Transformation of Latin American welfare regimes: Early childhood education and care (ECEC) policies and the new investment strategy in Argentina and Mexico

This paper investigates new directions in the evolution of Latin American welfare regimes by focusing on the extension of early childhood education and care (ECEC) policies in Argentina and Mexico.  Unlike recent literature on countries in the Global North which discusses the expansion of social policy to include early childhood education and care, the literature on Latin America pays little attention to these dimensions of social policy. This absence is partly because of the lack of attention by most Latin American states to childcare and to education under the age of five or six, particularly during the years of the ascendance of neo-liberalism and the cutbacks in social services during the 1980s and 1990s.  In recent years, however, high rates of growth and the shift away from neo-liberalism in some countries of the region has coincided with a shift toward a “social investment” paradigm that emphasizes the importance of human capital formation in social development.  Both of these overlapping phenomena, along with increased emphasis on the importance of the early years in the policies of international organizations, has led to greater attention to ECEC policies among Latin American states. We argue that both Argentina and Mexico have increased their attention to ECEC policies in recent years for several reasons:  the “rediscovery” of  poverty; the new investment social paradigm, and the increased entry of women into the paid labour force (partly as a result of the structural adjustment policies promoted under neoliberalism).  Divergence in policy adoption, however, is explained by the ideological differences between neo-liberal Mexico and post-neoliberal Argentina, the historical-institutional legacies of their welfare regimes and the different levels of influence of international organizations.