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OCR for page 42
3
Trends in the Care of Children
W orking parents in the United States use a variety of child care
providers, including care by family members (parents, grand-
parents, other relatives, and self-care), care by neighbors and
friends (nonrelative care in the child's home or in the provider's home),
family day care homes (care for a small group of children in a provider's
home), child care centers, and other organized activities. In this chapter, we
describe the types of care used by parents, the supply of care, family expen-
ditures on child care, and quality. Given the evidence presented in Chapter
2 showing a rise in the labor force participation among mothers, we focus
in this chapter on child care usage by families in which the mother is
employed.
PATTERNS OF CHILD CARE USE
The evidence presented is drawn from the Survey of Income and Pro-
gram Participation (SIPP) from spring 1999. We first discuss children of
preschool age, defined here as ages 0 to 5, and then children of school age,
ages 6 to 14.
Preschool-Age Children
According to data from the 1999 SIPP, there were an estimated 22.0
million children ages 0 to 5 in the United States in spring 1999 (March-
June), of whom 12.2 million (55 percent) had an employed mother. More
42
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TRENDS IN THE CARE OF CHILDREN 43
than a third of the preschool children (39 percent) of working parents had
more than one child care arrangement during the week, and the average
number of arrangements per child was 1.6. The primary child care arrange-
ment was defined as the arrangement used for the most hours per week.1
Average hours per week in the primary arrangement were 32.2, and total
hours in child care per week, including primary and other arrangements,
were 39.1.
Working parents traditionally often relied on relatives to care for their
children. Evidence suggests that the use of relatives for child care declined
during the last half of the 20th century as parents began to rely more on
family day care homes and child care centers (Hofferth et al., 1991; Uttal,
1999). However, in 1999, almost half the preschool children of working
mothers in the United States were cared for by relatives (48 percent) for
their primary arrangement (see Table 3-1). This included care by parents
(20 percent), grandparents (21 percent), and other relatives (7 percent). In
1999, a little more than half of the preschool children of employed mothers
(52 percent) were in some type of nonrelative care, including children in
day care centers, nursery schools, or kindergarten (31 percent), family day
care homes (11 percent), and nannies or babysitters in the child's home or
other nonrelative arrangements (10 percent).
Table 3-1 shows the distribution of primary child care arrangements of
preschool age children for families classified by various characteristics. The
proportion of children whose primary care arrangement is nonrelative care
and the distribution of children across types of care vary substantially by
household structure, education, race, ethnicity, nativity, income, location
of the household, age of the child, and job characteristics of the mother.
Unmarried mothers who were previously married use more nonrelative care
than do married mothers, particularly center care. In total, 56 percent of
their primary child care is in nonrelative arrangements compared with 53
percent for married mothers. This difference is probably due in part to lack
of availability of the spouse to provide child care while the mother is at
work.
Black mothers are about 7 percentage points more likely to use center
care than are whites, but blacks are less likely to use other forms of
nonrelative care than whites. Hispanic mothers are less likely to use center
care and family day care homes than whites. These patterns have been
noted in other data sources, and they persist when other household charac-
1When there were two (or more) arrangements with the same number of hours per week,
the primary arrangement was assigned in the following order of priority: center, family day
care home, school, organized before- or after-school activity, other nonrelative, grandparent,
other adult relative, sibling, mother while at work, child's other parent, self-care.
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44 WORKING FAMILIES AND GROWING KIDS
TABLE 3-1 Percentage Distribution of Employed Mothers' Primary
Child Care Arrangements for Children from Birth to Age 5, Spring 1999
Family
Demographic Day Other Grand- Other
Characteristic Center Care Nonrelative Parent parent Relative
All 31 11 10 20 21 7
Married 31 12 10 24 18 6
Widowed, divorced, 36 12 8 12 24 8
separated, married
spouse absent
Never married 28 8 10 11 32 11
White 32 14 9 22 18 5
Black 39 5 8 13 26 9
Hispanic 20 7 13 21 24 15
Other 24 3 7 20 40 7
Noncitizen 19 4 14 25 23 16
Native 32 12 9 20 20 6
Native citizen 28 7 9 15 33 8
< High school 24 5 10 15 23 20
High school 23 8 8 24 25 7
Some college 30 12 12 18 22 7
College graduate 36 16 9 20 15 3
Full time 33 13 10 15 21 7
Part time 25 8 8 31 21 8
Day shift 35 13 9 15 20 7
Nonday 19 5 10 33 24 9
< poverty 30 7 11 17 24 12
1-2 poverty 24 7 8 24 25 11
2+ poverty 34 13 10 20 19 5
Public assistance 33 8 9 10 30 11
No public 31 11 10 21 20 7
assisstance
Age 0 17 11 9 29 26 8
Age 1 19 14 14 22 25 7
Age 2 24 13 11 23 23 7
Age 3 27 12 8 20 23 11
Age 4 42 10 9 15 18 7
Age 5 51 7 7 15 14 5
South 37 10 8 15 23 7
Non-South 28 12 10 23 20 8
(continued)
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TRENDS IN THE CARE OF CHILDREN 45
TABLE 3-1 Continued
Family
Demographic Day Other Grand- Other
Characteristic Center Care Nonrelative Parent parent Relative
Metro 31 10 10 21 21 7
Nonmetro 30 17 10 16 20 8
NOTES: Data are weighted. Unweighted sample size is 3,066. Other nonrelative excludes
school and includes babysitters, nannies, and other unspecified nonrelatives. Hispanics are
excluded from the white, black, and other race categories. Public assistance includes Tempo-
rary Aid for Needy Families, food stamps, and other programs such as General Assistance
and SSI. Full time = 35+ hours each week in the month prior to the survey. Part time = 1-34
hours each week.
