Title: The French approach of childcare policy in a comparative perspective
1The French approach of childcare policyin a
comparative perspective
François Héran (INED, Paris), Marie-Thérèse
Letablier (CEE, Paris), Olivier Thévenon
(INED, Paris)
I N E D
- Czech Republic Conference for the Presidency of
EU - "Parental Child Care and Employment Policy"
- Session "Parental and non-parental childcare"
- Prague Congress Centre, 5-6th February,2009
2Two achievements of the French system
- The European diversity in demographic
behaviours and family policies is a fascinating
laboratory for social sciences, France
representing a special case - Total fertility rate around the replacement level
- 2.02 in 2008 (around 2.10 in tempo-adjusted
measure) - births to foreign mothers account only for 0.1 in
this rate - Quality of the childcare provision
(availability, affordability, quality, child
wellbeing) - ranking recently released by the UNICEF Innocenti
Research Centre France mark 8, with Denmark,
Finland and Norway, behind Sweden (10) and
Iceland (9) - could improve the child-to-staff ratio in the
pre-schools
3Total fertility rate in France since 30 years
4France 1980-2005 the limited impact of
immigration on the national fertility rate
(foreign mothers 8 of the mothers only)(F.
Héran, L. Toulemon, Population societies, 432,
March 2007)
5Public spending on family branch, of GDP,
2005(OECD Family Database)
Cash
Services
Tax cuts
FR UK SW H FI NO AUS IR CZ CY PT
RO IT JP ES PO GR MX KO
LU DK BE DE IS AT NZ NL SK SV EE
CH LV US LT CA BU MT
6French policy for family support a combination
of approaches (1)
- "Familialism"
- Support to large families, specific measuresfrom
the 3rd child onwards - "Universalism" reduce social/gender
inequalities - Alleviating the cost of children for parents
- Reconciliation Work/Family life
- Childcare services designed to meet the need for
full time childcare, in order to facilitate full
time work - Universal access of the children to early school,
considered as an element of the child wellbeing
7French policy for family support a combination
of approaches (2)
- The compromise between "familistic" and
"feministic" views "Freedom of choice" - included in the labels of the benefits provisions
- "complément de libre choix du mode de garde"
- "complément du libre choix d'activité")
- Gives choice between care and work
- Gives choice between types of childcare
- not a sharp dilemma between individual and
collective solutions but a range of intermediary
solutions (e.g. childminders with 3 children in
the close neighbourhood)
8French policy for family support a combination
of approaches (3)
- Macro-considerations? Frequently mentioned in
official statements - "Demographic challenge", "social contract between
generations" - Fertility rate at the "replacement level"
- seen as a positive by-product
- but also considered as an objective per se
- Implicit allusions in the public debate to a
preference for self-reproduction (instead of a
reproduction mainly fed by immigration)
9Family benefits in France (1)
10Family benefits in France (2)
11July 2006 reform of the "free-choice
complement"
- Gives the opportunity for a shorter but better
paid parental leave from the 3rd child - Either 3 years with 354
- Or 1 year with 578
- (monthly, in addition to the basic
allowance) - Two objectives
- to give more choice to the parents
- to reduce the negative impact of a long
interruption on career development
12Recent moves towards public/private partnerships
- 2002 "Integrated service benefit"
- Childcare centres subsidized by the Family
allowances Fund if they apply national rules
about fees - fees should not exceed 12 of household income
for 1 child and 10 for 2 children - Incentives to expand the opening hours
- 4-year covenants with municipalities, firms,
hospitals to promote childcare services - 4500 agreements signed
- Tax cuts for the companies to stimulate the
supply of childcare
13Childcare facilities how to cope with the
success?
- Childcare facilities have grown over the last 3
decades ( 47 000) - 1998 217 000
- 2006 264 000
- but less than the absolute increase in the number
of births ( 61 000) - 1998 769 000
- 2006 830 000
14A basic pillar of the French system the
pre-elementary school
- Pre-elementary school ("école maternelle")
created in 1881, taken up by the families in the
70's, mainly run by the municipalities - 98 of the children at age 3,
- 22 to 35 at age 2 (insufficient supply)
- Same body of teachers as in primary schools
- Additional childcare for working parents
- at lunch times, before/after school hours, on
Wednesday, during holidays - offered by the municipalities very uneven
- Free of charge gt strong competitive advantage
over the private sector
15Impact of the pre-elementary school
- Positive impact on the children
- Improves school performances, esp. in low income
families (but few studies so far) - Positive impact on the mothers (Maurin-Goux
2009) - Increases their participation in the LF, esp. in
low income or one-parent families - Social acceptance
- In spite of strong oppositions in the 50's
- No more discussion about "unworthy mothers"
- Rare example of an institution diffusing
bottom-up along the social scale
16Public cost of the various forms of childcare in
France (Adema Thévenon 2008) Monthly spending
per child enrolled at full time
17A major issue "Choice" and inequalities
- "Choice" is highly economically and socially
stratified - Gender / Social / Local inequalities (poor
municipalities) - (Bressé Galtier 2006, Accounting Court
2008, Adhéma Thévenon 2008) - Example 1. The less expensive solution
- for parents with income equivalent to Minimum
wage - childcare centre
- for dual earner families with 6 times the Minimum
wage - home-based "maternal assistant"
- Example 2.
- 56 of children of low income families benefit
from paid/subsidised care solution - 91 in high income families (upper quintile)
18"Preference" the final word?
- See Hakim 2000
- From the point of view of social science,
"preferences" are not primary realities, "fallen
from the sky" - Preferences (tastes, choices, values, intentions,
etc.) have themselves to be explained
("endo-geneized") (e.g. through a logistic
regression) - For example
- During centuries, a large fraction of peasants
"preferred" not to send their children to school - still in the 70's, the working classes
"preferred" shortened secondary education
19"Individual preference" the final word?
- Many existential "choices" are not real choices,
or very few (huge litterature) - choice of spouse or partner
- residential choices (inheritance, housing market,
etc.) - dropping or prolonging studies
- choice of a discipline, of an occupation
- baby boom in France ¼ of the births were not
desired - Choices, preferences, tastes depend also from the
choices of the other (social interaction,
influence, opinion of the parents, of the
neighbourhoods) - including in fertility choices (H.-P. Kohler)
20Neither "pure choice" nor "alienated choice"
- Two pitfalls about the theory of choice
- The theory of "Alienated choice" paves the way
to sociologism and totalitarism - The theory of purely free or natural choice
consecrates social inequalities into "natural"
hierarchies - For a pragmatic and consensual policy, we need
- 1/ to give more choices to the actors
- not only a sharp dilemma between individual and
collective solutions, but a wide range of
flexible and intermediate solutions - 2/ to identify the factors (assets or obstacles)
that shape the probabilities of making the
different choices - utility of scientific research