Access to child care: Novel insights using distance traveled for care as an indicator

• In Event: Factors Associated with Access to Child Care

Abstract

Universal access to early childhood education (ECE) is at the forefront of the American policy agenda. Several indicators have been used to measure ECE access, and inequalities by demographic characteristics have been widely documented. This paper provides novel insight into ECE access by using a new indicator: distance traveled for child care. It documents trends in how far families travel to access care in Illinois by neighborhood income and urbanicity using fine-grained geographic mobility data from SafeGraph for 2019 from n = 2,131 child care centers and n = 91,366 tracked devices. The findings indicate that distance traveled follows an inverted U-shaped pattern. Families who live in the lowest and highest income neighborhoods tend to travel somewhat less for child care than families in the middle of the income distribution and this is not driven by urbanicity. The pattern is consistent with the physical availability of child care where the lowest- and highest-income neighborhoods have similar number of child care centers and capacity per child, while areas in the middle of the income distribution have lower availability. Findings are discussed in terms of how distance traveled as an indicator can help define the child care market and its implications for early childhood policy.

Author

• Timea Henriett Viragh, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author