SOURCE: Tabulations from SIPP 1996 panel, wave 10 (Spring 1999).
teristics are held constant (see Blau and Hagy, 1998; Chaplin et al., 1999).
Nonnaturalized immigrants use less center care and family day care homes
than natives, but noncitizens use more care by other nonrelatives.
Use of center and family day care arrangements increases with the
mother's education. Only 24 percent of primary care arrangements for
children of employed high school dropouts were in centers, compared with
30 percent for college attendees and 36 percent for college graduates. Fam-
ily day care use rises from 5 percent for high school dropouts to 16 percent
for college graduates. More educated mothers may be more aware of the
potential benefits for child development of market child care and may be
better able to afford such care.
Nonrelative care is much more heavily used by mothers who work full
time (56 percent) rather than part time (40 percent), and by mothers who
work a day shift (58 percent) rather than some other work schedule (34
percent). The day/nonday difference is entirely due to higher use of centers
and family day care homes by day shift workers, and it is no doubt ex-
plained by the fact that many centers and family day care homes do not
offer care at nonday shift hours.2 The full-time/part-time difference is also
mainly in use of centers and family day care homes, and it is probably due
2Kisker et al. (1991:45) report that 10 percent of centers and 6 percent of regulated family
day care homes in the Profile of Child Care Settings (explained further in the section on child
care supply) sample offered weekend care, and 3 percent of centers and 13 percent of regu-
lated family day care homes offered evening care.
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46 WORKING FAMILIES AND GROWING KIDS
to the fact that relative care arrangements may be easier to make for a few
hours per day than for eight to nine hours per day.
Families with incomes below the poverty line use more center care than
families with incomes between one and two times the poverty line. This is
probably due to greater access to child care subsidies through the welfare
system. Families with incomes more than twice the poverty line also use
more center care than the poor and the near-poor. This is probably due to
the greater ability of higher-income families to pay for center care.
Overall use of nonrelative care increases sharply with the age of the
child after age 1, from 47 percent at age 1 to 65 percent at age 5. Most of
this increase is accounted for by center care, rising from 17 percent at age
zero to 51 percent at age 5. The developmental benefits of center care may
be perceived by parents to be strongest beginning at age 3, as children
approach school entry age. Moreover, families have fewer options for
nonrelative care when their children are infants and toddlers, or they may
prefer to have their very young children cared for by a family member given
the convenience, proximity, and reliability that they may feel is more easily
attainable using family members or friends (Folk and Yi, 1994).
Patterns of nonrelative care use across regions of the United States are
generally quite similar. The main exception is that center care is more
heavily used in the South than in other regions. This pattern has been
widely noted and has persisted over time (see Hofferth et al., 1991:Table
2.15; see also Capizzano et al., 2000a, for evidence on variation in child
care use across states). It is also the case that the rate of full-time employ-
ment by mothers of young children is higher in the South than in other
regions (Blau, 2001:Chapter 2, note 4), but the connection between these
two facts and the direction of causality are not clear. Patterns of nonrelative
care use across metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas are fairly similar.3
In summary, relative care is more often used by Hispanic families,
families with less education, families with a mother who works part time,
families with younger children, and families with lower incomes. Further-
more, working nonstandard hours is associated with a greater reliance on
relatives for child care (O'Connell, 1993; Casper, 1997; Casper and
O'Connell, 1998). Among married, dual-earner households, split-shift work
increases father participation in child care responsibilities, thus decreasing
child care costs and increasing parent involvement (Presser, 1994; Brayfield,
3SIPP has been collecting data on child care since 1985, so in principle it is possible to
examine trends in child care use over the period 1985-1999. However, there have been
several important changes in survey design that make comparisons over time difficult. Smith
(2002) shows trends in child care use in the SIPP data for children ages 0-4 (not 0-5, as in
Table 3-1) with employed mothers. The results show substantial fluctuation over time in the
use of nonrelative care (as defined here), with some suggestion of a decline in recent years.
OCR for page 47
TRENDS IN THE CARE OF CHILDREN 47
1995; Garey, 1999; Hoffman et al., 1999). Grandparents are particularly
involved in child care for single mothers who work nonstandard hours
(Presser, in press; see Hofferth et al., 1991, for similar findings on use of
relative care by Hispanics).
Finally, as noted earlier, 39 percent of preschoolers with employed
mothers had more than one child care arrangement: 28 percent had two
arrangements, and 12 percent had three or more arrangements. The per-
centage of children in multiple arrangements is especially high when moth-
ers work nonstandard hours; for example, 51 percent when mothers work
a rotating schedule (Presser, in press). In 1999, the majority (60 percent)
of secondary arrangements were in relative care, compared with 49 percent
of primary arrangements. Use of multiple arrangements is most common
when the primary arrangement is a parent (45 percent have a secondary
arrangement) or a center (48 percent). Average hours per week in second-
ary arrangements are 15.
