Socio-Economic Differentials in Formal Childcare – Does Availability of (in)Formal Care Explain Differential Uptake?

Naomi Biegel , University of Antwerp
Julie Maes , University of Antwerp
Karel Neels , University of Antwerp

While Belgium is among the European countries with the highest availability of formal childcare, uptake of childcare is characterised by pronounced socio-economic differentials. This paper focuses on how the labour market opportunities of women with different educational attainment affect their uptake of formal childcare. Hereby we address if and how local availability of formal childcare facilities differs for families with varying socio-economic profiles and how this affects childcare decisions. We additionally control for the availability of grandparents as a potential source of informal care, because parents may rely on care from relatives when formal childcare is scarce. We use data from the 2011 Belgian census which provides us with information on the sociodemographic characteristics of households. The data is linked to tax data giving insight into the usage of formal childcare uptake since childcare expenses are tax-deductible. Additionally, we include childcare coverage at the municipality level. Using logit regression, we model uptake of formal childcare arrangements in 2011, controlling for individual and household-level characteristics, as well as taking account of availability of grandparents by controlling for spatial proximity and characteristics of grandparents such as age, civil status and employment status. Preliminary results indicate that spatial variation in access to childcare has limited effects on explaining educational differentials in uptake, while differences in labour market opportunities for mothers have a substantial impact on the uptake of formal childcare. Differential availability of grandparents also explains some of the observed educational gradients.

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 Presented in Session 75. Child care and family