Book review: Childcare, Early Education and Social Inequality. An International Perspective
| DOI | 10.1177/1388262718798216 |
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| Author | Wim Van Lancker |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Hans-Peter Blossfeld, Nevena Kulic, Jan Skopek and Moris Triventi (eds.) (2017), Childcare, Early
Education and Social Inequality. An International Perspective, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing,
331 pages, ISBN 978-1-78643-208-7.
Reviewed by: Wim Van Lancker, Centre for Sociological Research (CESO), KU Leuven, Belgium
DOI: 10.1177/1388262718798216
In Europe, and in the European Union’s governing bodies in particular, the provision of high-
quality childcare services for young children is considered to be a lynchpin of the social investment
strategy. The core idea underlying social investment is that social policy should no longer focus on
‘passively’ protecting people against the perils of the market by means of cash benefits, but should
instead prepare or ‘empower’ people with a view to integrating them maximally into the market.
Labour market integration is regarded not only as a superior way of achieving income protection
and social inclusion at the individual level, but also as an indispensable feature of ‘productive’
social policy systems, as higher employment levels decrease benefit dependency and contribute to
sound public finances, and hence to the future sustainability of the welfare state. The principal
method for achieving this ideal of social inclusion through labour market participation is long-term
investment in human capital, beginning in early life. This ought to ensure productivity improve-
ments for future generations and bestow the necessary skills upon individuals in order for them to
be able to grasp the opportunities that present themselves in a knowledge economy and, ultimately,
to break the intergenerational chain of poverty.
In this respect, children and childhood are key to any successful investment strategy, not only
because the sustainability of the welfare state hinges on the number and productivity of future
taxpayers, but also because inequalities in childhood pose a real threat to the accumulation of
human capital and are the root cause of unequal opportunities in the labour market and in later life.
The idea is that childcare services not only help to achieve social inclusion through the labour
market, by allowing mothers of young children to engage in paid employment and balance their
work and family duties, but also further the accumulation of human capital of children by pro-
viding them with a high-quality and stimulating environment. Both dimensions should be partic-
ularly beneficial for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, since their parents are often not at
work and they are most likely to gain from human capital increases. Yet, such optimism might be
ill-advised for three interrelated reasons. First, it is important that disadvantaged children are
actually able to use these services. Second, if they do, the extent to which these services are
effective in raising their human capital more than their advantaged counterparts matters. Third,
the net effect depends on the quality of and the interaction with the home learning environment.
Given all this, the volume Childcare, Early education and Social Inequality. An International
Perspective, edited by Blossfeld, Kulic, Skopek and Triventi, is of particular interest for aca-
demics, social organisations and policymakers involved in the promotion of early years policies,
precisely because it focuses on all three aspects simultaneously. The book aims to understand the
diverging educational and labour market destinies of children. In doing so, it includes chapters on
13 countries and is subdivided into three parts, each part being devoted to one of the three aspects
identified above. First of all, inequality in the use of childcare arrangements is explored for Italy,
Russia, and Sweden. Second, parental and home care arrangements are examined in Germany and
Ireland. Finally, the majority of chapters are devoted to investigating the effectiveness of childcare
296 European Journal of Social Security 20(3)
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