Childcare Arrangements of 3-to 6-year-old Children and Associated Factors before and during COVID-19 using Latent Class Analysis

Abstract

This article examines childcare arrangements of 3-to 6-year-old children and factors associated before and during Covid-19 in Korea. We analyzed Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Families 6th (2016-2017), 7th (2018-2019), 8th (2020-2021) waves, focusing on care by grandparents, nurseries, kindergartens, and classes at Hakwon and personal tutoring. Latent class analysis results show that there are not much differences in childcare arrangements before and during the Covid-19 in terms of what the families used. In all waves nursery-centered arrangement accounted for between 45% and 52% and kindergarten centered 39-47%, with the rest utilized more shadow education. But it is important to note that during Covid-19, the kindergarten-centered arrangement used more shadow education than before. Further, families who all utilized private classes at Hakwon as some of them used nurseries newly appeared. Low-income families continued to use childcare at nurseries during the pandemic. But higher income families relied more on shadow education, particularly the education service at hakwon.