ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the main characteristics of the social investment perspective and the different policy instruments that are used to implement it across regions of the world. It then provides examples of the ways the perspective has been coupled with ideas about inclusive growth and other themes in the policy lexicon. Several indicators point to an emerging consensus in the second half of the 1990s that the social policy domain required new approaches to address poverty, social exclusion, population ageing and program sustainability. The chapter describes a specific logic for fighting poverty and exclusion as well as fostering social inclusion; it is the social investment perspective. The social investment perspective represents an approach to social policy different from the social protection logic of post-1945 welfare regimes as well as the safety-net stance of neoliberals. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) programs have been identified for years as a multi-purpose instrument for achieving the goals of the social investment perspective.
