News Archive
BI proposal on child care vouchers misinterpreted in recent press coverage
13/03/2010 | News
Some of the proposals of a BI paper on day care services for children have been misinterpreted by a recent article of Magyar Nemzet (local daily newspaper) and in the news programme of Duna television.
A BI paper published in November 2009 examined the potential impact of increasing the provision of day care services for children aged 1-3 in Hungary.
In particular, the paper identified the shortages and the geographical distribution of potential gains (mostly related to labour market conditions and the composition of the female labour force) and variations in costs depending on settlement size and location. It also outlined options for securing the necessary funding and motivating municipalities to increase day care provision and also deliver high quality service.
The paper identified the increase of parental contributions as one of the potential sources of financing. This could take the form of converting the third year of the flat rate maternity leave benefit into a child-care voucher. Mothers with children aged under 2 would continue to receive the cash benefit, but could also use it to pay parental contribution in a nursery.
Current state subsidies for nurseries and day care centres would remain in place, but we would recommend a uniform baseline subsidy for all types of day care and extra support depending on the quality of service. The current system favours municipal nurseries over private providers and nurseries over day care centres. The quality of child care services is guaranteed by an accreditation system, while the regular monitoring of service quality is weak.
For more detail, please see the related project.
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