Chapter 2: The Role of Early Childhood Education and Care in Current Welfare Regime Transformations

This chapter focusses on how early childhood education and care (ECEC) has been extended and configured in recent decades in advanced capitalistic countries. We will first set out the main societal benefits associated with public investment in ECEC and then discuss how neoliberalism and cutbacks in social services have coexisted with the expansion of ECEC as a social policy in recent years.

In particular, we will delve into the role of Social Investment as a policy framework that supports the expansion of ECEC in advanced capitalistic countries, and then we will highlight the challenges that ECEC faces in terms of universalisation and diversity of needs, areas in which social innovation (both citizen and institution-led) is playing an emergent and growing role.