Costa Rica's Red Nacional de Cuido y Desarrollo Infantil (REDCUDI) — A Stalling Childcare Network for Working Mothers

Established in 2010 and coordinated by Costa Rica's Instituto Mixto de Ayuda Social (IMAS), REDCUDI funds childcare and early-development centres for children in poverty and vulnerability, explicitly to enable mothers' and fathers' labour and educational participation. For over a decade the network was cited regionally, including by ECLAC/CEPAL, as a reference model linking childcare to women's economic participation.

According to the 2024 Estado de la Nación report, REDCUDI now reaches only about 8.8% of its target population of children in poverty. Beneficiary numbers fell 12% in 2023 and a further 7% in 2024, to 29,582 people served, and the government's own goal of adding 4,000 places in 2024 was not met, a shortfall confirmed by Costa Rica's Ombudsman (Defensoría de los Habitantes). The monthly subsidy IMAS pays per child (¢131,000) has been frozen for seven consecutive years, even though a UNICEF Costa Rica costing study (August 2024) found the actual need to be ¢220,000.

REDCUDI illustrates both the promise and the fragility of care-economy infrastructure: its rationale of freeing caregivers, mostly mothers, for employment is well established and was innovative at launch, but sustained underfunding has produced a shrinking rather than growing service — a cautionary case for other countries scaling similar networks without indexing subsidies to real costs.