Why are childcare workers low paid? an analysis of pay in the UK childcare sector, 1994-2008

The thesis examines pay among British childcare workers from 1994 to 2008. It uses childcare as an example of female care occupations and selects the UK as a case study because in recent years childcare services have expanded substantially. As childcare provision has become increasingly formal, the issue of the rewards attached to this type of work has become more pressing. The thesis asks why childcare workers in the UK have traditionally received low pay and to what extent they continue to do so. It explores the changes in childcare policy that have taken place since the mid-1990s in order to understand whether Government’s increased commitment to childcare services has resulted in an improvement in workers’ pay. The thesis develops a multi-layered analysis. First, based on a review of policy documents and secondary sources, the thesis examines British childcare policy and identifies the challenges to higher pay in the sector. Second, the thesis investigates changes in the characteristics and pay of the childcare workforce between 1994 and 2008 by using data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and from the Early Years and Childcare Providers survey. Finally, cultural assumptions about caring motivations and pay are explored on the basis of data from the LFS as well as findings from interviews with childcare workers. The thesis makes three main contributions. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods and a variety of information sources, it offers evidence on changes in the remuneration of British childcare workers, paying close attention to the way childcare policy, education policy and labour market institutions influence wage levels. Furthermore, drawing from the example of childcare in the UK, the thesis contributes to the wider debate on the undervaluation of women’s work by pointing to some of the institutional dynamics that account for low pay in the sector. Finally, the thesis highlights the direct labour market impact of a childcare and early education policies, thus exploring an important dimension of welfare state analysis

Gender typicality of occupational aspirations among immigrant and native youth: the role of gender ideology, educational aspirations, and work values

The gender typicality of adolescents' occupational aspirations helps sustain occupational segregation, ultimately contributing to maintain gender stratification. According to sociological and psychological perspectives, adolescents develop occupational aspirations by drawing on their gender beliefs and work-related values. Yet few empirical studies have examined the contribution of these value orientations specifically to the gender typicality of occupational aspirations. Moreover, although children from immigrant backgrounds make up an ever-increasing share of school-age students, there is scant evidence on the gender typicality of their occupational aspirations relative to those of their majority peers. This study investigates variations in the gender typicality of occupational aspirations among adolescents from immigrant and non-immigrant backgrounds at around age 16. It also explores how the gender typicality of different groups' aspired occupations relates to differences in gender ideologies, in educational aspirations, and in the importance attributed to three work values: the possibility to earn high income, to help others, and to think and solve problems. Drawing on a harmonized survey from England, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, the analysis uses a sample of 8,574 adolescents, including 1,510 girls and 1,336 boys from immigrant backgrounds. Multinomial logistic regressions estimated the associations with aspired occupations, classified as masculine, integrated, feminine or ultrafeminine based on the proportion of women working in them. Results indicate that boys and girls of immigrant origin aspired to somewhat less gender-typical occupations than their majority peers. Among girls, these differences would be even larger if they were not suppressed by the more traditional gender ideologies held by girls from immigrant backgrounds. In terms of mediating mechanisms, our findings suggest that more ambitious educational aspirations may partly explain these differences. These findings indicate that distinguishing between multiple dimensions of adolescents' work-related values hint at different underlying mechanisms in the formation of adolescents' occupational aspirations

The Impact of Complex Family Structure on Child Well‐being: Evidence From Siblings

Evidence from the United Kingdom Millennium Cohort on children at ages 3 and 5 with older siblings addresses the questions of whether those living with both biological parents and only full siblings have better emotional and behavior outcomes than other children, and whether nonfull siblings affect children's outcomes independently of parents' partnership status. Adjusting for measured family circumstances and resources in cross?sectional regressions accounted for much of the adverse association of family complexity with child outcomes. Controlling for unobserved family and child fixed effects did not, however, attenuate all estimates further. Fixed unobservable factors appeared to be masking underlying associations. Allowing for them intensified some, albeit modest, estimates. These revealed excess externalizing behavior problems for boys with single or stepparents but only full siblings. For girls with single mothers, the chances of internalizing problems were raised. Whether siblings were full or not made little difference to outcomes in general

The peer composition of pre-school settings in England, and early recorded attainment among low-income children

