On Wednesday last week, the legislature finished deliberating the Special Act on the Forward-Looking Infrastructure Development Program (前瞻基礎建設特別條例) and passed it into law. Apart from the construction projects proposed in the original draft, such as railways and “green” energy development, the Democratic Progressive Party proposed an amendment calling for “friendly childcare spaces in response to the falling birth rate.”
At last, a solution is being offered for problems such as parents having to draw lots for spots at public childcare centers and joining long wait lists for public kindergartens, which make it harder to get into a preschool than a university. The government can no longer use “fiscal difficulties” as an excuse for refusing to build public childcare facilities.
Now that the law has been passed, the government should quickly take the following steps:
First, while there are more than 2,000 public kindergartens in the nation, funds from the infrastructure program should be used to increase classes for two-year-olds.
Parents who have taken part in drawing lots for spots at public kindergartens know that they mostly offer classes for children aged four and five. As the system prioritizes admission for older children, those aged two and three are simply consigned to waiting lists.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has said he wants all public kindergartens in the city to add a class specifically for two-year-olds. However, it is not enough for the narrow gate to kindergartens to be widened only in the privileged capital.
As a priority, the infrastructure program’s funding for “friendly childcare spaces” should be used for government-run nonprofit kindergartens across the nation to cover the cost of adding space and equipment for classes for two-year-olds, which is the age group for which there is the widest gap between demand and supply.
Second, the program should provide small-scale community public and nonprofit infant daycare centers that could be formed by reorganizing existing public and private infant childcare centers to improve them with regard to scale, quality and work conditions.
The movement advocating more public childcare attaches importance to the ratio between public and private service providers, and calls for a balanced market share between public and privately run childcare. The government should not give free rein to for-profit providers or allow excessive marketization.
Growing public provision means that kindergartens for two to six-year-olds are approaching a ratio of 40 percent public and 60 percent private, but up until now the ratio for children younger than three has been stuck at one to nine. Taiwan’s progress in this respect lags far behind that of other nations.
More than 10 years ago, the EU called on its member states to provide childcare to at least 33 percent of children younger than three. Germany’s childcare provision for the demographic has increased from 13.6 percent 10 years ago to 32.3 percent today.
These countries know that only large-scale provision of public childcare services can save parents from having to struggle between drawing lots, joining waiting lists, quitting their jobs and delaying employment.
In contrast, Taiwan provides childcare services for just 10 percent of children younger than three, which is far behind most advanced nations. As a priority, resources made available by the infrastructure program should be used to relieve this hardship of young families.
Third, the government should conduct a general survey on demand for childcare from families in all rural and urban areas.
Accessibility is the top consideration in baby and child care. That is why the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare conducts annual surveys on the number of children waiting for admission to childcare centers. The survey reaches all rural and urban areas, and is used to calculate changes in demand from year to year. This data is then used as a basis for adjusting policies and resource distribution to ensure that public resources are invested in the most appropriate places.
This kind of groundwork has also been going on for many years in Western countries with advanced childcare provision, such as Sweden and Denmark.
However, Taiwan still has no such precise surveys, which makes it hard to effectively allocate resources to public kindergartens and public and nonprofit childcare centers for two to three-year-olds.
Of course, the lack of public childcare facilities is not the only reason for the low birth rate, but the infrastructure program’s construction funds cannot solve problems such as the low salaries paid to young people; poor work conditions and long work hours; unequal share of household responsibilities between men and women; and women’s view of marriage and childbearing.
However, public childcare construction is something that the program can do something about. Experts long ago pointed out that the reason some nations have experienced falling birth rates in the course of their development — as has been seen in East Asia — while some maintain reasonable birth rates — as seen in western and northern Europe — is that the latter countries have worked out systems that make women’s labor participation and having children compatible. In countries that have not developed systems that make these things compatible, people give up on having children for the sake of their careers.
Public childcare is a key policy for maintaining a balance between work and family, and Taiwan cannot wait for it any longer.
Wang Chao-ching is a spokesman for the Childcare Policy Alliance.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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