Who Really Controls Childcare Admissions in Denmark - Parents or Municipality?
This post explains why centralized childcare admission systems may have ambiguous outcomes when municipalities offer two admission paths. The childcare system in Denmark, which is administered by 98 local municipalities, gives a useful example of this problem for centralized childcare admissions design.
Outside options and childcare choice
Parent applications for childcare are often affected by what they perceive are their outside options. This is important because childcare for infants and toddlers generally provides parents with many outside options: Keep the child at home for a few months longer, choose private childcare, choose a childcare that is not closest. Any shared algorithm that a municipality uses to assign childcare must keep in mind what parents perceive are their outside options and how this impacts their applications and admissions.
Childcare choice in Denmark
Denmark’s 98 municipalities each operate their own childcare system. They often use similar tools for running shared admissions, but these systems also allow municipalities to have a lot of power to impact how parents choose. This is because group behavior impacts everyone’s outside options. I use the admission systems of Copenhagen and the bordering municipality of Tårnby to discuss how municipalities can choose two different paths. I need more evidence to prove that this conjecture is obviously true, but I hope to give enough evidence to suggest a smoking gun.
How Danish municipalities can manipulate parent choices and behavior
Shared admissions systems for childcare in Denmark feature a choice of two application paths for any parent:
The waitlist path … pick your favourite daycare
The guaranteed placement time (GPT) path … The municipality give you a daycare from the date you request. Typically uses a simple distance algorithm like nearest available childcare.
Copenhagen picks the waitlist path
Copenhagen really wants parents to pick the waitlist path. This seems clear in documentation from the city and from our discussions with the city on how it administers the GPT path … it allocates GPT children to undersubscribed childcare facilities. This is generally confirmed in the data that we have gathered from the municipality.
Tårnby picks the GPT path.
Looking at Tårnby, it seems that the Tårnby website promotes path 2. We don’t have access to the admissions data of Tårnby yet, but we can speculate that if many parents choose the GPT path, then the waitlist path becomes less desirable. This is because Tårnby will have to push back admission dates to waitlisters which makes these choices less desirable.
Why does this matter?
If this hypothesis is true, Danish municipal politicians can greatly affect whether choice is possible, but this does not seem to be often discussed. Do we want to give parents agency to choose childcare or not. Do parents know that their fundamental choices are impacted by the decision of local municipal boards?
People that study childcare outcomes often need to know if choices are made for childcare. This to control for possible problems of selection. How would you view data in Copenhagen where parents choose childcare, to data in Tårnby where parents are assigned by GPT.
We don’t often think about multiple equilibrium behavior in childcare algorithms. Maybe this is an interesting topic for theory to study given that most childcare systems in the rest of the world with waitlist admissions have yet to implement GPTs.
Information systems could play a big role here. The GPT path is motivated by giving parents a precise prediction of when to start. However better APT (anticipated placement times) could be given to waitlist choosers. This would stack the deck more in favor of waitlist choice.
I could be wrong
I am guided by my personal understanding of the game, and I have not used formal game theory to frame my conjecture: One childcare admissions algorithm, Two equilibria.
I don’t have direct evidence for the GPT equilibrium in Tårnby. Only that my reading of Tårnby documentation for parents applying for childcare seems to encourage the choice of GPT over the waitlist option.
Check out Tårnby
https://www.taarnby.dk/borger/born-unge-og-familie/dagtilbud-0-6-ar/pladsanvisningen/
If you live in Tårnby, do you think your daycare would ultimately be assigned to you by GPT or waitlisting?