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

Established in 2010 and coordinated by the Instituto Mixto de Ayuda Social (IMAS), Costa Rica's Red Nacional de Cuido y Desarrollo Infantil (REDCUDI) funds childcare and early-development centres for children in poverty and vulnerability, explicitly to enable mothers' and fathers' "labour and educational insertion" — the network was, for over a decade, cited regionally (including by ECLAC/CEPAL) as a reference model for linking childcare to women's economic participation.
Independent evidence increasingly shows a programme under strain. According to the 2024 Estado de la Nación report, REDCUDI 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) put the actually-required amount at ¢220,000.
REDCUDI illustrates both the promise and the fragility of care-economy infrastructure: its gender rationale (freeing caregivers, mostly mothers, for employment) is well-established and was innovative at launch, but sustained underfunding has produced a shrinking, not growing, service — a cautionary case for other countries scaling similar networks without indexing subsidies to real costs.

Read the full analysis: https://igualdad.cepal.org/es/repository-of-policies-and-strategies/red-nacional-de-cuido-y-desarrollo-infantil-redcudi