Family policies and childcare in the European context

Countries, by means of policies, allocate intergenerational responsibilities between families, markets, and the state in different ways, which also impact gendered practices concerning paid employment and care work. According to differences in care arrangements, countries have often been classified along the familialism–defamilialisation continuum, having more or less publicly provided alternatives for family care such as childcare services or financial support (e.g. parental leave provisions) (Saraceno and Keck, Reference Saraceno and Keck2010).

The institutionalisation of public childcare in Europe has taken place at the crossroads of two main policy motives: first, promoting the reconciliation of care and paid work, and second, the notion that children are in need of public education (Scheiwe and Willekens, Reference Scheiwe, Willekens, Scheiwe and Willekens2009). The first has traditionally included aspects of social protection in preventing poverty and fostering gender equality by enabling women to be in paid employment and providing safe day care for children (Mahon, Reference Mahon2002). Increasingly, however, early childhood education has been seen as the right of children to receive education and as a social investment that aims to mitigate inequalities between children and enhance equality of opportunity in their educational and occupational careers, irrespective of their socio-economic, cultural, or linguistic backgrounds (Scheiwe and Willekens, Reference Scheiwe, Willekens, Scheiwe and Willekens2009; Mahon et al., Reference Mahon, Anttonen, Bergqvist, Brennan and Hobson2012; Repo et al., Reference Repo, Alasuutari, Karila, Lammi-Taskula, Repo, Alasuutari, Karila and Lammi-Taskula2020).

Therefore, ECEC services are important elements of both childcare and education policies. Differences between countries in terms of gender ideologies, family values, and the understanding of childhood have led to different policies and care arrangements (Pfau-Effinger, Reference Pfau-Effinger2005; Scheiwe and Willekens, Reference Scheiwe, Willekens, Scheiwe and Willekens2009). However, different ways of addressing and allocating these care responsibilities can have different implications for social and gender equality (Orloff, Reference Orloff2009).

The positive effects of ECEC in many different areas have made it an important service for international organisations to promote. European Union set its first ECEC participation goals in 2002, the so-called “Barcelona target”: by 2010, at least 33 per cent of under-3-year-old and at least 90 per cent of over-3-year-old children should participate in ECEC. By 2019, 11 EU countries had yet to reach the target for those under 3 years, and overall, the participation rates varied from 4 per cent (Slovakia) to 65 per cent (the Netherlands) (OECD, 2023a). This goal was revisited in 2022 by the European Council, which stated that by 2030, 45 per cent of children under 3 years of age should attend ECEC. The council also recommended targeted measures to support the early education and care of children with disadvantaged backgrounds (European Council, 2022/C 484/01).

ECEC systems (e.g. the availability of ECEC services and how they are organised) vary across Europe, especially for younger children. In 2018 and 2019, only a few European countries guaranteed a place in ECEC for children of a very young age (6–18 months) (see Table 1), and even fewer had no childcare gap between legal entitlement to parental or childcare leave and a guaranteed place in ECEC. Thus, most families with children under the age of 3 years struggle to arrange the care of their children using informal arrangements (e.g. babysitters, grandparents, and other adults). Accessibility is better for older children, as in many countries, the focus of ECEC services changes from childcare to early education around the age of 3 years. For very young children, ECEC services have historically been understood as care services that enable parents, usually mothers to participate in the labour market. Thus, approximately one-third of European countries have limited access to ECEC or have prioritised families in which both parents work or study. The ECEC participation rates of children under the age of 3 years also reflect mothers’ labour market participation and employment rates (see Table 1). For older children, ECEC services are more often understood as part of the education system, supporting child development and preparing them for primary education, although systems that integrate these two approaches have also become more prominent. Thus, the participation rates of older children could be high even in countries that do not have any legal framework to ensure a place in ECEC (one-quarter of European education systems) (Eurydice, 2019).

Table 1. Characteristics of countries included in the study

Note: Changes in public expenditure on ECEC during the study period, if country guarantees a place in ECEC, if the demand for places is met, and changes in employment rate of mothers with young children during the study period.

Sources:

¹ OECD (n.d.b).

² Eurydice (2019) (data are based on experts’ answer from their country).

³ OECD (n.d.c).

⁴ Data from 2011.

⁵ Data from 2009.

In addition to entitlement and availability, affordability is another important aspect of ECEC services for parents. Most European countries have fees for ECEC, and only a few offer free public ECEC (with possibly limited hours) for the youngest children. Monthly ECEC fees for children under 3 years are the highest in countries that rely on market-driven mechanisms to supply ECEC to this age group. To include the most vulnerable groups of children, many countries also offer fee reductions or priority access to certain groups (e.g. children living in poverty, children of single parents, and children with disabilities) (Eurydice, 2019).

Public spending on ECEC also varies notably between countries, although in most countries, it increased throughout the study period. In 2004, EU countries used an average of 0.52 per cent of their GDP on the ECEC, whereas in 2019, the share increased to 0.75 per cent. In 2019, Ireland used the least (0.33 per cent of its GDP), while Iceland used the most (1.7 per cent of its GDP) (OECD, n.d.b). Table 1 presents the development of public spending in the countries included in this study during the study period. It should be noted that these figures include spending for both children under three years old and children over three years old, and data are not available separately for each age group. In some countries, higher spending may reflect compulsory participation of older children.

Inequalities related to ECEC

Earlier research on childcare has pointed to different factors of social stratification related to formal childcare use at both the individual and institutional levels (Van Lancker and Ghysels, Reference Van Lancker and Ghysels2016; Petitclerc et al., Reference Petitclerc, Côté, Doyle, Burchinal, Herba, Zachrisson, Boivin, Tremblay, Tiemeier, Jaddoe and Raat2017; Van Lancker, Reference Van Lancker2018; Ferragina and Magalini, Reference Ferragina and Magalini2023). Since women are typically the primary caregivers of children, it is mostly the mother’s socio-economic background that influences the use of childcare. Additionally, immigrant children in Europe are less likely to participate in formal early education and care (Van Lancker and Pavolini, Reference Van Lancker and Pavolini2022).

In previous research on the unequal use of ECEC, different methods for measuring inequality have been applied. These include family income (Van Lancker, Reference Van Lancker2018) and mother’s social class (Pavolini and Van Lancker, Reference Pavolini and Van Lancker2018; Ferragina and Magalini, Reference Ferragina and Magalini2023). The most frequently used characteristic is education (Van Lancker and Ghysels, Reference Van Lancker and Ghysels2016; Krapf, Reference Krapf2014; Wood et al., Reference Wood, Neels and Maes2023). Overall, education level is related to several aspects of well-being. For example, higher educated people are healthier (Albert and Davia, Reference Albert and Davia2011) and less likely to be poor (Hofmarcher, Reference Hofmarcher2021). In addition, those with a high education level more often support gender egalitarian values (Salin et al., Reference Salin, Ylikännö and Hakovirta2018). The importance of education has led governments to invest in it, resulting in a rapid rise in education levels among young adults around the world (OECD, 2022). The expansion of education has also meant that the social position of low-educated people has weakened in many countries. For example, they are more disadvantaged in the labour market (Abrassart, Reference Abrassart2013; Elstad, Reference Elstad, Falch-Eriksen, Takle and Slagsvold2021), and relative inequality in health and mortality is increasing between educational groups (Mackenbach et al., Reference Mackenbach, Kulhánová, Menvielle, Bopp, Borrell, Costa, Deboosere, Esnaola, Kalediene, Kovacs, Leinsalu, Martikainen, Regidor, Rodriguez-Sanz, Strand, Hoffmann, Eikemo, Östergren and Lundberg2015; Linder et al., Reference Linder, Spika, Gerdtham, Fritzell and Heckley2020).

