Table of Contents | Previous | Next |
Introduction
The National Study of Child Care for Low-Income Families was a ten-year research effort designed to provide Federal, state and local policy makers with information on the effects of Federal, state and local policies and programs on child care at the community level, and on the employment and child care decisions of low-income families. It also provides insights into the characteristics and functioning of family child care, a type of care frequently used by low-income families, and the experiences of parents and their children with this form of care.1 Abt Associates Inc. of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University’s Joseph Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, conducted the study under contract to the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department in Health and Human Services.
The study looked at how states and communities implement policies and programs to meet the child care needs of families moving from welfare to work, as well as those of other low-income parents; how these policies change over time; and how these policies, as well as other factors, affect the type, amount, and cost of care in communities. In addition, the study investigated the factors that shape the child care choices of low-income families, and the role that child care subsidies play in those choices. Finally, the study examined, in depth and over a period of 2½ years, a group of families that use various kinds of family child care and their child care providers, to develop a better understanding of the family child care environment and to what extent the care provided in that environment supports parents’ work-related needs and meets children’s needs for a safe, healthy and nurturing environment.
One component of the study gathered information from 17 states about the administration of child care and welfare policies and programs and about resource allocations. Within the 17 states, the study gathered information from respondents in 25 communities about the implementation of state local policies and the influence of those policies and practices on the local child care market and on low-income families. Information on states and communities was collected three times: in 1999, 2001, and 2002, to allow us to investigate change over time in policies and practices.
For the second study component, we gathered information from individual families in the 25 study communities on how state and local policies and programs, as well as other factors, influence parents’ decisions about child care, the child care choices they make, how these choices affect their ability to find and retain a job or participate in educational or training programs and the stability and continuity of child care. The Community Survey, a one-time survey of 2,500 low-income parents, conducted in 2000, provided this information.
For the third component of the study, we collected more detailed information on families that use family child care, their providers and the experience of children in family child care. This portion of the study involved multiple data collection efforts over a 2½-year period, making it possible to track changes in parental employment, subsidy status and child care arrangements over time.
Study Reports
An interim report on the first component of the study, the State and Community Substudy, has already been released. A final report on this component of the study is in preparation. An interim report on the third study component, the Neighborhood Substudy was released earlier this year. A final report on the Neighborhood Substudy is in preparation.
Contents of this Report
This report presents results from the second component of the study, the Community Survey. Conducted in 2000, it was a random-digit-dialing (RDD) survey of low-income families with children under the age of 13 in the 25 study communities. The first chapter describes the research questions, design, and conduct of the survey. Although the survey focused on the characteristics, attitudes, and child care arrangements of families using non-parental care, the portion of the interview that screened out other families collected valuable information on child care use and non-use by all low-income families. Chapter Two describes this broader population, including those families in which the mother stays home, those in which the mother works only while the children are in school, those in which the father cares for the children when the mother is unavailable, and those in which school-aged children care for themselves.
Chapter Three describes characteristics of low-income families that use non-parental care. Chapter Four discusses aspects of non-parental child care: the types of care chosen; the reasons for these choices; the cost of child care; and parental knowledge and use of subsidies. Finally, Chapters Five and Six present multivariate analyses of child care modal choice and child care subsidy status. The report has three appendices. Appendix A describes the procedures used to weight the data and presents response rates for the survey. Appendix B provides technical information on the multivariate analyses described in Chapters Five and Six. To assess the generalizability of the survey findings to similar low-income families nationally, we reanalyzed data from the 1997 National Survey of America’s Families (NSAF). The comparisons are noted in Chapters Three and Four of the report. Appendix C presents the results of comparative analyses of two NSAF data sets; a national data set of low-income families using non-parental care; and a data set restricted to similar families in counties with child poverty rates of higher than 13.8 percent, the cut-off point for counties included in the sampling frame for the National Study of Child Care for Low-Income Families. The survey instruments are contained in Volume 2 of the report.
| Table of Contents | Previous | Next |