Research shows both long-term gains for children who attend preschool and women who need support to take up jobs

Childcare is important but quality and quantity decide who benefits mostTorsten Bell

Research shows both long-term gains for children who attend preschool and women who need support to take up jobs

Rising female employment requires more childcare. Photograph: Hollandse Hoogte/Rex/Shutterstock

Sun 8 Jan 2023 09.30 GMT

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Childcare is back in the news, thanks to Liz Truss lamenting Rishi Sunak’s decision to dump her childcare proposals – including the scrapping of staff-child ratios for nurseries. But there are deeper reasons for childcare’s increasing role in our policy debates. Rising female employment requires more childcare and a Conservative party nervous about relying on older voters occasionally turns to a childcare policy offer for the squeezed middle aged. After all, subsidising childcare is more manageable than buying every angry millennial a house.Research supports the idea that a focus on childcare can deliver dividends. A new paper examines what happened to 4,000 four-year-olds in Boston, Massachusetts, where a lottery determined who got a publicly funded preschool place at the turn of the millennium. Comparing those who did/didn’t get in, researchers find lasting impacts: those attending were more likely to graduate from high school and 18% more likely to immediately enrol at university, driven by improved behavioural outcomes, not better test results. It’s boys who mainly benefit, which matters when far fewer men than women have been going to university since the mid-1990s.But this preschool was publicly provided, with more highly qualified staff than we require in the UK. If we want better outcomes for kids, the quality matters. But if what we’re after is higher employment rates for mothers, higher volume, not quality childcare, might be the priority. A German study shows that proactively supporting poorer mothers to apply for childcare places helps overcome low take-up and boosts maternal employment.So politicians should focus on childcare, but also decide what the goal is: better outcomes for children, higher employment for women or cheaper childcare for those already working?