Childcare in the Netherlands

Thomas Emery , Erasmus University Rotterdam

This paper describes how childcare behaviors vary across the population following the introduction of subsidized private childcare in the Netherlands. Existing research has identified a large socioeconomic gradient in childcare across Europe which is not wholly explained by cost and access. Scholars have speculated that this is due to an incomplete revolution, normative inertia, and the failure of lower-income households to adopt gender-equal behaviors and utilize private childcare (Esping-Andersen, 2009). These theories of value diffusion suggest that the use of formal childcare spread across networks (Aassve, Billari, and Pessin, 2016). Given that the use of formal childcare represents a complex behaviour with multiple facets and dependencies, this paper conceptualizes this diffusion process through a complex contagion process by which individuals only use formal childcare if a sufficient number and diversity of peers do so (Centola & Macy, 2007). Using detailed administrative data covering 10 years and 3.5 million children, this analysis uses multi-channel sequence analysis to illustrate that childcare strategies differ markedly between socio-economic groups and that this gradient has persisted over time despite overall increases in the use of formal childcare. Furthermore, using high-resolution administrative network data, the complex contagion hypothesis is tested. The results show that parents are more likely to opt for a specific childcare strategy when multiple, diverse peers in their network have already done so. The results suggest that social investment policies success are highly dependent on normative diffusion and that this process explains existing trends in policy uptake and concerns over a Matthew effect.

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 Presented in Session 89. Childcare