School-Age Children
There were an estimated 35 million children in the United States ages 6
to 14 in spring 1999, of whom 22 million (63 percent) had an employed
mother. For the great majority of the children of employed mothers (80
percent), the primary child care arrangement was school. School serves as
a child care arrangement in most cases for six to seven hours per day during
the school year. As noted later, unsupervised care increases during the
summer months.
Table 3-2 classifies children ages 6 to 14 according to their primary
arrangement other than school. Arrangements for school-age children are
classified as center, nonrelative (including family day care homes), orga-
nized activities, parent, grandparent, other relative, and self-care. Orga-
nized activities include before- and after-school programs, lessons, sports,
and clubs. The distribution of primary nonschool arrangements for chil-
dren ages 6 to 14 was 5 percent in center care, 9 percent in nonrelative care,
12 percent in organized activities, 37 percent by parents, 14 percent by
grandparents, 12 percent by other relatives, and 12 percent by self-care.
Average hours per week in the primary care arrangement were 14.4, with
longer hours in centers and nonrelative care (21.4 and 18.8, respectively)
and shorter hours in organized activities (10.4). Average hours per week in
all arrangements other than school totaled 20.7. Thus, the typical school-
age child is in some kind of child care for a significant amount of time.
Use of the different types of child care for school-age children did not
vary much by marital status, but married mothers were more likely than
other mothers to use organized activities. This pattern appears throughout
the table: use of organized activities is higher for more advantaged families,
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
day care
48 WORKING FAMILIES AND GROWING KIDS
TABLE 3-2 Percentage Distribution of Employed Mothers' Primary
Child Care Arrangements Other Than School for Children Ages 6-14,
Spring 1999
Demographic Other Organized Grand- Other
Characteristic Center Nonrelative Activity Parent parent Relative Self
All 5 9 12 37 14 13 12
Married 5 8 12 42 10 11 12
Widowed, divorced 6 10 11 24 20 16 14
separated, married
spouse absent
Never married 5 11 10 22 26 19 8
White 5 8 13 39 11 11 14
Black 5 8 12 31 19 17 9
Hispanic 4 13 8 33 17 19 7
Other 4 9 8 37 19 13 10
Noncitizen 3 10 5 43 12 20 6
Native 5 9 13 36 13 12 13
Native citizen 8 13 8 38 14 12 7
< High school 3 8 6 37 14 24 8
High school 5 8 9 37 17 13 12
Some college 5 10 11 36 14 12 13
College graduate 6 9 18 37 9 9 13
Full time 6 10 11 32 15 14 13
Part time 2 7 12 49 11 11 9
Day shift 5 9 13 35 13 13 13
Nonday 3 9 8 44 16 13 7
TRENDS IN THE CARE OF CHILDREN 49
TABLE 3-2 Continued
Demographic Organized Grand- Other
Characteristic Center Nonrelative Activity Parent parent Relative Self
Metro 5 9 12 37 13 13 12
Nonmetro 3 9 12 36 14 14 13
NOTES: Data are weighted. Unweighted sample size is 6,489. Nonrelative includes family day care homes,
babysitters, nannies, and other unspecified nonrelatives. Hispanics are excluded from the white, black, and
other race categories. Public assistance includes Temporary Aid for Needy Families, food stamps, and other
programs such as General Assistance and SSI. Full time = 35+ hours each week in the month prior to the
survey. Part time = 1-34 hours each week.
SOURCE: Tabulations from SIPP 1996 panel, wave 10 (Spring 1999).
regardless of whether advantage is measured by marital status, race/
ethnicity, education, income, receipt of public assistance, or nativity.
Nonrelative care use for school-age children increases with the mother's
education, and the gap in the use of organized activities is especially large
by maternal education, with only 6 percent of high school dropouts com-
pared with 18 percent of college graduates using organized activities.
Nonrelative care is used more often by mothers who work full time (27
percent compared with 21 percent for part time) and by day shift workers
(27 percent compared with 19.7 percent for nonday shift workers). The
biggest differences that appear in the table are by the child's age, with 38
percent of 6-year-old children in nonrelative care, 27 percent of 10-year-old
children in nonrelative care, and 13 percent of 14-year-old children in
nonrelative care. These differences undoubtedly reflect parental percep-
tions of differences in children's needs and capabilities by age, as well as the
changing interests of children and the availability of appropriate programs
for those age groups.
Finally, self-care, or care without adult supervision, has been a major
policy concern for school-age children. According to the 1999 SIPP data,
the extent to which children spend at least some time caring for themselves
varies somewhat by family characteristics, although these differences are
small. For example, a higher proportion of children with married mothers
spend time in self-care (12 percent) than children of never-married women
(8 percent); white children spend more time in self-care (14 percent) than
black (9 percent) or Hispanic (7 percent) children; children of full-time
working mothers spend more time in self-care (13 percent) than children of
part-time working mothers (9 percent); and children with mothers working
the day shift spend more time in self-care (13 percent) than children with
mothers working nonday shifts (7 percent). The use of self-care varies more
by age of child than it does for family characteristics. For example, a third
50 WORKING FAMILIES AND GROWING KIDS
of 14-year-old children spent time in care without adult supervision com-
pared with less than 1 percent of 6-year-olds.
