Impacts of CCDBG Reauthorization on the Supply of Child Care: Evidence from Massachusetts

• In Event: Equitable Access to Childcare: Tools and Solutions

Abstract

Background: The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Reauthorization Act of 2014 and the 2016 Child Care and Development Fund final rule updated federal expectations regarding state licensing requirements and quality standards for child care providers for the first time since 1998. Massachusetts has been in the vanguard of implementing these new requirements; adopting some enhanced background check requirements in early 2014, reforming licensing and inspection requirements in late 2017, and further strengthening background check regulations in early 2019. Compliance with these new regulations requires substantial effort and investment from both state agencies and providers themselves. Providers with little resources, such as family providers, may be less able to bear these costs, and providers serving low-income families may be less able to compensate by passing increased costs to families. Indeed prior research suggests that adoption of other regulatory requirements such as staffing ratios or center director education requirements may have the perverse effect of reducing the number of child care providers, and that this effect is especially pronounced in low-income markets. (Hotz, V.J. & Xiao, M., 2011.) This study examines the changes in child care supply following the adoption of rule changes in Massachusetts, with a view to evaluating whether CCDBG requirements have impacted child care supply in low-income communities.

Methods: The study uses administrative data from the Massachusetts Department of Early Care and Education. The full data set consists of monthly records pertaining to all licensed providers in Massachusetts, from April 2011 to December 2019 (N=105 months). Using geocoded address data, we identify providers operating in areas of concentrated poverty. The licensing data is supplemented by merging it with child care subsidy records, allowing us to identify providers serving subsidized children. We first describe the pattern of changes in the number and capacity of licensed providers of each type (center, family provider) over the focal time period. We use interrupted time series methods to estimate the effect of the new regulations by comparing the actual path of the outcome variables to the path projected from the pre-adoption period for each regulatory change while modeling key time series features of the data. (Bernal, J.L., Cummins, S., & Gasparini, A. 2017.) We conduct subset analyses to evaluate the effect of the regulations on particular communities of interest: providers located in areas of concentrated poverty, providers serving subsidized children, and providers serving particular age groups.

Results: Preliminary descriptive analysis suggests that the introduction of differential licensing and unannounced monitoring in 2017 was associated with opposite trends in licensed capacity for high poverty and low poverty areas. Specifically, capacity increased in low poverty areas and simultaneously decreased in high poverty areas. However, these exploratory findings should be interpreted with caution as the data show strong seasonality and differential trends prior to the policy change. Formal analysis with ITS methods will evaluate the extent to which these changes in supply can be attributed to the policy change.

Authors

• Yoonsook Ha, Boston University
  Presenting Author

• Jonathan Borowsky, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nikita Joshi, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kate Giapponi Schneider, Brandeis University
  Non-Presenting Author