More than one in seven children under the age of three cannot find a daycare place, shows a new study by the German Economic Institute (IW). The situation is not the same everywhere: While there is still a great shortage in the West, the East has to reduce the number of places in the future.
For more than ten years, children from the age of one have had a legal right to a childcare place. But politicians are still not able to meet the requirement: in spring 2024, there was no place nationwide for 306,000 children under the age of three who needed care. This is shown by IW calculations based on data from the Federal Statistical Office and the Family Ministry.
Supply situation is best in the east
The situation is particularly bad in West Germany: in Bremen there is no place for almost one in four children (23.9 percent), in North Rhine-Westphalia the proportion has risen to 18.6 percent of children under three. It’s different in the east, where only 7.6 percent of children don’t have a childcare place. In the frontrunner Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania it is only 3.9 percent. However, the situation there is different: Compared to 2016, births in the new federal states fell by 25 percent (West: 9.6 percent). In the coming years there could even be an oversupply there.
Demand in the West remains high
“Politicians in the East must already think about reducing the amount of care available,” says IW education expert Wido Geis-Thöne. In the West, however, demand is likely to remain high for the foreseeable future; the states and municipalities there must significantly accelerate expansion. “The lack of daycare places is a political indictment. The compatibility of family and work is still severely restricted in large parts of the Federal Republic.”
