Brief analysis 17: What is the cost of achieving the Barcelona target in childcare?

The importance of childcare and early childhood education is clearly underlined by the results of labor market and educational research. This concerns both the compatibility of work and family life, as well as the educational outcomes of children and future pupils.

Especially in an international comparison, it is clear that Austria performs below average in terms of spending on early childhood education. In 2018, for example, public spending amounted to 0.6% of GDP and was therefore below the EU-27 average of 0.65%. Across Europe, Austria ranks 20th in EcoAustria's scoreboard indicator for childcare.

In order to identify possible catch-up potential, this brief analysis by the economic research institute EcoAustria looks at two possible scenarios for the expansion of childcare:

1. Increasing the childcare rate for children under the age of three to the so-called Barcelona target of 33% throughout Austria.
2. Increasing the proportion of three- to five-year-olds cared for in facilities with VIF-compliant opening hours to 75%.

The result
According to the cost estimates, the additional costs resulting from the expansion of childcare amount to just over 270 million euros. In terms of distribution, this means additional costs of around 190 million euros for the first expansion scenario, the expansion of infant care to 33%. In the second expansion scenario, the care of 75% of three to five-year-old children in facilities with VIF-compliant opening hours, around 90 million euros. The additional personnel requirement is estimated at around 5,050 childcare staff or 4,270 full-time equivalents.

Taking into account that additional expenditure was estimated "conservatively" in the course of this analysis, both scenarios represent effective and relatively inexpensive variants of the expansion of childcare in Austria.

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