John Barry Professor of Green Political Economy Queens University Belfast

GDP: Total expenditure on all goods and services produced within a country Adds to GDP: Also adds to GDP: Not included in GDP:

The costs of high quality childcare are investments in social and economic infrastructure. Investing in the healthy development of children brings benefits to society as a whole. It achieves gender equality goals It benefits children – especially those from poorer families Together with proposals to reduce the working week, it is part of a new economic paradigm

Sustainability reasons – climate change, energy insecurity, resource depletion and pollution; ‘We don’t inherit the earth from our parents, but borrow it from our children’ Equality reasons – economic growth under capitalism manages and reproduces inequality it does not eradicate it; “We are addicted to growth because we are addicted to large inequalities in income and wealth. What about the poor? Let them eat growth! Better yet, let them feed on the hope of eating growth in the future!” (Herman Daly, 1991) Human flourishing reasons – beyond a threshold, economic growth does not add to and can reduce opportunities for human flourishing.

“Economic growth, for so long the great engine of progress, has, in the rich countries, largely finished its work. Not only have measures of well-being and happiness ceased to rise with economic growth but, as affluent societies have grown richer, there have been long-term rises in rates of anxiety, depression, and numerous other social problems. The populations of rich countries have got to the end of a long historical journey”. Wilkinson, R and Pickett, K. (2009), The Spirit Level: why more equal societies almost always do better, pp.5–6.

We should measure progress in our society not by the size of our armies or GDP/economic growth But rather by how we look after our most vulnerable – the old, the sick …and the young Universal affordable childcare is a simple, understandable way to realise this sense of progress And is part of a policy agenda to create a less gender unequal, ecocidal, unsustainable and growth-obessed economic system, on which values ‘work’ not just ‘employment’, and one where childcare is a form of ‘employment’, it is a well paid, high status occupation. The politics of childcare is part of the political economy of socio- economic progress and transformation for the 21st century – part of policy mix to ‘moving beyond bigger to better’