Evidence suggests that early education can promote children’s development and narrow attainment gaps between those from lower-income and higher-income families. However, realisation of these potential benefits depends on many factors, feasibly including peer composition. We use national census data for a year-group cohort of children in England in 2011, to answer two questions: how are low-income children distributed across pre-schools; and what is the relationship between the proportion of low-income peers in a low-income child’s setting and these children’s subsequent recorded educational attainment? In contrast to many European countries and to the United States, we find that the majority of low-income children attend mixed settings. We find little evidence for associations between the proportion of low-income peers and low-income children’s subsequent early attainment. We suggest that this may be due to an arguably optimal distribution across settings, where the funding and provision context of 2011 facilitated a lack of clustering of low-income children

Inequalities in the experience of early education in England: access, peer groups and transitions

This paper summarises the output of a Nuffield-funded research project exploring inequalities in three aspects of children’s experience in early education in England. The main focus of the project was on ‘peer effects’ in pre-school settings: we examine the extent of clustering by income and language background and explore associations between pre-school peer group and children’s outcomes in early primary school. The report also presents findings on access to the full duration of the free entitlement to early education, and on variation in children’s experience of the transition onward to reception class. We find much lower levels of clustering in pre-schools in England than have been identified in studies for the US, particularly by income, and little evidence that pre-school peer group is related to early school attainment as assessed by teachers in reception and Year 2. But we identify significant levels of non-take-up of the full entitlement, particularly among disadvantaged groups. A higher prevalence in the local authority of some types of pre-school appears to make a difference: more voluntary sector or Sure Start provision is associated with higher take-up, while more Sure Start provision is further associated with lower inequalities in access between different groups. We also find disparities in the stability of transitions to reception class. In the cohort we examine, children from lowincome backgrounds and some minority ethnic groups are much more likely to experience the most secure transition – from a school nursery class to a reception class in the same school, with high numbers of known peers – because they are more likely to be in school nurseries to begin with. But among those attending school nurseries, some groups, including Black Caribbean children and those with a statement of special educational needs, are significantly less likely than others to continue to reception in that school. The disparity is of potential concern given wider disadvantages facing these groups of children

“Universal” early education: who benefits? Patterns in take-up of the entitlement to free early education among three-year-olds in England

For over a decade, all three-year-olds in England have been entitled to a free part-time early education place. One aim of this policy is to close developmental gaps between higher-income and low-income children. However, the success of the initiative depends on children accessing the places. Using the National Pupil Database, we examine all autumn-born four-year-olds attending in January 2011, and ask whether they started attending when first eligible, in January 2010. One in five children did not access their free place from the beginning, and the proportion is much higher among children from families with persistently low incomes. We also find differences by ethnicity and home language, but these factors explain only a small share of the income gradient. We go on to explore associations between non-take-up and local area factors. In areas with higher child poverty rates, take-up is lower overall, but the gap between low-income and other families smaller. There are also various associations between take-up and local proportions of different provider types (maintained, private, voluntary, Sure Start). In particular, the voluntary sector seems to have more flexibility than maintained provision to offer places in January and more success than private providers in reaching children from lower-income backgrounds. The analysis also highlights how take-up overall is relatively high and the gap by income-level is smaller in areas with more Sure Start provision. This suggests aspects of Sure Start facilitated access among low-income families, and could perhaps be replicated as implementation of the free entitlement continues to be expanded

Should Mama or Papa Work? Variations in Attitudes towards Parental Employment by Country of Origin and Child Age

Employment among mothers has been rising in recent decades, although mothers of young children often work fewer hours than other women do. Parallel to this trend, approval of maternal employment has increased, albeit not evenly across groups. However, differences in attitudes remain unexplored despite their importance for better understanding mothers' labour market behaviour. Meanwhile, the employment of fathers has remained stable and attitudes towards paternal employment do not differ as much as attitudes towards maternal employment do between socio-economic groups. This paper examines attitudes towards maternal and paternal employment. It focuses on Germany, drawing on data from the German Family Demography Panel Study (FReDA). The survey explicitly asks whether mothers and fathers should be in paid work, work part-time or full-time, presenting respondents with fictional family profiles that vary the youngest child's age. Unlike previous studies, the analysis compares the views of respondents with different origins: West Germany, East Germany, immigrants from different world regions, and second-generation migrants in West Germany. The results highlight remarkable differences between respondents from West and East Germany, with the former group displaying strong approval for part-time employment among mothers and fathers of very young children and the latter group reporting higher approval for full-time employment. Immigrant groups are far from homogenous, holding different attitudes depending on their region of origin. Taken together, the results offer a nuanced picture of attitudes towards maternal and paternal employment. We discuss these findings in relation to labour markets participation in Germany

