Poster #132 - What's in Your Neighborhood? Community Profiles of Early Care and Education Access

• In Event: Poster Session 01

Abstract

ISSUE: Supply, cost, quality, and equity in early care and education (ECE) remain intractable challenges. Although 65% of young children need care because their parent(s) work (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019), half of US census tracts are childcare deserts (Malik et al., 2018). Disparities in availability, affordability, and enrollment are associated with family income, ethnicity, single parenthood, and rural vs. urban location (Child Care Aware of America, 2018; Davis, Lee & Sojourner, 2019; Malik et al.; National Academies, 2018).

Equitable deployment of ECE resources requires accurate data on where needs are greatest. Metrics based on a radius around a family’s home provide an authentic estimate of resource availability from a family perspective (Davis et al., 2019).

METHODS: We used a two-step floating catchment area method to measure three aspects of ECE access within a set commute from a prototypical family home in the state of Hawaii (n = 281,124 residential lots). Three catchment areas were used: 5-mile drive, 10-mile drive, and 30-minute public transit ride. Nearby Seats was the population-to-capacity ratio (children per seat) within the catchment boundary of a home. Affordability was the average availability-weighted tuition of a childcare seat, expressed as a percentage of the median family income in this same catchment area. Quality was the availability-weighted likelihood that a nearby seat was in a high-quality program. These accessibility indices were measured at the micro-level (i.e. residential lot) and can be aggregated at different geographic levels (e.g., census tract, county). Results are visualized and available to stakeholders via online maps.

Since there are different routes through which communities may become well- or poorly-resourced, we also plan to use a latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify community types. Census tract will be the unit of analysis. Access scores (for all three catchment areas), median family income, population density, % of seats in Head Start and public preK, % of children in low-income families, and ethnic composition will be the independent variables. Based on what we know about the location of targeted programs in our state and prioritization of Native Hawaiian communities, we expect to find profiles that include: a) high access, middle/high income, urban/suburban, White/East Asian; b) high access, low-income, rural, Native Hawaiian, c) medium access, low-income, urban; d) low-access, working class gap group.

RESULTS: Statewide data for 5-mile access indexes showed that: 67% of children live in childcare deserts (i.e., more than three children per seat with a 5-mile drive of one’s home); 14% have nearby access to affordable care (i.e., 7% or less of median family income); and 40% of nearby seats are high quality.

Communities varied widely in terms of access (see Figure 1 for sample maps), and not always in ways consistent with historical social advantage. Some rural, low-income census tracts had among the best access in the state—this appears to be the result of strategic placement of targeted, free programs. Discussion of LPA results will focus on the extent to which these programs appear to reduce access disparities.

Authors

• Barbara D DeBaryshe, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
  Presenting Author

• Ivette Rodriguez Stern, University of Hawaii - Center on the Family

• Javzandulam Azuma, University of Hawaii

• Minh Nguyen, University of Hawaii at Manoa

• Qi Chen, University of Hawaii at Manoa