Wiesbaden (epd). According to a study, socially disadvantaged children have significantly lower chances of a place in a day care center than children from better-off families. According to a study by the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB) presented in Wiesbaden on Friday, little has changed in this regard ten years after the introduction of the legal entitlement to a daycare place after the age of one. The data on day-care center use by around 96,000 boys and girls was analyzed. Affected are therefore children from educationally disadvantaged families, from circumstances at risk of poverty and from households in which no German is spoken. The Institute recommends further reducing barriers to early childhood education for these children.
In 2020, only about every fourth child under three years of age at risk of poverty (23 percent) had a place in a day care center, while the number was twice as many for families from non-precarious backgrounds (46 percent). The childcare requirements of poorer families are not met in around 17 percent of cases, and in the case of richer families, daycare centers only fail to meet one in ten childcare requirements.
A similar pattern can be seen in families with a migration background. Of all children who mainly speak German at home, 38 percent attend a day-care center. In contrast, among boys and girls whose families do not speak German, the figure is only 24 percent. “Families who do not speak German at home express a desire for a daycare place just as often as other families. Nevertheless, these children go to a daycare center much less frequently before the age of three,” said Sophia Schmitz, co-author of the study.
The Federal Institute for Population Research calls for families to be given low-threshold information about the advantages of attending a daycare center early and for parents to be supported in their search for childcare places. Another day care center expansion is also necessary.
