Research and policy
Research: For Love or Money: Pay, progression and professionalisation in the 'early years' workforce
1 Apr 2008
The first report from ippr's Working out of Poverty series highlighted the significant and growing problem of poverty among working people and their families (Cooke and Lawton 2008). We identified low wages and limited progression at work as important factors underpinning working poverty. The aim of this report is to investigate how these issues play out in one particular low wage sector, the early years, highlighting both challenges that are common across low wage sectors and those that are distinctive to the early years.
Early years services for young children are critical to delivering both economic prosperity and social justice for Britain. However, average pay is £6.80 an hour, only 7% of the workforce has a post secondary qualification and 98% are women. We have chosen to focus on the early years sector because, as well as being a source of low wage employment in its own right, it has wider importance in enabling parents to work and giving children the best start in life. This raises the stakes for policymakers because a virtuous circle of high quality services and high value employment can help reduce working poverty (both directly and indirectly) today, as well as for generations to come. Equally, any negative impacts of low pay have implications beyond the early years workforce itself.
Our analysis reveals the human stories and struggles that lie behind the statistics on pay and poverty. Our findings highlight the challenges for policymakers and deliverers seeking to raise both quality and wages. Our proposals suggest how policy could better realise fairness, opportunity and aspiration at work, while orientating this crucial sector of the economy towards both higher wages for workers and higher quality for children.
(Extracted from Executive Summary, p.6)
To download the full report visit the IPPR website.
