Project description
Identifying barriers to uptake in formal childcare
Young children from lower income households are less likely to be enrolled in formal childcare facilities than children from higher income families. However, research has shown that children exposed to high-quality childcare show better academic outcomes through secondary school and later in life. So, it is necessary to remove the barriers to formal childcare to reduce inequalities in usage. The ERC-funded CHILDCARE STRATEGIES will investigate why formal childcare does not always spread to low income households. The findings from administrative and survey data will shed light on the diffusion of childcare strategies. The project will reframe our understanding of childcare in order to identify barriers to uptake.
Objective
Background - High quality childcare greatly improves outcomes in later life. Yet childcare access and usage are distributed unevenly, leading to amplified inequalities in later life outcomes. Parents from low-income households are 50% less likely to use formal childcare services than high-income households and use them when the child is older and less intensely. Research has shown that cost, location, and quality of childcare effects usage, yet policy solutions aimed at removing these barriers have not reduced inequalities in usage.
Aim - In this project, sociological, economic, demographic and social policy perspectives are synthesized within a framework of ‘complex contagions’ to investigate how the use of formal childcare diffuses across low income populations, with the aim of identifying barriers to uptake in formal childcare.
Approach - This project breaks through the state of the art to more clearly describe why some childcare strategies, that use formal childcare, don’t spread to low income households. With a complex contagion, people only adopt a new behaviour if they are repeatedly exposed to it from multiple, diverse actors in their network. Low income households have personal networks with long weak ties and high, multi-layer clustering, that make adopting new childcare strategies unlikely. This project therefore examines how the childcare strategies present in work, family and neighbourhood networks influences the childcare strategies of low income households.
Innovation & Impact - The analysis will draw on unprecedented, linked administrative and survey data to study the diffusion of childcare strategies. Network data are used in combination with multichannel sequence analysis and other longitudinal methods to identify the role of networks in shaping childcare strategies. The project will completely reframe our understanding of not only childcare strategies, but also parallel areas of social policy and the wider study of behaviour diffusion in
Keywords
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2021-STG
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3062 PA Rotterdam
Netherlands
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