Exploring the Role of Child Care in Parents’ Certification and Employment Success

• In Event: Harnessing Evidence to Advance Equity in Career Pathways

Abstract

In an increasingly skill-based economy, many parents are enrolling in education and training programs to improve financial stability (Federal Reserve Bank, 2024). For example, across several government-funded workforce training programs for low-income adults, parents make-up anywhere between 30% and 70% of participants (Gardiner & Juras, 2019; Judkins et al., 2020; Peck et al., 2022). While often motivated by their children to pursue higher education (Duquaine-Watson, 2007), accessing adequate and affordable childcare is a significant obstacle in their ability to persist and complete education programs (Generation Hope, 2023). In fact, parents are nearly half as likely to complete a postsecondary credential within six years as their peers without children (37% vs. 60%; Gault et al., 2020).

The Health Professions Opportunities Grant (HPOG) 2.0, is a career pathways program that offered supportive services, including childcare, to address some of the barriers parents face when seeking additional education. Sixty-two percent of HPOG 2.0 participants were parents at baseline, yet only 4% took-up the offered childcare services (Klerman et al., 2022). Program grantees offered child care through one of four modes: (1) direct service, (2) program partner, (3) referrals, and (4) a combination of the previous three types. The current study examines childcare mode as a potential driver of take-up rate and short-term parental outcomes.

Using experimental data from the HPOG 2.0 National Evaluation, we studied a subsample of treatment and control participants with at least one dependent child (n=33,945).  Our aims were to: (1) descriptively examine variation in childcare take-up by mode, and (2) assess whether the effects on certification and employment in healthcare after 15 months differ depending on the mode of childcare offered. To account for non-random assignment of childcare modes, we first conducted covariate adjustment of baseline characteristics within the control group to estimate differential treatment effects more accurately.

First, we found take-up was highest for parents at program grantees who offered direct care (9.61%), followed by referral (6.76%), combination (5.48%), and partner-provided care (2.98%). These findings suggest the convenience and reliability of childcare provided directly may be more accessible compared to “lighter-touch” strategies (Hsueh & Ferrell, 2012; Long, 2017).

Second, using the adjusted covariate model to eliminate differences across childcare mode, we found significantly greater impacts of treatment on certification in program grantees who offered direct childcare compared to the other modes. As shown in Table 2, the effect of treatment on certification was 15 percentage points higher for the direct compared to the partner mode (β=0.15, SE=0.04, p < 0.001), 18 percentage points higher compared to the referral mode (β=0.18, SE=0.05, p < 0.001), and 11 percentage points higher compared to the combination (β=0.11, SE=0.03, p=0.002). We did not find significant impacts on employment in healthcare after 15 months. We plan to conduct post-hoc analyses to test overall employment (i.e., in any field) and further explore comparisons between the partner, referral and combination modes.

Given how many workforce training participants are parents, understanding whether and how the structure of childcare support affects their success is critical for improving future programs.

Author

• Julia Honoroff, University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author