Even from a very young age, day care institutions focus heavily on child development and early learning outcomes - indeed, although initially developed with the express aim of facilitating parental employment (Kamerman and Moss, 2009), ECEC in Sweden has since become an integral part of the education system with its own curriculum and educational targets. However, Sweden’s comprehensive, public, centre-based system is relatively expensive (OECD, 2005). In 2013 public expenditure on ECEC services in Sweden was 1.64% of GDP, the second highest level of spending on ECEC in the OECD after Iceland (see Figure 3.7 and OECD, 2015h).