Overall, the data on self-care should be interpreted with caution. The
estimates of the number of children without adult supervision have varied
across reports and depends somewhat on the month the question is asked
(whether school is in session or not), the parents' interpretation of the term
"self-care," and the parents' willingness to admit that their children are left
home alone. For example, a study released by the Urban Institute based on
data from the 1999 National Survey of America's Families (Capizzano et
al., 2002) found that while 1 in 10 children under age 13 spent time alone,
these children spent twice as much time unsupervised in the summer than
during the school year.
CHILD CARE EXPENDITURES
In 1999, there were an estimated 21.8 million families with an em-
ployed mother and at least one child ages 0 to 14. Table 3-3 (first row)
shows that 43 percent of these families reported making a cash payment for
child care for at least one child. The average weekly payment for all child
care arrangements for all children among families that made any payment
was $76.4 The average percentage of family income spent on child care
was 7.5 percent, almost identical to the figures for 1997 and 1995 and up
slightly from 7.3 percent in 1993, 7.1 percent in 1991, 6.8 percent in 1988,
and 6.3 percent in 1986 (Smith, 2000).5 The fact that only 43 percent of
employed mothers paid for child care may seem surprising, but the rate of
use of nonrelative care by employed mothers of children, averaged over all
children ages 0 to 14, is 42.1 percent. The rate of use of paid care was 56.8
percent for families with children ages 0 to 5 only, and 31.1 percent for
families with children ages 6 to 14 only. The former group averaged $89
per week in child care expenditures (9 percent of family income), and the
latter group averaged $55 per week (5.3 percent).6
4 This is sharply lower than the average weekly payment of $85 reported in the 1995 SIPP
(Smith, 2000). This may be a result of the change from a fall interview in 1995 to a spring
(March-June) interview in 1999. Smith (2002) suggests that the spring interview period
includes months in which children were off from school and may not have been in their
regular arrangement.
5 The SIPP questions on child care expenditure are intended to measure out-of-pocket cash
expenditure by families. Since most child care subsidies do not take the form of cash, we can
be reasonably confident that subsidies are not included in reports of cash expenditure.
6 These payments include a variety of hours of care, ranging from less than five hours a
week to more than 40 hours a week. See Smith (2002) for a breakdown of payments by
different characteristics.
TRENDS IN THE CARE OF CHILDREN 51
of
% Income 5.3 3.7 9.3 9.8 4.5 7.5 8.5 5.8 7.0 4.1 2.9
(continued)
1999
Children
Spring with Weekly Expenditure 55 55 58 53 52 56 65 83 66 56 31
Only
Families 6-14 % Pay 31.1 31.9 22.5 28.1 33.0 24.2 31.3 24.6 43.7 31.0 16.9
Mother,
of
% Income 9.0 6.8 7.5 5.4 7.1
16.2 12.5 11.8 16.4 10.2
Employed
an
Children
with
89 95 90 69 92 73 89 83 98 74
with Weekly Expenditure
Only
Families Families 0-5 % Pay 56.1 58.0 63.5 48.4 61.4 45.4 48.0 38.4 54.7 58.3
in
of
% Income 7.5 5.6 6.3 7.3 7.7 7.0 4.1 2.9
12.4 13.1 10.6 11.5 10.1
Expenditure
Care
Weekly Expenditure 76 78 71 66 75 71 80 88 96 82 66 52 31
Child
Families
All % Pay 43.0 44.7 37.5 40.9 45.9 35.9 41.3 30.6 56.3 58.5 43.7 31.0 16.9
Family
child
Total
married
3-3 divorced
absent
married youngest
of
separated, spouse 0-2 3-5 6-8 9-11 12-14
TABLE Demographic Characteristic All Married Widowed, Never White Black Hispanic Other Age
52 WORKING FAMILIES AND GROWING KIDS
ies.
of
% Income 6.4 5.6 3.0 5.4 4.6 5.3 5.3 8.3 4.6 3.3 2.3 8.9 4.2 2.5
11.5 19.5
categor
race
Children
other
with Weekly Expenditure 62 57 54 54 59 42 56 50 50 52 61 74 52 58 48 57
and
Only
Families 6-14 % Pay 18.1 24.6 32.9 43.0 32.6 28.2 32.0 27.3 21.6 35.7 45.1 46.9 20.8 26.5 29.5 36.7 black,
white, week.
of the
% Income 9.9 8.2 6.6 8.6 5.7 8.4 7.6 6.5 5.0 7.2 5.0
19.2 11.8 11.5 22.2 11.9 each
from
hours
Children 1-34
excluded =
75 73 81 93 77 93 71 66 93 58 81 81
with Weekly Expenditure 111 126 147 106 are
time
Only
Families 0-5 Part
% Pay 49.4 50.2 54.8 65.5 63.9 41.1 62.5 38.1 46.5 65.1 69.9 71.3 51.0 47.9 57.4 62.2
Hispanics 1999).
survey.
of 5,864. the (Spring
% Income 8.5 7.4 5.1 7.2 6.2 7.3 8.5 6.1 5.0 3.6 5.9 3.9
15.2 10.5 22.8 10.6 is to 10
size
prior wave
sample
month panel,
Weekly Expenditure 73 67 71 88 79 63 79 63 64 73 97 65 70 67 84
108 the
in 1996
Families
Unweighted SIPP
All % Pay 30.0 36.7 43.6 55.7 45.8 37.5 45.3 35.2 34.7 48.3 56.0 57.4 35.1 36.3 43.2 49.0 week
each from
weighted.
