individual experiences by parents/guardians as users of these services (bottom-up). To date, however, very little bottom-up research in the SI literature analyses how country-level variables influence users’ evaluations of childcare quality. This article’s main focus is to examine how user satisfaction with childcare quality at the individual level is related to objective childcare quality and contextual factors at the country-level. The study relies on a childcare satisfaction index (CSI) for EU (27) countries and the UK, constructed with data from Eurofound’s European Quality of Life Survey. The findings demonstrate that childcare users’ satisfaction with childcare quality is associated with trust in government, the intensity of childcare use, and SI reform strategies. The findings have important implications for SI research by showing the association between top-down factors and individual bottom-up satisfaction with childcare among formal childcare users. This research broadens existing childcare and SI literature by suggesting a multidimensional approach for analysing individual and country-level indicators.