Explaining Social Inequality in Childcare Use Across 30 European Countries: What (if any) Is the Role of Social Spending?

Under the social investment paradigm, childcare services are increasingly put forward as one of the most important policy levers to mitigate social inequalities in early life. As a corollary, expanding the number of childcare places has been a government priority across European welfare states in recent years, and almost all countries increased expenditures on childcare. Recent comparative studies based on cross-sectional data have shown, however, that children living in higher income families use childcare services to a much larger extent than lower income. Due to this social gap in childcare use, government investment in childcare could fail to live up to its inequality-reducing potential and may actually exacerbate rather than mitigate social inequalities in early life. Such outcome would be the opposite of what is intended. This begs the question whether an increase in government spending on childcare services leads to a better performance in terms of equity. Drawing on several waves of the EU-SILC (European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions) data and on OECD SOCX (social expenditure) data, I 1) reinvigorate our knowledge on the extent and evolution of social stratification in childcare use across 30 European countries over the period 2005-2011; 2) investigate what welfare state institutions are related to these patterns of inequality; and 3) explore the role of social spending as a policy strategy to achieve more equal outcomes in childcare use. The empirical analyses will contribute to understanding mechanisms driving childcare inequality and the impact of social spending.