Continued hours
are
3-3 35+
earnings Tabulations
school graduate 's Data =
income
school college
time time shift $18,000 $18,000 time
High < $18-35,999 $36-53,999 $54,000+ < $18-35,999 $36-53,999 $54,000+
TABLE Demographic Characteristic < High Some College Full Part Day Nonday Mother Family NOTES: Full SOURCE:
54 WORKING FAMILIES AND GROWING KIDS
the week or the month, then families using part-time care may be forced to
pay for a full-time slot. It is also possible that families seeking full-time care
choose less expensive care. The day/nonday shift differences are similar to
the full-time/part-time differences.
CHILD CARE SUPPLY
The simplest way to measure the supply of child care is to consider the
licensed capacity of existing day care centers and family day care homes.
However, this approach is problematic for our purposes for several rea-
sons. First, many family day care homes and some centers and preschools
are legally exempt from licensing and registration requirements, and there-
fore they are not found in state licensing lists. Second, the availability of
babysitters, nannies, and relatives cannot be estimated in this manner.
Third, licensed capacity does not distinguish between care provided during
working and nonworking hours of employed mothers. Fourth, and most
important, licensed capacity is a short-run measure that reflects the existing
level of demand as well as supply. Should demand for nonrelative care rise
in the future, one would expect licensed capacity to increase as well, through
expansion of existing facilities and entry of new establishments.
Bearing in mind the shortcomings of licensed capacity as a measure of
supply, the following data provide an overview of the supply of nonrelative
care. The Profile of Child Care Settings (PCS) survey of day care centers
and regulated family day care homes estimated that in 1990 there were
80,072 day care centers with a licensed capacity of 5,333,067 children; and
117,995 registered family day care homes with a licensed capacity of
859,506 children (Kisker et al., 1991). The National Child Care Survey
(NCCS) of 1990 estimated that 6,104,000 children under 13 were enrolled
in a day care center in 1990 for their primary child care arrangement
(Hofferth et al., 1991).7 The excess of enrollment over licensed capacity
7The PCS was a telephone survey of a sample of centers and family day care homes drawn
from state lists of licensed facilities. A stratified random sample of counties was selected
(with probability proportional to the number of children under age 5), and a stratified ran-
dom sample of early education and care providers was drawn from the licensing list for each
county. Counties were stratified by region, metropolitan status, and poverty level. Providers
were stratified by whether they were home-based, Head Start, public school-based, or other
center-based. The PCS data are over ten years old, but there have not been any nationally
representative surveys of providers since the PCS. The data from the PCS should be inter-
preted with the caveat that we do not know whether the patterns documented in 1990 have
changed significantly. Failure to regularly collect data on providers is a significant shortcom-
ing of the U.S. child care data collection system, as we discuss in Chapter 9 of this report.
The NCCS was a telephone survey of households with children under age 13 located in the
same counties drawn for the PCS survey. The sample was selected randomly from telephone
numbers in the selected counties.
TRENDS IN THE CARE OF CHILDREN 55
may be accounted for by day care centers and preschools exempt from
licensing. The NCCS also estimated that in 1990 3,193,000 children were
enrolled in a family day care home as the primary child care arrangement.
The large difference in this case between licensed capacity and enrollment
undoubtedly reflects the fact that a large majority of family day care homes
are believed to be unlicensed (National Research Council, 1990). A total of
37 percent of centers were for profit, of which 28 percent were independent
and 9 percent were part of a national or local chain. Of the 63 percent of
nonprofit centers, 6 percent were Head Start programs, 7 percent were
based in public schools, 18 percent were religious-sponsored, 7 percent
were sponsored by other groups (government agencies, community agen-
cies, employers, etc.), and the remaining 25 percent were independent.
These data are more than 12 years old, and there has not been a more
recent national data collection that would reflect current licensed capacity.
More recent data collected by the Children's Foundation (CF) indicate
that there were 113,506 licensed day care centers in 2001, and 306,246
regulated family day care homes (Children's Foundation, 2002). However,
the Children's Foundation does not provide data on licensed capacity. It
has gathered data for over a decade on the number of centers listed with
licensing agencies, and its figures for 1990-1991 can be compared with data
from the PCS. The Children's Foundation estimate of the number of cen-
ters in 1991 was 86,212, compared with an estimate of 80,072 by the PCS
in 1990. This is a reasonably close correspondence. However, the
Children's Foundation figure for family day care homes in 1990 was
223,351, much larger than the PCS estimate of 117,995. The reason for
this large discrepancy is unclear.
Another source of information on availability of child care is the Cen-
sus of Services, conducted every five years by the U.S. Census Bureau. The
1997 Census of Services found a total of 62,054 day care centers (establish-
ments with payroll), which is only about two-thirds the 97,046 figure for
1997 from the Children's Foundation (U.S. Census Bureau, 2002b). The
1992 Census of Services estimated 489,054 family day care homes (estab-
lishments without payroll), compared with 265,347 in the Children's Foun-
dation 1992 survey. The former figure applies to all family day care homes,
while the latter refers only to regulated homes. The large differences across
sources in estimates of the number of centers and family day care homes as
well as the absence of recent information on licensed capacity illustrate the
problems in measuring availability of private child care, thus making it
difficult to draw any firm conclusions about the availability of private child
care services.
