Why childcare matters to us all

With the cost of childcare up 11 per cent in the past year the Government moved to address the issue last month at a roundtable meeting with childcare providers and unions. Jen Dalitz says that childcare is an important issue for all Australians.

Prime Minister Gillard’s rushed childcare summit earlier this month has put the spotlight back on the issue of affordable, quality care and why – like it or not – childcare is an issue for all. 

There is now wide acceptance that childcare involves a learning and socialising process that provides the vital first step to life-long learning, and that affordable quality care is key to optimising the productivity of Australia’s workforce. 

Yet, in my experience, many Australians simply don’t understand why it matters to them.  Here are some of the key issues relating to childcare, working women and the Australian economy in general.

Impact on a woman’s career
If you’re a taxpayer you should know that Australia ranks equal highest of all OECD countries in terms of the investment taxpayers make in educating our women and girls.  And yet:

• The Australian Bureau of Statistics has found that 70,000 Australian mums are locked out of the workforce solely because they cannot get affordable childcare.  The ABS says a further 13 per cent of mothers were either unavailable for work or unable to work more hours because there were no childcare places where they lived.
• 48% of women say the cost of childcare had negatively hit their career but not their partner’s career; while 71.6% of women said their partner’s career had not been held back at all.
• 46% of parents say the cost of childcare for their children under school age is too high relative to their income. 36% are considering leaving the workforce, while 26% have already reduced their hours of work because of the high cost of care for children under school age.  This affects the careers of women more than men.
• 24% of working mothers say working isn’t viable however they remain in the workforce due to independence and the necessity for career progression.
• Leaving the workforce for cost of care reasons has a compound negative effect. After leaving the workforce 52% of unemployed carers feel that their skills have been reduced whilst off work, and 49% have reduced confidence in their ability to return to work.

Impact on workplace participation and the Australian economy
Childcare is now recognised as a key solution to unlocking the full productivity of Australia’s workforce. The relationship between the cost of care and employment choices affects employees on all incomes, ie. from those on relatively high incomes (AUD$90K and upwards) to those on relatively low family incomes (AUD$50K and below).  Hence strategies to address all incomes groups will have a significant impact upon choice and workforce participation for all employees.

A Senate Standing Committee found that for every $1 the Government spent on childcare, the Government gets back $1.86 in revenue because they have created a child-care industry which is paying taxes. If you factor in mother or father working, and therefore paying taxes, then you can sometimes get up to an eight or nine times return on the dollar spent. 50% of parents say they would increase their hours of work – and therefore their taxable income – if care was more affordable.

An industry in crisis?
The flip side of affordability for parents is that childcare workers – who are mostly women – earn low wages of about $18 an hour.  As a result up to 180 workers a week leave the sector. At the same time, childcare fees have increased on average by 11.2 per cent over the past year.

While there’s an obvious need to address the remuneration of those working in the childcare sector, 51% of families say that one parent would have to quit their job if the costs of childcare increased.

Given that 92 per cent of parents rate childcare cost as an important or very important as a political or election issue, it’s not surprising the Prime Minister is finally committing to a review of childcare in Australia over the coming months.  I’ll be waiting with interest – like hundreds of thousands of other parents and employers – to see what ideas the Government comes up with.

Jen Dalitz is a corporate adviser, blogger and speaker on gender balance and the author of The SheEO Blog where she writes on topics related to women, leadership and gender balance. An avid commentator and award winning Australian businesswoman, Jen’s expertise in this space has been recognised with inclusion on the 40 Young Business Leaders list for 2012 and an Edna Ryan Workplace Award for improving the working conditions of Australian women. Jen was also selected as a finalist in the 2010 NSW Telstra Business Awards and has been invited by Malaysia’s Minister of Women to speak at her annual Summit in Kuala Lumpur, and also represented Australia in a BBC global debate on the advancement of women and the Millennium Goals. In 2011 Jen co-founded the childcare lobby group, Make Care Fair an online petition to reignite the debate on the cost and affordability of child care.

0 Comments

1. 

   foggy

   July 4, 2012 at 4:27 pm

   Empowering working mothers

   26% of women reducing their working hours because of high cost of child care,is quite a big number in percent as it affects the total productivity of a currently available workforce.Instead of leaving the place of work in order to reduce their working hours;what if the women use these ‘off” hours and intersperse them with their regular work hours,on a daily or weekly basis.Using these “free” hours to look after their own kids for free at the workplace.
   Thus the cost of care would be reduced.Also if the working mothers could get hold of a close relative, friend or a worker volunteer who would for free mind their kids at the workplace;that would also deduct from the total cost of care.The only thing is….how much flexibility would the workplace administration be willing to show in order to help, adjust and permit the mothers, the measures required to make care more affordable?
   • 

     adreinneLima

     June 20, 2013 at 5:13 am

     I guess, this is the price we

     I guess, this is the price we have to pay for quality education, childcare and moving towards high income country. Some people just absolutely insist on having these things known as “kids” and one of the big things a parent has to provide for is child care during infancy and early childhood. It isn’t exactly cheap either, as child care costs have been accelerating away for awhile. Read more here.