Does Residential Mobility Affect Child Development at Age Five? A Comparative Study of Children Born in US and UK Cities

Residential mobility is a normal feature of family life but thought to be a source of disruption to a child's development. Mobility may have its own direct consequences or reflect families' capabilities and vulnerabilities. This article examines the association between changes of residence and verbal and behavioral scores of children aged 5, contributing to the literature in three ways. First, it compares two countries, by drawing on the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study in the United States (N = up to 1,820) and an urban subsample of the U.K. Millennium Cohort study (N = up to 7,967). Second, beside taking into account an extensive range of demographic characteristics, it applies inverse probability weights to minimize observable selection bias associated with residential mobility and further controls for a wide range of family changes that often co-occur with moves. Third, the article adds to extant research on residential mobility by incorporating the type of locality from and into which families move. Individual-level longitudinal data are linked to objective measures of neighborhood socioeconomic status to gauge the quality of moves families make. Results show that residential moves are not inevitably deleterious to children. In both countries the poorer outcomes of some moves result not from moving per se but rather from the context in which they occur

Developing Better Measures of Neighbourhood Characteristics and Change for Use in Studies of Residential Mobility: A Case Study of Britain in the Early 2000s

This paper addresses the problem of measuring neighbourhood characteristics and change when working with individual level datasets to understand the effects of residential mobility. Currently available measures in Britain are in various respects unsuitable for this purpose. The paper explores a new indicator of small area poverty: the Unadjusted Means-tested Benefits Rate (UMBR), which divides claimants of means-tested benefits in a small area by the number of households. We describe changes in area poverty between 2001 and 2006, using UMBR. As often assumed, these are generally negligible, but small areas in “disadvantaged urban“ and “multicultural city life“ communities did change considerably in this period. We also link UMBR to the first three waves of the UK Millennium Cohort Study, a survey of families with children born at the beginning of the 2000s. We examine opinions about neighbourhood and find that parents living in areas of higher poverty did tend to express more negative views than those living elsewhere. Living in high poverty areas was also associated with moving home, and those families who retrospectively gave neighbourhood considerations as reasons for moving did move into areas with markedly lower poverty rates. Finally, we compare families' moving trajectories to trends in poverty within areas. We are able to show that a large proportion of families who moved to poorer neighbourhoods were at double disadvantage, as they often moved to areas with increasing poverty rates. We conclude that UMBR can be used to enhance understanding of changing neighbourhood contexts in cohort studies, at least for this period, although it still suffers from the same conceptual and technical difficulties as other available alternatives in terms of its ability to capture aspects of neighbourhood quality

Developing Better Measures of Neighbourhood Characteristics and Change for Use in Studies of Residential Mobility: A Case Study of Britain in the Early 2000s

This paper addresses the problem of measuring neighbourhood characteristics and change when working with individual level datasets to understand the effects of residential mobility. Currently available measures in Britain are in various respects unsuitable for this purpose. The paper explores a new indicator of small area poverty: the Unadjusted Means-tested Benefits Rate (UMBR), which divides claimants of means-tested benefits in a small area by the number of households. We describe changes in area poverty between 2001 and 2006, using UMBR. As often assumed, these are generally negligible, but small areas in “disadvantaged urban“ and “multicultural city life“ communities did change considerably in this period. We also link UMBR to the first three waves of the UK Millennium Cohort Study, a survey of families with children born at the beginning of the 2000s. We examine opinions about neighbourhood and find that parents living in areas of higher poverty did tend to express more negative views than those living elsewhere. Living in high poverty areas was also associated with moving home, and those families who retrospectively gave neighbourhood considerations as reasons for moving did move into areas with markedly lower poverty rates. Finally, we compare families' moving trajectories to trends in poverty within areas. We are able to show that a large proportion of families who moved to poorer neighbourhoods were at double disadvantage, as they often moved to areas with increasing poverty rates. We conclude that UMBR can be used to enhance understanding of changing neighbourhood contexts in cohort studies, at least for this period, although it still suffers from the same conceptual and technical difficulties as other available alternatives in terms of its ability to capture aspects of neighbourhood quality