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Title: America's Child Care Deserts in 2018

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2018

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Abstract: In August 2016, Connecticut parents learned that the state’s child care assistance program, Care 4 Kids, would stop enrolling most children due to insufficient funding.1 In a state where families can expect to pay more than $20,000 a year to send two children to a child care center, this news was devastating to many parents.2 One such parent was Annunziata Zito, a mother with two children ages 8 and 3. Without assistance from Care 4 Kids, she thought she might have to quit her job, leaving her family living in poverty.3 Connecticut was an early adopter of a new federal requirement to extend eligibility for child care assistance to a full year.4 The change was based on evidence from child development experts that shows providing consistent child care is important for young children.5 Continuous access to high-quality child care promotes strong relationships and positive interactions with early educators, which in turn supports skills such as vocabulary, early literacy skills, and healthy behaviors. But with children staying in the program longer and no new federal or state resources, Connecticut could no longer enroll new children. In the year that followed, the number of children receiving child care assistance through Care 4 Kids was cut by more than 40 percent. This particularly affected parents with infants, who could not enroll their babies when they returned to work. After Care 4 Kids stopped enrolling new children, the number of infants and toddlers in the program dropped from 8,200 to 4,400.6 Connecticut’s experience was a bellwether for the country. For decades, federal and state lawmakers underfunded child care assistance, resulting in dwindling enrollment levels and fewer quality options for parents as the value of their child care voucher eroded over time. Congress took action in 2014 to improve quality, requiring minimum safety protections, such as background checks for child care providers, and extending eligibility periods for child . . .

Url: https://cdn.americanprogress.org/content/uploads/2018/12/06100537/AmericasChildCareDeserts20182.pdf

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Authors: Malik, Rasheed; Hamm, Katie; Schochet, Leila; Novoa, Cristina; Workman, Simon; Jessen-Howard, Steven

Publisher: Center for American Progress

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Other, Poverty and Welfare

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