This research project focuses on the intertwined topics of the rise of the social investment paradigm and education inequality in the early years. In particular, the research aims to analyse ssess the impact of existing barriers to universal childcare coverage in the Autonomous Province of Trentino, in northern Italy.
The term ‘social investment paradigm’ broadly refers to the rise and consolidation, since the mid-1990s, of a new cluster of social policy principles and prescriptions, aimed at responding to challenges of stagnating growth as well as to the emergence of the so-called ‘new risks’ of demographic imbalances, changing family structure and gender roles, socio-economic globalization, and the post-industrial turn from manufacturing to service economies. The core assumption of social investment is that welfare states must shift their focus towards activation policies, capable of maximizing citizens’ potential for participation into the labor market. Aligned with these stated intentions, the social investment model regards human capital investment as an essential to (i) decrease inequalities in educational opportunities, and (ii) ensure the affordability of social expenditures. In this context, early childhood education and care (ECEC) has risen to a new strategic role. Within what has been called the ‘childcare strategy’, stronger ECEC has become regarded as both a direct investment in the human capital of younger generations, and as an effective tool to reconcile family and working life, creating the conditions for young mothers to promptly re-enter (or not withdraw from) the labor market.

Over the last two decades, the childcare strategy discourse has become dominant across European countries, as well as a guiding principle of the European Union’s (EU) social policy. In 2002, the EU Barcelona targets on participation in childcare were launched, as part of the Employment Strategy. Member States agreed on the common goal of expanding childcare participation to 33 % of children in the 0-3 age group.

Since the mid-1990s, Italy has followed the pattern of childcare expansion sponsored by the EU, to mixed results. Both access to services and their quality have remained uneven across Regions, and dramatically polarized along the North-South divide.

Among the “leading” Regions, the Autonomous Province of Trento (APT) represents a paradigmatic case of expanded ECEC coverage under a social investment model. A traditionally social-catholic area, with an lagging ECEC participation rate close to 10% by the late 1990s, the APT has seen its number of day-care centers increase threefold over the 1998-2015 period. As a result of the expansion in the offer of services, the overall participation in ECEC has also seen a significant rise, reaching a 25% rate by the year 2014, - and rates above 30% in its main urban centers. Additionally, new legislation has been introduced to progressively increase the minimum qualification for staff employed within ECEC services – implying a major shift for a sector that had been historically associated with a low-educated and almost exclusively female labor force.

Parallel to the increase in overall ECEC services and participation rates, questions have been risen with regards to its distributional outcomes. Who are the actual beneficiaries of this expansion in ECEC offer? The research aims to uncover and assess potential barriers to childcare participation by low-income households.

The specific frameworks that will be observed will be those relating to cost of provision, criteria for public subsidies repartition and tariff systems. Whether informed by child-centred investment motives or other types of social justice arguments, in order to be successful in decreasing inequality early years services should be accessible to children from disadvantaged backgrounds who are expected to gain the most benefits from the pre-school years.

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