Transcript Childcare - LRD report 1.6.16x

Social and economic benefits of
good quality childcare and early
years education
Key points from a briefing for
EPSU by the
Labour Research Department
Helping more women into employment
• OECD figures show that even in countries where the
women’s employment rate is relatively high (UK,
Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia) there is still a gap
of more than 10 percentage points between women with
and without children
Female employment rate (25-54 age cohort)
Maternal employment rate - child under 15
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
OECD average maternal employment rate = 65.2%
Public spending on family benefits
Percentage of GDP, 2011, Source: OECD
Cash
4.50
4.00
3.50
3.00
2.50
2.00
1.50
1.00
0.50
0.00
Services
Tax breaks
Economic benefits
• UK analysis – nationwide public system of universal and
affordable childcare would provide net return to
government of more than EUR 6800 per woman (more if
there were a greater take up of full-time work)
• Danish analysis – highly subsidised, universal childcare
and comprehensive parental leave brings return to public
finances of EUR 37000 over course of women’s lifetime
• Quebec experience – from 2000 heavily subsidised
childcare for all 0-4 year olds increased maternal
employment rate by 11 percentage points – adding 3.8%
to overall women’s employment rate and 1.7% to
economic output
(Institute for Public Policy Research, 2011)
More women in work more jobs in
childcare
• Austria – EUR 100 million federal
investment would create 14000 childcare
jobs, 2300 in related services and between
14000 and 28000 men and women who
currently cannot work would be back on
the labour market – taxes and other
contributions would make this positive for
public finances from fifth year onwards
(Arbeiterkammer 2013)
Longer term… educational and
social development
• Range of studies indicating positive impact
on educational attainment and
development of social skills as well as
increased success in employment and
social integration – mainly in UK and USA,
evaluated positively by National Audit
Office in UK
Investing in the care economy
ITUC, 2016
• Investing in care delivers more jobs and
reduces gender quality when compared to
equivalent investment in infrastructure
• Employment effects in 7 OECD countries
analysed with care investment delivering
on average 1.5% larger increase in
employment rate – over 21 million jobs in
care compared to 13.4m in construction
• http://www.epsu.org/article/social-and-economicbenefits-good-quality-childcare-and-early-yearseducation
• http://www.ituc-csi.org/CareJobs