Different reasons have been suggested for disparities in childcare solutions between mothers. For example, the lower use of childcare services by lower-educated mothers has been explained by their weaker labour market opportunities compared to higher-educated mothers (Biegel and Maes, Reference Biegel and Maes2022; Wood et al., 2023). Lower-educated mothers also work more often in jobs with irregular working hours and short, temporary contracts. This instability may cause difficulties in finding an ECEC place for a child, especially if accessibility is a problem (Vandenbroeck, Reference Vandenbroeck, Nieuwenhuis and Van Lancker2020).

Problems in accessing ECEC have often been understood as the main factor explaining inequality in participation. These problems stem from the lack of availability and the high cost of ECEC. In 2018, only eight European countries guaranteed an ECEC place for children under the age of 3 years, while the demand for childcare for young children was higher than the supply in most European countries (Eurydice, 2019; see Table 1). Furthermore, the cost of childcare places more strain on lower-educated mothers, as it may be economically more beneficial for them to stay home and take care of their child than to work in a low-paying job and pay high childcare fees. According to Pavolini and Van Lancker (Reference Pavolini and Van Lancker2018), these kinds of structural constraints drive European inequalities.

Additionally, although inequality in childcare use is generally lower in countries with better accessibility to ECEC services, other factors seem to contribute to families’ childcare use. Irrespective of the level of investment in public childcare, socio-economic differences in ECEC use have been found to be particularly high in countries in which the male breadwinner model is traditionally supported instead of the dual earner/dual carer model (Ferragina and Magalini, Reference Ferragina and Magalini2023). Thus, at the individual level, cultural factors and attitudes can play a role in differences in ECEC use and the division of care responsibilities more widely (Krapf, Reference Krapf2014; Abrassart and Bonoli, Reference Abrassart and Bonoli2015).

Previous comparative research on inequality in ECEC participation (Van Lancker and Ghysels, Reference Van Lancker and Ghysels2016) has shown that countries with long and well-paid parental leave, on the one hand, or low-quality childcare services, on the other hand, have more inequality in ECEC use. Meanwhile, countries that provide legal entitlement to ECEC or have more subsidised places have lower inequality. More public spending on ECEC correlates with higher use of ECEC, but is not directly associated with the development of inequality in ECEC (Van Lancker, Reference Van Lancker2018).

Based on earlier research, three hypotheses were formulated for the analysis. Our first hypothesis is that as the overall use of ECEC has increased, the inequality in ECEC use has decreased. The more children are enrolled in ECEC, the more there will be children from different backgrounds. Our second hypothesis is that the largest participation gap can be found between the low- and high-educated. The polarisation of these groups has been found in previous studies. Our third hypothesis is that disparities between medium- and high-educated mothers have decreased faster compared to pairwise comparison of low- and medium- educated. Since the share of the low-educated has decreased during the study period, we assume they have become a more marginalised group.

Data and methods

Analytical methods

To analyse inequality in ECEC use, we ran logistic regression models on the youngest child’s participation in ECEC, with an interaction between the mother’s education level and time point separately for each country. To illustrate the differences in ECEC use between the three education groups, we used AMEs to show the effect of a change in the dependent variable (here, ECEC use) on the predicted probability of the independent variable (mother’s education level). AME was calculated at each time point for all education level pairs (low versus medium, low versus high, and medium versus high). For the overall inequality in a country, we used the average of each time point’s AMEs (Figure 1).

Figure 1. ECEC participation rates and inequality during the study period.

Note: The figure shows overall inequality in ECEC use according to mother’s education level (average AME during the study period, left y-line) and every country’s ECEC participation rate of under-3-year-old children at the start and end of study period (% of children under 3 years, right y-line).

The development of inequality (Table 2) was determined by examining the AMEs at each time point, and countries were categorised according to the type of change observed in the levels of inequality. This was performed by two authors separately, followed by a discussion with a third author for the categories on which there was disagreement. In certain countries, the results fluctuated so much that the development was too difficult to categorise, while in other countries, the categorisation was made with some uncertainty. These are marked in Table 2 by * next to the development category. The AME values for each country and time point are shown in Table B1.

Table 2. Development of inequality in ECEC use by country

Note: This table shows the development of inequality in ECEC use according to pairwise comparison of education groups.

