Current population trends and the COVID-19 pandemic reinforce the need for efficient public service provision while guaranteeing good access to all. Population decline and ageing in rural regions affect the provision of services through lower economies of scale and scope, professional shortages...

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) can bring a wide range of benefits – for children, parents and society at large. However, these benefits are conditional on “quality”. Expanding access to services without attention to quality will not deliver good outcomes for children or...

The types of services available to children and their parents vary significantly across OECD countries. This makes international comparisons of ECEC more challenging. The revision of ISCED in 2011 was a significant first step towards better identifying the education component of ECEC programmes...

The increase in the human life span is a testament to the economic, social and medical progress made over the course of the last century. However, an ageing population brings some new challenges both to healthcare systems and to medicine in terms of the increased manifestation of specific...