Yet another source of information related to the supply of child care is
the recent estimate of the size and components of the U.S. Child Care
Workforce and Caregiving Population conducted by the Center for the
56 WORKING FAMILIES AND GROWING KIDS
Child Care Workforce and the Human Services Policy Center at the Univer-
sity of Washington (May 2002), which was funded by the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services. Focusing on paid caregivers for children
ages 0 to 5, the study estimates that there are 2.3 million such caregivers in
the United States at a single point in time, including 550,000 (24 percent)
working in child care centers, 650,000 (28 percent) providing family day
care, 804,000 (35 percent) functioning as paid relatives other than family
day care providers, and 298,000 (13 percent) as paid nonrelatives other
than those working in centers or family day care programs (i.e., nannies).
In addition to the paid child care workforce, the study estimated that
approximately 2.4 million individuals provide unpaid child care during a
given week. Most (93 percent) of these individuals are unpaid relatives,
and the remainder are volunteers in centers or unpaid, nonrelative
caregivers.
No current national data track how much time and effort working
families spend trying to find child care at a price they are able to pay.
Several recent reports (U.S. General Accounting Office, 1997; Mezey et al.,
2002) suggest, as would be expected and is implied by data reported earlier
in this chapter, that the lack of adequate supply is especially trying for
parents of infants and toddlers, for children with special needs, for older
schoolchildren, and for children of families working nonstandard hours. It
is important that the requisite data be collected for the nation on a regular
basis.
CHILD CARE QUALITY
Two main approaches have been used to characterize the quality of
child care. One is based on structural features of the child care setting that
are thought to affect the developmental appropriateness of the care for
children. These features include the size of the group in which care is
provided, the ratio of adult caregivers to children, the overall education
level and specialized early childhood education and training of the provid-
ers, and the stability of the setting as measured by the turnover rate of the
care providers. The other approach to measuring quality uses direct obser-
vation of the developmental appropriateness of the care received, as re-
corded by trained observers using standardized instruments. The ratings
made by the observers are subjective in the sense that the observer makes a
judgment about where on a given ordinal scale a child care setting lies (for
example, a 1-7 ordinal scale or a "not at all," "somewhat," or "highly"
characteristic scale). However, raters can be trained to produce ratings that
are highly correlated with ratings of the same settings by other observers.
And these process measures are believed to be more directly related than
structural measures to child outcomes of interest.
TRENDS IN THE CARE OF CHILDREN 57
The most recent nationally representative data on the structural mea-
sures are from 1990, and no nationally representative data are available on
the process measures. Once again, failure to collect such data is a signifi-
cant shortcoming of the child care data collection system in the United
States. Here, we summarize the available information on quality.
The Profile of Child Care Settings (Kisker et al., 1991) collected infor-
mation on structural classroom characteristics from a nationally represen-
tative sample of child care centers and regulated family day care homes
through a telephone survey in 1990. There are limitations to telephone
surveys for the purpose of measuring the structural characteristics, com-
pared with recording them by direct on-site observation. Child care class-
rooms are in flux during the day, with groups often changing composition
and merging with other groups for some activities for part of the day and
teachers moving among classrooms (Helburn, 1995). The PCS telephone
survey provided a static snapshot of a typical period during the day, but it
did not capture the dynamics of classroom composition throughout the
day. Nevertheless, these data provide a useful overview of the distribution
of quality characteristics. It is also important to bear in mind that regulated
family day care homes are unlikely to be representative of unregulated day
care homes, and that the latter are thought to be far more numerous than
the former.
Table 3-4 summarizes characteristics of centers and family day care
homes (see Kisker et al., 1991, for more details). Average group size was 16
in centers and 7 in regulated homes. Group size increased with the age of
children in centers, but not in family day care homes. The average group
size in centers was 7 for infants, 10 for 1-year-olds, 12 for 2-year-olds, and
17 for 3- to 5-year-olds, which were within the range of maximum group
size recommended by the National Association for the Education of Young
Children (NAEYC) (see National Research Council, 1990) at that time.
The average child-staff ratio was 9:1 in centers and 6:1 in regulated homes.
The ratio of 4:1 for infants was at the high end of the range recommended
by NAEYC at that time, and the ratios of 6.2:1 for 1-year-olds and 7.3:1
for 2-year-olds exceeded the NAEYC recommended ranges for these age
groups. The average of 9.9 for 3- to 5-year-old children was at the high end
of the NAEYC recommended level. The great majority of children in
centers are 3 to 5 years old, so the majority of classrooms were (barely)
within the range recommended by NAEYC.
