ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the economic ideas that are being harnessed in the general notion of investment in infrastructure, and then present Ailsa McKay and her co-authors arguments for seeing childcare specifically as such an investment. It also explains some reflections on when and where the use of investment type arguments is helpful in arguing for policies that promote gender equality and their possible impact on Scottish politics in particular. Insisting on talking about childcare in this way is a longstanding practice of both the UK and Scottish Women's Budget Groups and of feminist economists more generally. This insistence is a response to the relative neglect in policy discourse of attention to social infrastructure compared to the more widely recognized physical infrastructure. By analogy, high quality childcare is an investment in the personal qualities of children, providing a flow of benefits for the children themselves and the economy more generally over many years.
