Validity of Zero Children on the Waiting Lists as a Policy

UNAYAMA Takashi
Fomer Faculty Fellow, RIETI
Associate Professor, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

This column discusses the validity of the Plan to Accelerate the Elimination of Childcare Waiting Lists, one of the centerpieces of the Abe administration's growth strategy. It examines the validity of the plan as a policy target and not as a policy purpose. With greater importance attached to evidence-based policies recently, a variety of evidence has been presented in academic research and policy-making. However, most efforts have concentrated on evaluating the purposes of the policies in question, and little attention has been paid to their targets. No matter how much evidence is collected to establish the right purpose, such efforts will be futile if setting the right target at the stage of developing policies into specific action has failed. From this perspective, the validity of Zero Children on the Waiting Lists as a policy target will be discussed.

Encouraging women to play a more active role in society as a policy purpose

As a centerpiece of his growth strategy, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe emphasizes the idea of encouraging women to play a more active role in society. As the first specific measure to achieve this goal, the Abe administration has come up with the Plan to Accelerate the Elimination of Childcare Waiting Lists. This plan aims to expand the capacity of nursery schools to allow for an additional 400,000 children by fiscal 2017. The purpose of this policy is to create a society in which women can play a more active role, thereby ensuring economic growth. Zero Children on the Waiting Lists has been set as a target to fulfill this purpose.

As a basic consensus, encouraging women to play a more active role in society is an appropriate policy purpose. With an aging and decreasing population and a low birth rate, Japan faces the major challenge of securing a sufficient labor force. As the female labor participation rate is still low in Japan, it is essential to promote further utilization of the untapped potential of women in order to secure an adequately sized labor force in the years to come. Meanwhile, the fact that the percentage of women holding leading positions remains low may indicate that their potential has not yet been fully utilized. This in turn suggests that if women can play more active roles on the front lines of the economy, they may be able to help raise the quality of the entire labor force, thereby contributing to economic revitalization.

The idea of expanding the capacity of childcare facilities in order to create a society in which women can play a more active role is worth supporting because it is an evidence-based policy. Increasing the capacity of nursery schools is actually an effective means of enabling women to enjoy better "compatibility" between work and marriage/childbirth. In a society where it is difficult to achieve a balance between work and childbirth/childcare, women are forced into a situation in which they have to choose between work and family life. A series of studies that I have conducted at RIETI (Note 1) demonstrate that perhaps the only way to improve the low compatibility between work and marriage/childbirth is through an expansion of the nursery school capacity.

It should be reiterated that encouraging women to play a more active role in society is the correct policy purpose, and there is no problem with efforts to increase the capacity of childcare facilities to fulfill such purpose. Nevertheless, upholding Zero Children on the Waiting Lists as a target will pose two major problems.

Zero Children on the Waiting Lists feared to distort local authorities' behavior

Zero Children on the Waiting Lists as a target is aimed at creating a situation which enables all people wishing to enroll their children in nursery schools to do so. The goal is formally visible, and its simplicity is politically appealing.

Nevertheless, closer scrutiny reveals that this policy goal is not as clear-cut as it appears because of the ambiguity of the definition of "people wishing to enroll their children in nursery schools." Newspapers and other media have frequently reported recently on the problem that the definition of "waitlisted children" varies depending on the local authority. According to news reports, some local authorities do not count those children whose parents have extended their childcare leave because of the unavailability of childcare services, or those who are being looked after through unlicensed child care services or by babysitters. For parents, this is a situation in which they wish to enroll their children in a nursery school but are unable.

Using this kind of ambiguous indicator as a target might distort the behavior of the local authorities concerned. Needless to say, since it is easier to change the definition of waitlisted children than to expand the capacity of nursery schools, local authorities tend to be tempted to make it appear that the number of waitlisted children has decreased. If officials at relevant desks of municipal offices give arbitrary advice or inappropriate responses to parents in an attempt to remove their children from the waitlisted children category, the real problem will be concealed and will delay attaining the original goal, i.e. improvement of compatibility.

Increased availability of childcare services boosts the number of waitlisted children

Moreover, even if local authorities do not behave in ways that hinder the understanding of the current situation, the effect of Zero Children on the Waiting Lists is questionable as a policy target because the number of people wishing to enroll their children in nursery schools varies in accordance with nursery school capacity. That is, if the chances of their children enrolling in a nursery school are extremely slim, many parents will not even apply in the first place. Conversely, if nursery school capacity grows and the chance for enrollment increases, demand for childcare that has so far been latent will surface.

Due to the above-mentioned links between the chance of enrollment and the number of waitlisted children, a smaller number of waitlisted children could mean one of two different situations: one in which anyone in need of childcare can enroll his or her child in a nursery school, or another in which applying for enrollment in a nursery school is unimaginable. As a matter of fact, Hiroshi Nakada, the former mayor of Yokohama, wrote on his blog: "When we increased the availability of childcare facilities, we had more people moving in from other communities and more parents wishing to enroll their children in nursery schools and start working. It was like a game of cat-and-mouse." In other words, the number of waitlisted children does not necessarily reflect the availability of nursery schools actually experienced by parents. Neither does Zero Children on the Waiting Lists always represent a desirable situation.

Using this kind of problematic indicator as a policy target is not desirable either in terms of appropriate resource allocation or policy evaluation. In order to expand the capacity of nursery schools, an indicator based on the entire population of reproductive-age women should be used. What indicator to use as a target, however, is an open question. In any case, it is epoch-making for the Japanese government to uphold the expansion of nursery school capacity as a centerpiece of its growth strategy in its efforts to create a society in which women can play a more active role. It is hoped that the government sets more reliable targets to encourage women to work more actively in society, which in itself is an appropriate policy purpose.

July 9, 2013

July 29, 2013