Public investment in care services in Turkey: Promoting employment & gender inclusive growth

Kijong Kim, Ipek Ilkkaracan () and Tolga Kaya

Journal of Policy Modeling, 2019, vol. 41, issue 6, 1210-1229

Abstract: Recent policy debates on macroeconomic tools to counteract the prolonged global economic recession point to the potential of fiscal policies with appropriate sectoral targets for simultaneously boosting effective demand while alleviating inequalities through employment generation. This paper contributes to the debate by pointing to the social care services sector –in particular early childhood education and care (ECEC) — as an effective target of fiscal spending for robust employment generation and gender inclusive growth. We use a macro-micro simulation model to examine the aggregate and gender employment impact of increasing public expenditures on ECEC services, an underdeveloped sector in Turkey versus physical infrastructure and construction, a common target of stimulatory spending. Our methodological approach combines input-output analysis on aggregate employment effects with a statistical microsimulation approach to assess distributional outcomes. We find that an expansion of ECEC services creates not only significantly more jobs but also does so in a more gender-equitable and fiscally sustainable way than the a construction boom.

Keywords: Early childhood education; Employment generation; Fiscal policy; Gender equality; Microsimulation; Input output analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E17 I25 O23 R15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161893819300614
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jpolmo:v:41:y:2019:i:6:p:1210-1229

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpolmod.2019.05.002

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Policy Modeling is currently edited by A. M. Costa

More articles in Journal of Policy Modeling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().