Australian Children Growing Up with Opportunity

• Author: Guyonne Kalb
• Published date: 01 July 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8462.12232
• Date: 01 July 2017

Policy Forum: Public Investment in Disadvantaged Children

Australian Children Growing Up with Opportunity

Guyonne Kalb*

Abstract

This article focuses on the early years of

children in Australia. It discusses the inequal-

ity of opportunity as ref‌lected in the statistics

and the potential impacts of this inequality. A

brief literature review is provided regarding

the impact of formal childcare and preschool

attendance on child development, with a

specif‌ic focus on the impact for children from

disadvantaged families. The article concludes

with a discussion of possible policy directions

to counteract the inequality of opportunity.

1. Introduction

A key question in providing opportunity is how

society can create a more level playing f‌ield for all

children. Some children have many opportunities

provided to them in the environment in which

they are growing up, while other children may

have none and instead face many challenges. As a

result, by the time children enter compulsory

schooling a large gap can already be observed

between children with many opportunities

compared to the children facing many challenges.

This article presents recent developments in

formal childcare use and preschool attendance

by young children in Australia. In addition,

it describes the relative prevalence of use

amongst specif‌ic, disadvantaged subpopula-

tions. To assess the importance of formal

childcare and preschool use, a brief discussion

of the literature on the impacts of formal

childcare and preschool on child outcomes is

presented. Since the focus of this article is on

children growing up in disadvantaged circum-

stances, specif‌ic attention is paid to this

subpopulation in the review. The article then

combines these two pieces of information to

present a few policy considerations.

The article is structured as follows. Section 2

provides some background statistics on partici-

pation in childcare and preschool for different

groups of children. Evidence around the impact

of childcare and preschool on childrenis provided

in Section 3. A discussion of the implications for

Australia in Section 4 concludes the article.

2. Participation in Childcare and

Preschool in Australia

Overall participation in childcare and pre-

school services has been increasing steadily

* Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social

Research and ARC Centre of Excellence for Children

and Families over the Life Course, The University of

Melbourne, Victoria 3010 Australia, and Institute of Labor

Economics, Bonn 53113 Germany; email <g.kalb@

unimelb.edu.au>. This article draws on and is inspired

by presentations by Rosalyn Bell, Deborah Brennan and

Anne Kennedy at the Children, Education and Welfare

Workshop, which was held at the Melbourne Institute of

Applied Economic and Social Research on 15 Febru-

ary 2017. However, all errors, as well as opinions and

views expressed, are those of the author alone.

The Australian Economic Review, vol. 50, no. 3, pp. 329–37

°

C2017 The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research

Published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd