Application Support Increases Child Care Enrollment of Children from Lower-Educated Families

“The support measures increased the likelihood of lower-educated families applying for a child care slot by 21 percentage points, and their likelihood of actually attending child care by 16 percentage points”, Lergetporer says. In addition to a higher likelihood of submitting an application, this considerable increase is also due to the fact that lower-educated parents who received the support measures were more likely to visit a child care center during the application process. The measure had no effect on higher-educated families. “Application support thus greatly reduced the socioeconomic difference in child care attendance,” says Simon Wiederhold of the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. In the study, which involved more than 600 families with children under age three, randomly selected families received information and an offer for personalized support for their child care application.

In Germany, every child aged one year or older has a legal entitlement to early child care. However, the child care application process is very complex. In order to obtain a child care slot, parents must obtain information early, submit forms by the deadline, and attend appointments (e.g., to meet the child care managers in person). “This often poses particular challenges for lower-educated parents,” Frauke Peter of DZHW Hannover says. They more often lack important information about the application process. Henning Hermes of NHH Bergen explains: “It is therefore absolutely crucial that such barriers are reduced, for example by providing easy-to-understand information, so that all families have equal access to early child care.

The study was prepared by a team of researchers led by Philipp Lergetporer (ifo Institute and TU Munich), Henning Hermes (NHH Bergen, formerly Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz), Frauke Peter (DZHW Hannover), and Simon Wiederhold (Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt).