Expanding daycare for children in Hungary

This project aimed at assessing the increase in daycare capacities for children aged below 4 between 2007 and 2011, using EU funding. We compared the regional distribution of accepted and rejected grant proposals with non-participating municipalities to identify the potential impact of increased capacities on maternal labour supply and equal opportunities in education.

In our estimate, new daycare places reduced the shortage of capacities by around 9% and the spacial allocation of new places was likely to contribute especially to improving female labour supply, rather than access to early childhood development. Incentives for small villages to submit joint proposals would help in achieving a balance between these two goals.