As robustness checks, we employed income quintiles as an alternative measure of inequality because the amount in each subgroup would be more stable than education. However, the values still changed drastically for some groups, similar to the changes observed for some countries’ low-educated mothers. Therefore, this did not bring the desired stability, leading us to retain education as the primary measure of inequality. When examining the overall development of inequality using these two alternative model versions, the picture looked the same as that of education only.

Conclusions and discussion

This study examined cross-country differences in the development of inequality in ECEC use in Europe in 2004–2019. Using data from the EU-SILC for 21 European countries, we analysed whether a mother’s education level is associated with her youngest under-3-year-old child’s participation in ECEC across countries and over time. We conducted a pairwise analysis of three education levels.

Our initial hypothesis, which posited that the inequality in ECEC participation would diminish as the participation rate increased, was not confirmed by this study. Our results show that while ECEC participation rates have increased in almost all countries in the sample, and in some of them very significantly, the overall educational inequality in ECEC use in Europe has also increased. In most countries, the increase in inequality has taken place in multiple education pairs, whereas in the few countries in which inequality has decreased, the change has occurred only between medium- and high-educated mothers. In many countries, the level of inequality has remained stable between educational pairs.

Our results are partly in line with the findings of Ferragina and Magalini (Reference Ferragina and Magalini2023), who show that despite investments in public childcare and increased rates of ECEC use, socio-economic differences remain high in many countries that have traditionally supported the male breadwinner model. However, overall, it seems that an increase in participation often means that inequality in the country also increases. This contradicts Van Lancker’s (Reference Van Lancker2018) suggestion that inequality decreases as ECEC participation rates increase. A decrease in inequality has occurred in Norway and Luxembourg, where participation was already high at the start of the study period. However, the opposite occurred in many countries with lower initial participation rates. For example, Austria, Cyprus, and Slovenia have increased both participation and inequality. Meanwhile, Estonia and Greece are exceptions, as even with a significant rise in participation, inequality has remained low. Our results thus show that an increase in ECEC participation does not invariably lower inequality.

In previous research, country differences in ECEC participation rate have been explained by policy context as well as cultural factors (Gambaro et al., Reference Gambaro, Stewart and Waldfogel2014; Petitclerc et al., Reference Petitclerc, Côté, Doyle, Burchinal, Herba, Zachrisson, Boivin, Tremblay, Tiemeier, Jaddoe and Raat2017). In countries with more liberal policy context, services are more market based, and child development is viewed as the responsibility of families. Conversely, in countries with a more social-democratic welfare state, the responsibility is seen as more shared, and services are more universal. We thus tried to make sense of the country variation by reflecting on the institutional characteristics of the countries (Table 1). In Luxembourg, Latvia, the Netherlands, and Norway, where inequality remained unchanged or decreased during the study period, there was a significant increase in public spending on ECEC during that time. Furthermore, most countries that in 2018/2019 guaranteed a day care place for young children (Eurydice, 2019) showed stable inequality. For example, Estonia maintained a lower level of inequality despite a significant increase in ECEC participation rate. This aligns with a previous study by Van Lancker and Ghysels (Reference Van Lancker and Ghysels2016), who found that countries that guarantee an ECEC place have lower inequality. We can thus say that universal, subsidised, and affordable ECEC services are likely to increase the participation rate and decrease socio-economic selection.

In many countries, there are still supply-side problems, such as a lack of availability (Pavolini and Van Lancker, Reference Pavolini and Van Lancker2018; Woods et al., 2023), and formal service provision does not meet the need based on parental employment. The association between ECEC use and mothers’ employment has been found in earlier studies (e.g. Zoch, Reference Zoch2020). In Europe, the employment rate of women is generally lower than that of men. In most countries, the rise in employment of mothers of children aged 0–2 years has been moderate, although in some countries (e.g. Austria, Latvia, Luxembourg, and the United Kingdom), the rise has been significant.

