Nowadays, there is growing recognition for the provision of universal child care. Studies have shown the effectiveness of universal child care in reducing social inequality and potential social costs from the child care gaps. In Korea, emphasis has be...
Nowadays, there is growing recognition for the provision of universal child care. Studies have shown the effectiveness of universal child care in reducing social inequality and potential social costs from the child care gaps. In Korea, emphasis has been put on establishing public child care since the revision of the child welfare act in 2004 and the Basic Act on Low Fertility and Aging Society in 2005. However, a lack of attention has been given to assessing the regional accessibility of child care services. Therefore, this study aims to measure the service accessibility of child care facilities across Seoul, Korea, analyze the areas with over or undersupply, and investigate the relationship of the regional characteristics to child care accessibility. From the analysis, the study has found that the spatial distribution of child care accessibility corresponds to the economic status of the regions, yet there, the child care supply did not parallel with the population of families with children. Also, the accessibility of child care in Seoul is far less than the surveyed demand ratio. Lastly, of all the regional characteristics, the population of children and land price had a significant negative relationship to the child care accessibility, and the population of National Basic Living Security recipients had a significant positive relationship to the accessibility. This study has originality in bringing together two topics from different disciplines, which are universal care and accessibility, obtaining empirical findings from the microscopic spatial analysis that estimated spatial accessibility using detailed demand population in the service windows. These findings offer a comprehensive understanding of the current landscape of universal child care accessibility in Seoul.