Balancing work and family life has become one of the biggest issues in Australian social policy today. Child care is an essential tool that aids workforce and educational participation of those families that use it, employs thousands of persons within the industry, and hopefully provides an environment that is safe, educational and beneficial to our children. Relatively little research has been conducted into child care affordability and availability, leaving a gap in information for public debate and decision making. This paper aims to lessen this gap by assessing the affordability and availability of child care within Australia using data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics survey (HILDA) and the Child care Census.

This paper seeks to determine who is looking after our children, the problems that households may have with accessing and affording child care and whether or not these problems have continued into the second wave of the HILDA survey.