More extravagant claims are being made for the benefits of child-care. For example, at a recent conference 
organised by pro-child care organisation, Start Strong, Fergus Finlay of Bernardos said Sweden’s comprehensive child-care system was responsible for its strong economy.
Writing in The Irish Independent today, we have economist Stephen Kinsella citing an unnamed OECD report which says there is a connection between early child-care and reduced crime, and between child-care and a greater rate of participation in the workplace.
So, if we invest in a universal system of child-care we’ll have a stronger economy, reduced crime and more people in the workplace. It is truly the magic bullet.
Some of the claims I can believe. If there are more people in the workplace, this would probably lead to a stronger economy, although the claim made by Finlay is different from this. He seemed to be saying that early child-care benefits children educationally, and this in turn has made the Swedish economy strong.
I can believe it could reduce crime and obviously that it would lead to more people going to work.
But none of these claims mean we must have a very expensive universal child-care system. There are several reasons for this.
One is that the benefits of such a system to the whole population are much less than the benefits of child-care targeted specifically at children from very disadvantaged areas.
When studies show that children benefits educationally from being placed in child-care at very young ages, those children are from highly disadvantaged backgrounds. See this study [1], for example, which is cited by Start Strong itself.
Therefore, claims that all children will benefit in terms of their education are very wide of the mark.
This means the claim that the economy will benefit are also overblown. It will benefit somewhat, but it can have the benefits with a targeted scheme, not a universal one.
It should also be pointed out that if the Swedish economy is strong right now it is not due to universal childcare, but because it introduced economic reforms in the 1990s.
Finally, a system of universal child-care because it is so expensive, means taxes must go up, and as taxes go up, it becomes harder for a family to live on one income meaning both parents have to work and the choice is removed to have one staying at home to raise the children. This is anti-choice.
Perhaps labour force participation goes up due to universal day-care and but perhaps some of those taking up paid employment are forced to do so by the very cost of such a system to the tax-payer.
As usual, Sweden is being touted as the model. It will also lead to greater sexual equality, we are told. But despite universal day-care, many Swedish women still work part-time and the gender pay gap is almost identical to our own at 16pc.