The annual turnover rate of teachers reported by centers was 25 per-
cent (half the centers in the sample reported no turnover, and the other half
reported turnover averaging 50 percent annually). With regard to educa-
tion of the teachers, almost half (47 percent) had a four-year degree, 39
percent had some college education, 13 percent had a high school diploma
or graduate equivalency degree (GED), and there were virtually no high
58 WORKING FAMILIES AND GROWING KIDS
TABLE 3-4 Characteristics of Day Care Centers and Regulated Family
Day Care Homes, 1990
Regulated Family
Characteristic Day Care Centers Day Care Homes
Average group sizea 16 7
Infants only 7 7
1-year-olds only 10 7
2-year-olds only 12 7
3-5-year-olds only 17 8
Average child-staff ratioa 9 6
Infants only 4 6
1-year-olds only 6 6
2-year-olds only 7 6
3-5-year-olds only 10 7
Annual rate of teacher turnover 25%
Percentage of centers with any turnover 50%
Turnover rate in centers with turnover 50%
Average percentage of teachers with:
At least a BA/BS degree 47% 11%
Some college 39% 44%
High school degree or GED 13% 34%
No degree or GED 1% 11%
Percentage of teachers who have had:b
CDA training 25% 6%
Teacher training 35%
Other education training 40%
Child care workshops or courses 54% 43%
Child development or psychology courses 36% 28%
Nurse or health training 26%
Training by a R&R or government agency 5% 5%
Social service training 4% 2%
Other training 6%
aExcludes programs that serve primarily handicapped children.
bThe training information for center refers only to private, nonreligious-sponsored centers.
SOURCE: Kisker et al. (1991).
school dropouts (1 percent). Operators of regulated family day care homes
had much less education, with only 11 percent having graduated from
college, 40 percent with some college education, 34 percent with a high
school diploma or GED, and 16 percent who were high school dropouts.
Specialized training in early education, child development, or child care is
also more common among center staff than in family day care homes. One-
quarter of day care center teachers had earned a child development associ-
TRENDS IN THE CARE OF CHILDREN 59
ate (CDA) credential, compared with only 6 percent of family day care
home operators.
Many studies (summarized in National Research Council and Institute
of Medicine, 2000) have found that more formal education and specialized
training for caregivers, a higher ratio of caregivers to children in their care,
and lower caregiver turnover rates are, other things being equal, associated
with a higher quality experience for children. Whether these correlations
represent causal effects is uncertain, but it is likely that better working
conditions, including higher wages and smaller group size, attract caregivers
with more formal education and specialized training, and the associated
better outcomes for children are the result.
As indicated earlier, there are no nationally representative samples of
child care centers with measures of process quality. Two studies with
reasonable sample sizes have measured process quality in site-specific
samples of child care centers that may be representative of centers in the
selected sites.8 The Cost, Quality, and Outcomes (CQO) study and the
National Child Care Staffing Study used the same instruments to rate qual-
ity--the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) and its in-
fant-toddler counterpart (ITERS). These instruments take about three hours
to complete and rate each observed classroom on 30 to 35 items using a
scale of 1 to 7 for each item. As a guide to the intended interpretation of the
scores, ratings of 1, 3, 5, and 7 are designated by the instrument designers
as representing inadequate, minimal, good, and excellent care, respectively
(see Harms and Clifford et al., 1980, and Harms et al., 1990). Summary
scores are obtained by averaging over the items. Table 3-5 presents descrip-
tive statistics on quality ratings in day care centers from these two studies
by site, age of children in the classroom, and the auspices of the center (for
profit or nonprofit).
It is important to bear in mind that the samples in these two studies are
drawn from a small number of states, and while they are likely to be
reasonably well representative of centers in those states, we have no way to
determine whether they are nationally representative. The overall average
rating in both studies is just under 4, or about halfway between minimal
and good. The authors of the CQO report refer to this level of quality as
"mediocre" (Helburn, 1995). Quality varies substantially across locations,
with the highest quality sites (Boston, California, Connecticut) rated almost
a full point above the lowest quality sites (Atlanta, North Carolina, Seattle).
Classrooms with preschool-age children are almost always rated to be of
higher quality than infant-toddler rooms, by a fairly wide margin in the
8A third study, discussed below, is based on a sample of children and consists of the
centers and all other child care arrangements in which the sample children were enrolled.
60
the the
of scale and
the for ITERS
Staffing
(1.07) (1.07) (1.04) (1.13) (1.02) (1.07) (1.05) (0.72) (1.45) (0.97) (0.96)
by and underlying same CQO
Care
Infant-Toddler 3.57 3.60 3.66 3.85 3.29 4.09 3.89 4.51 3.69 4.48 3.63 centers the the the
description of
Standard 227 ECERS has
Child
for in
This between
Measured
(and analysis
as (0.96) (0.97) (0.89) (0.99) (0.95) (0.97) (0.87) (0.61) (1.40) (0.89) (0.73) (1989)
individual National
al. factor
Mean Nonprofit Preschool 4.41 4.66 4.25 4.33 4.31 4.39 4.30 4.72 4.14 4.79 3.99 et classrooms the measures. the
on comparisons
Centers 665 from and
so
Scales: (1993) (1989) and scores summary
Care Whitebook
the derived (CQO)
study two
Study (1.02) (0.70) (0.89) (1.07) (0.60) Study (0.98) (0.86) (0.57) (1.37) (0.83) (1.06) and
Day differently,
Rating the Study
in Infant-Toddler 3.33 3.86 3.40 4.00 2.54 3.43 3.04 3.16 3.86 3.84 3.37 CQO include
Study, measures of
Staffing the not derived
Outcomes
CQO for
does average was Outcomes
Quality and Care
the summary
(0.99) (0.88) (0.85) (1.02) (0.83) (0.90) (0.84) (0.86) (1.04) (0.75) (0.86) but and
Environment Profit of centers two
Care Child NCCSS
For Preschool 4.07 4.27 4.09 4.46 3.28 3.59 3.32 3.66 4.23 3.74 3.30
Quality, 401 CQO
the unweighted
in Quality,
the
Child includes the
Toddler description
Cost, National from it
of are
for set from Cost,
(1.07) (0.96) (0.95) (1.05) (1.08) (0.99) (0.96) (0.72) (1.24) (0.90) (0.84) caution. the
Infant Centers classrooms here
data Rather, scores
(1995)
All 3.99 4.36 3.94 4.24 3.44 3.92 3.57 4.44 3.96 4.09 3.62 with from
731
and al. is
et release score.