The country variation in ECEC participation rates can thus also reflect the gendered labour market situation in each country. For example, the gender difference in employment rate is larger in southern European countries and in some of the former Soviet countries, as well as in Ireland, whereas in Baltic countries and in Finland the gap is relatively narrow (Eurostat, 2023). Furthermore, country variation in the inequalities in children’s participation in ECEC could be related to educational disparities in the employment rate of parents. In countries with an initially low participation rate, the new places in ECEC have most likely been taken up by children of higher-educated parents, which has driven the increase in inequality. In countries with a high participation rate to begin with, such as Luxembourg and Norway, it could be assumed that most high- and medium-educated parents already had their children attending ECEC and the increased participation came from less-educated families.

Greece is an example of a country where an increase in ECEC participation rates has not been combined with increasing inequality. This may be due to a combination of institutional and labour market characteristics. In Greece, low-educated mothers working in the service sector, such as hotels and restaurants, may need to return to work relatively early as the parental leave for employees in the private sector is less generous than in the private sector, and work-family reconciliation is supported by lower childcare fees for low-income families (Eurydice, 2023).

Our second hypothesis was confirmed as general differences in ECEC use were the largest between low- and high-educated mothers compared to the differences between low- and medium-educated mothers or between medium- and high-educated mothers. The second largest inequality was between low- and medium-educated mothers. A pairwise comparison of the three education groups revealed new aspects of the behaviour of medium-educated mothers. It seems that medium-educated mothers most often behave similarly to high-educated mothers, and only in a few countries (e.g. Luxembourg and Ireland), they behave more like low-educated mothers.

Our third hypothesis anticipated that the decrease in inequality would be more rapid between medium- and high-educated individuals compared to other educational pairs. Overall, there was indeed a decrease in inequality between medium- and high-educated in most countries, but at the last time point, inequality in the pair had increased. The largest increase in inequality was found in pair comparisons involving the low-educated. It appears that, as in the labour market (Abrassart, Reference Abrassart2013) and health (Mackenbach et al., Reference Mackenbach, Kulhánová, Menvielle, Bopp, Borrell, Costa, Deboosere, Esnaola, Kalediene, Kovacs, Leinsalu, Martikainen, Regidor, Rodriguez-Sanz, Strand, Hoffmann, Eikemo, Östergren and Lundberg2015), this group is becoming more marginalised. During the study period, the proportion of low-educated mothers has also decreased rapidly. They are becoming a more selected group with potentially multiple social and economic challenges. This makes it even more important for their children to participate in ECEC to prevent the developmental gap between them and other children from widening.

The findings of our analysis demonstrate that when looking at educational inequality in ECEC use, it is important not only to consider differences between higher and lower levels of education but also to include a third education level (i.e. medium educated) in the analysis. During the past decade, there has been a significant change in the educational structure of the working-age population in Europe, as the number of employed people with a low education level has decreased, and the number of those with a high level of education has increased (Eurostat, 2023). The low-educated are thus an increasingly smaller and marginalised group, and comparisons between them and the higher-educated can obscure the dynamics between medium- and high-educated groups, to which most mothers belong. Doing so allowed us to more closely study the dynamics of inequality related to ECEC usage. Still, while the small number of respondents with the lowest education level is likely to create also practical problems in a more detailed survey data analysis, we found it important to include it as a separate group to contribute to the study of vulnerabilities and related policies targeted at families.

Our study also raises questions regarding the use of EU-SILC as research data. The low number of mothers with children under 3 years of age creates a challenge for stability. We recommend using at least 2 years to account for fluctuations in the number of respondents for more stable results. Using only 1 year could yield very different results compared to using an additional year.

Even when the original Barcelona target of young children’s participation in ECEC has been reached in many countries, the aim of social inclusion might not always be realised, as children with a higher risk of marginalisation owing to low parental education do not attend early education to the same extent as those with higher-educated parents. To better evaluate and promote the social sustainability of European societies, it is important to closely follow not only participation rates but also the various aspects of inequalities related to the use of early education and care services. Countries with high inequality, especially those with rising inequality, can learn from other countries’ policies to prevent and decrease social inequalities between children.