The Changing Landscape of Early Care and Education: Trends in U.S. Child Care Supply, 1990-2021

• In Event: 30461 - Section on Children and Youth Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4. Social Inequality in the Lives of Young People

Abstract

High-quality early care and education (ECE) provides long-lasting benefits for children while bolstering parental employment, especially for mothers. Yet, the shortcomings of the U.S. child care infrastructure produce unequal access to ECE, with low-income and racially marginalized families less likely to receive high-quality care. While disparities in ECE access are well documented, few studies examine if and how these inequalities have evolved over space and time, in part due to the lack of standardized, geocoded, longitudinal data on child care. This study constructs a novel dataset of U.S. child care supply at the census tract level from 1990 to 2021, disaggregated by provider type (center-, home-, and school-based). To my knowledge, this is the most comprehensive dataset of U.S. child care supply to date. I use these data to analyze spatial and temporal patterns in ECE access and to examine how community characteristics are related to ECE access over time. Findings offer new insights on the changing landscape of early care and education over the last three decades, providing the foundation for future research on how time-varying social, demographic, political, and economic factors—including policy changes—shape access to early educational opportunities.

Author

• Sarah Hodgman, Brown University