Universal entitlement, unequal provision: childcare in segregated German cities

One mechanism driving persistent inequalities in childcare provision, despite rising investments and a substantial expansion of childcare facilities, may consist in the locational choices of providers, who eschew poorer neighbourhoods. Our analysis is the first to combine georeferenced data on child daycare centres with socio-demographic information from fifty-two German cities and 2,607 neighbourhoods to test this proposition. The study explores the correlation between local access to daycare centres and the proportion of social benefit recipients in the respective neighbourhoods. Our results indicate that neighbourhoods with greater socio-demographic difficulties in German cities have fewer daycare centres. This is exclusively due to the expansion of (publicly subsidised) daycare centres run by non-profit providers in neighbourhoods that are socio-economically better off. While the subsidiary principle in German social law explains the pivotal role of non-profit providers, municipalities should compensate for unequal childcare provision; however, such compensatory provision remains weak. Overall, the unequal spatial provision may contribute to the socially stratified utilisation of childcare in Germany, despite extensive public funding.