An Update of the World Bank’s Childcare Portfolio from 2019-2025

Overview & Synopsis

Every day, limited access to childcare keeps women out of the workforce, impacts family well-being, restricts economic growth, and leaves many children in unsafe and unstimulating environments. More than 40 percent of children around the world who are below primary-school entry age - nearly 350 million children – need childcare but do not have access to it. An estimated 708 million women (and 40 million men) are out of the workforce due to childcare responsibilities. Investments in childcare can create new jobs in the childcare sector and facilitate women’s labor force participation, while simultaneously laying strong foundations for the workforce of the future and increasing families’ incomes and ability to invest in their children’s health and development. New jobs and increasing female labor force participation contribute to economic growth and offer new sources of government revenue. This document reviews the evolution of the World Bank’s childcare portfolio from 2019 to 2025. While the childcare portfolio is still relatively nascent and many activities are small in scale, the portfolio has expanded rapidly - from just nine projects in 2019 to 130 projects in 2025. The portfolio is beginning to generate useful lessons for countries and partners. The World Bank is supporting countries to develop new financing mechanisms, policy reforms, data systems, impact evaluations and implementation models that can inform further scale-up. All of this work is building the foundations for larger and more sustained investments in the coming years to build on this momentum.