Understanding Waitlists, Openings, and Child Care Access: Evidence from Virginia

• In Event: Understanding ECE Access: New Evidence on the Dynamics of U.S. Child Care Supply and Demand

Abstract

Navigating the fragmented U.S. child care system is challenging. There are few-to-no formal systems connecting families and providers. Parents must contact individual sites and often report waiting months for an opening, limiting their ability to work, go to school, and support their families. Even when openings are available, they may not match the specific hours or age groups a family needs. This protracted process has negative implications for child care providers, who operate on thin margins and rely on tuition to sustain their businesses. While there is considerable policy interest in improving access, much of the current narrative has been driven by anecdotal accounts due to the lack of data on child care waitlists and openings.

The current paper aims to fill these gaps using novel statewide survey and administrative data collected from nearly 1,200 Virginia centers in fall 2024. These providers represent 40% of child care centers registered to serve children 5 years or younger in the commonwealth. Survey respondents provided information about their centers’ operations, including the number of unfilled openings and total children on waitlists by age group. We then asked the primary reasons providers had waitlists or openings to better understand the complex interplay of family demand and providers’ ability to supply care. We combined these data with site-level administrative sources to capture information about licensed capacity, location, ages licensed to served, and subsidy participation.

These data allow us to address three questions: 

(1) How common are waitlists and openings across Virginia child care centers overall and by age group?

(2) What are the primary reasons centers report having a waitlist or openings? 

(3) Does having waitlists or openings predict whether a center reported financial challenges in the past year?

We find most centers (n=637; 56%) had a waitlist. Of these 637 centers, 74% maintained waitlists across multiple age groups. Similar to prior studies, centers were much more likely to have a waitlist for infants (53%) than for preschool-aged children (23%). Forty percent cited lack of staff as a top reason for having a waitlist and one-third of centers said they were at their licensed capacity.

Unfilled openings were unexpectedly common, with nearly three-fourths of centers (n=857; 73%) saying they could serve additional children. Of these, 82% had openings across multiple age groups, and were somewhat more likely to have openings for preschoolers (58%) than for infants (42%). Most centers said lack of demand (51%) contributed to unfilled openings. More than one-third said the available slots did not meet families’ needs (38%) or were unaffordable to families (35%).

We also find that evidence that openings and waitlists have implications for centers’ financial wellbeing: centers with waitlists were about half as likely to have lost money in the past year (OR=0.60; p<.001) and two times more likely to report a loss if they had unfilled openings (OR=2.58; p<.001). In future analyses, we will look at how other provider and community characteristics relate to waitlists and openings. Together, these results can inform policies targeting child care access.

Authors

• Katherine L Miller-Bains, University of Virginia
  Presenting Author

• Daphna Bassok, University of Virginia
  Non-Presenting Co-Author