The Oslo Dilemma. How a 2019 Danish law gave municipalities a choice: Reform childcare or admissions
The Oslo Dilemma
The ‘‘Oslo Dilemma’’ is the policy dilemma that families with low SES (socioeconomic status) more often choose the same childcare facilities - an adverse distribution in daycare institutions - even when childcare is free, and low SES families have higher priority over other parents at each childcare facility. This is policy dilemma, because the case for a progressive child care admission policy appears to be strong.
A high quality child care facility should be attractive to all families. Low SES children gain strengths from interacting with high SES children, and vice versa. A place with high quality facilities, dedicated teachers, and effective management.
Cross-country studies by Eurydice, and others, show that low SES families have access to lower quality early child care resources than high SES families.
A progressive childcare admissions policy aims to combat item 2 under the assumption that all parents agree with item 1. Oslo pursues such a policy by setting shared admission priorities where all childcare facilities priortise the application of a low SES child over a higher SES child, whenever two children compete for the same spot. However,
Evidence of segregation in Oslo daycares
Source: ‘‘Segregation in a Universal Child Care System: Descriptive Findings from Norway’’ by Nina Drange and Kjetil Telle in (2020) European Sociological Review.
If parents did not segregate as they do in Oslo, we could see the fraction of children in each childcare as a horizontal line, with less than one in four children at each childcare being from low SES families. However, as the graph reveals, in reality there is high degree of segregation. This remains true even within reasonable walk zones that contain a multitude of child care facilities.
Denmark’s 2019 ‘‘better distribution in daycare institutions’’ law
The Oslo dilemma is not surprising to policy makers in Denmark. In 2019, Denmark was infamous for its new laws that force municipalities to implement a ‘‘better’’ distribution in daycare institutions.
“Lov om bedre fordeling i daginstitutioner” (Law on better distribution in daycare institutions). This law places a cap on the fraction of new admissions in any daycare in a calendar year can be children from “udsatte boligområder” (“vulnerable housing areas”). These laws are famously targeted at the left tail of the childcare distribution that is observed in Oslo.
The intent of the ‘‘better distribution in daycare institutions’’ law is clear, but it also gives Danish municipalities two conflicting choices:
Easy way. Reform childcare admission policies so that low SES families have restricted choices. This will force a better distribution. However, it comes at a loss of agency for individual families.
Hard way. Reform childcare so that families can continue to freely choose childcare, but do so in a way where they do not choose to segregate.
Copenhagen chooses the hard way
Copenhagen is a wealthy and large municipality in Denmark. It has chosen to spent a lot of resources to make childcare more integrated and socially diverse. It has avoided the so-called easy way, which has the cost of taking away the agency of parents to choose childcare. Examples of the hard way.
In the summer of 2019, the Municipality of Copenhagen introduced a strengthened follow-up to pedagogical supervision, so that challenged institutions receive help and support from the administration more quickly and effectively.
Copenhagen has introduced a very ambitious pedagogical inspection developed in collaboration with leading educational researchers. And the effort has borne fruit. From 2018 to 2019, the number of daycare centers assessed as needing to improve conditions in at least two areas was reduced by almost a third – from 41 to 28 out of the city’s 366 daycare centers.
Copenhagen has invested in extra hands in the form of social norms in institutions with many vulnerable children in recent years. These institutions are also assigned a social worker. This early intervention aims to reduce inequality and help ensure that vulnerable children get a better start.
You can learn more about Copenhagen policies in the following post by the city:
Better standards and improved quality in Copenhagen's daycare institutions
Municipal policies outside of Copenhagen?
Municipalities outside of Copenhagen are smaller and less rich. While actions taken by a large municipality like Copenhagen can be copied by smaller municipalities, smaller municipalities might also be tempted to reduce parental choice as guided by the 2019 law.
Reduced choice is simple to introduce if parents are guided to choose GPT (Guaranteed placement time) admissions. This is a realistic outcome in light of another aspect of the 2019 law - Low SES families are forced to start childcare before the age of one.
See also my post that compares admissions in Tårnby versus Copenhagen. I argued that a municipality like Tårnby can easily frame GPT applications as the best policy, while making waitlist applications less desired due to administratuon of GPT applications to desired childcares. This framing then acts to eliminate child care choice.
The short answer is that I really don’t know the affects of child care policies like Denmark’s law for a better distribution in daycare institutions on parental agency to choose child care have had in the muncipalities. I would be interested in knowing, for example, how many children are being assigned by GPT applications, and whether these children are increasingly from low SES and/or high SES family backgrounds.
Long run impact of ‘‘parallel society’’ laws?
The ‘‘better distribution in daycare institutions’’ laws have probably acted as a constraint on Copenhagen’s overall approach to childcare for the good, because Copenhagen has chosen the hard way.
The best case scenario for parallel society laws is that these policies are only a threat, and that municipalities have clear incentives to reform childcare so that society is less segregated, while choice and autonomy of families is respected. Copenhagen gives a hopeful example.
The worst case scenario is that municipalities will respond to parallel society laws by following the easy way - take away the agency of families to choose child care, and do little to change actual childcare, and how childcare institutions welcome diversity.
There is clearly a lot of information that we need to gather to understand the different implications of Denmark’s ‘‘parallel society’’ laws. However, at present, I think that there is a shortage of information on child care admission policies and outcomes outside of Copenhagen.