Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) - In the southwest, compared to the federal states, the fewest children under the age of three are cared for outside the home. As reported by the Baden-Württemberg State Statistical Office on Tuesday, the childcare rate rose slightly last year to almost 29.9 percent (1.2 percentage points compared to the previous year).
According to this, parents of 99,058 children under the age of three used some form of day care outside the home on March 1 last year. In a comparison of the federal states, Baden-Württemberg has the lowest childcare rate, according to the State Statistical Office.
There are clear differences in the regions. The supervision rates in Heidelberg (47 percent), Freiburg (46.5 percent), Karlsruhe (39.4 percent) and Stuttgart (38.8 percent) are comparatively high. In 14 urban and rural districts, the rate is more than 30 percent, in 8 it is less than 25 percent. According to the State Statistical Office, very few children are looked after outside the home in the urban district of Pforzheim and the district of Schwäbisch Hall.
According to the State Statistical Office, there is an east-west divide across Germany. The five eastern German federal states each have a childcare rate of more than 50 percent. Nationwide, the rate is 35.5 percent.
