(Policy profile forthcoming)
Universal Childcare Benefits (UCB) provide support to children, typically via their primary care providers, who are the direct recipients of a cash transfer paid on a regular basis. UCBs have been proposed and adopted in different contexts, recognizing that (a) childcare responsibilities should be shared collectively, rather than falling primarily on parents / carers / private providers, and that (b) every child is entitled to a fair start in life, independently of their socioeconomic background and context at birth. UCBs are a cash transfer paid directly to households with children on a regular basis. They are paid to all households with children, without being means tested or otherwise targeted at particular households. They differ from other types of transfer in that they are paid regularly over time. Currently, 47 countries and territories, out of the 185 countries for which information is available, provide UCBs or quasi-UCBs.
UCBs promise benefits and potential across two key dimensions of relevance here: (a) individual life chances and society-wide inequality: support to children’s outcomes in the short, medium and long-term, promoting and guaranteeing individual life chances and containing or reducing wider social inequalities; (b) political economy and fiscal space: support and expansion via the strengthening of State-citizen relations and social cohesion and public support and policy sustainability. On the first point, from an investment and human capital accumulation perspective, supporting child development and childcare from birth or even before birth, has been advocated by policy analysts and makers from an economic efficiency and productivity perspective. A growing body of evidence highlights how such cash transfers are associated with positive incomes across a range of outcomes, with individual- and societal-level benefits (e.g. ODI and UNICEF, 2020).
Like other universal policy measures, compared with means tested, or otherwise targeted, and / or conditional transfers, UCBs stregthen State-citizen relations and public support and policy sustainability with important political economy and public finance implications. Universal social protection and fiscal systems are associated with low levels of inequality, high levels of trust in government, and social cohesion. Both because they are universal and because they support children, they typically command broader public support than narrowly targeted or conditional measures, including during economic downturns, and they are therefore more likely to secure and maintain higher budgets than narrowly means-tested or targeted and conditional schemes.
A complementary measure is to guarantee adequate maternal care, maternity benefits and parental leave as part of the same life-course architecture of universal support. Paid maternity protection, access to prenatal, delivery and postnatal care, and inclusive parental leave schemes help prevent income loss at childbirth, improve maternal and newborn health, support early child development, and promote a more equal sharing of care responsibilities within households. When designed as rights-based and broadly accessible provisions, rather than narrowly targeted or employer-dependent benefits, they provide essential income security at a crucial stage in a life cycle perspective.
