Public or Private Responsibility? Early Childhood Education and Care, Inequality, and the Welfare State

Abstract

Although early childhood education and care provision (ECEC) is increasing in all the industrialized welfare states, institutional arrangements for providing and financing services still vary substantially across countries at similar levels of economic development. These policies have potentially important implications for the reduction of income and labor market inequalities. In this paper we document variation in the institutional arrangements for ECEC in fourteen industrialized countries. Institutional variation is associated with equally varied levels of public responsibility for the care of young children - across countries, and between age groups within some countries. The extent to which care is socialized has implications for the reduction of several forms of social inequality.