Almost a third of children under the age of three in North Rhine-Westphalia are currently looked after in day-care centers or by childminders. This was the result of a key date survey on March 1, 2023, as announced by the State Statistical Office IT.NRW on Friday. The U3 supervision rate has increased within a year by 0.6 percentage points to 31 percent. In 2022 it was still 30.4 percent, in 2021 29.6 percent and in 2018 27.2 percent. In absolute figures, a good 161,000 children under the age of three were cared for on the 2023 reporting date.
The U3 childcare rates vary regionally between 42.5 percent in the district of Coesfeld and 18.1 percent in Gelsenkirchen. In addition to the U3 children, on March 1, 2023, almost 485,000 other children aged between three and six years were in day care in NRW. The care rate in this age group was 89.7 percent. From the age of three, there is a legal entitlement to support in a day-care center for children.
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