presented ITERS
Distribution made
size
Cryer and be
public average
3-5 figures Tabulations
See
Childhood Sample The the
Carolina should
or The ECERS (NCCSS).
Sites Sites the
TABLE Early Deviation) All California Colorado Connecticut North All Atlanta Boston Detroit Phoenix Seattle NOTES: NCCSS. NCCSS. items items. as NCCSS SOURCES: Study
TRENDS IN THE CARE OF CHILDREN 61
CQO data.9 With only a few exceptions, nonprofit centers received higher
average quality ratings than for-profit ones.10
The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has
been leading a longitudinal Study of Early Child Care (SECC) since the
early 1990s. This study selected a sample of births in hospitals in 10 sites
around the United States and has been following the children and their
families ever since. Among other features of the study, the child care
arrangements in which the study children were enrolled were visited and
assessed for quality. Because this study was not limited to centers, a new
quality assessment instrument was developed that could be used in a variety
of different settings. This instrument, known as the Observational Record
of the Caregiving Environment (ORCE), focuses on the caregiver's interac-
tion with the study child, rather than on the overall quality of the arrange-
ment. Like the ECERS and the ITERS, the ORCE takes about three hours
to administer, and the final score is an average over the various observa-
tions during the recording period. The scale for this instrument is 1 to 4,
with 1 indicating that a particular dimension of positive caregiving was
"not at all characteristic," 2 indicating "somewhat uncharacteristic," 3,
"somewhat characteristic," and 4, "highly characteristic."
Table 3-6 summarizes the distribution of ORCE scores at three differ-
ent observation ages--15, 24, and 36 months--separately by type of child
care arrangement (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2000a).
The most striking feature of the data is the relatively low quality of centers
and family day care homes compared with care by the father, grandparent,
or in-home babysitter. At age 15 months, positive caregiving is somewhat
or highly characteristic of 28 percent of centers and 50 percent of family
day care homes compared with 60 to 71 percent of fathers, grandparents,
and in-home babysitters. The quality of the more informal types of care
9The ECERS and ITERS instruments are similar but not identical. It is not clear whether
quality differences by age of children in the classroom are real or reflect different scales of the
instruments.
10There is little systematic information on process quality in family day care homes. Kontos
et al. (1995) studied about 200 family day care homes and relatives providing child care.
They concluded that the majority of providers were providing care of adequate quality, about
one third were providing inadequate quality care, and only 9 percent were providing good
quality care.
There is no published breakdown of quality by family characteristics in the CQO study.
The NCCSS reported some quality breakdowns by a measure of socioeconomic status (SES)
of the families, as reported by the center director. This is not a very useful measure, because
directors were not given any instructions on how to define SES. Quality tends to be highest in
centers reporting the highest family SES, lowest in the middle SES, and in-between for centers
reporting the lowest SES (many of which are Head Start or other heavily subsidized pro-
grams).
62 WORKING FAMILIES AND GROWING KIDS
TABLE 3-6 Percentage Distribution of Observed Positive Caregiving in
the NICHD Study of Early Child Care
Positive Caregiving Rating
Not at all Somewhat Somewhat Highly
Child Age Characteristic Uncharacteristic Characteristic Characteristic
15 months
Father 5 36 35 25
Grandparent 5 24 46 25
In-home 3 36 37 24
Family day care 7 44 34 16
Center 10 62 23 5
24 months
Father 5 45 30 20
Grandparent 5 31 49 15
In-home 8 34 34 24
Family day care 9 50 28 14
Center 11 66 19 4
36 months
Father 5 48 37 10
Grandparent 2 53 37 8
In-home 5 39 45 12
Family day care 2 63 29 5
Center 4 62 30 3
NOTES: The ORCE instrument has a rating scale of 1-4. The ratings here are based on
averages over several time periods, with the following assignments: not at all characteristic =
mean rating < 2; somewhat uncharacteristic = mean rating 2 to < 3; somewhat characteristic =
mean rating 3 to < 3.5; highly characteristic = mean rating = 3.5.
SOURCE: NICHD Early Child Care Research Network (2000a:Table 5).
declines with the age of the children, as does the quality of family day care,
while the quality of centers is lower at 24 than at 15 months but higher at
36 months than at either 15 or 24 months. By age 36 months, positive
caregiving is somewhat or highly characteristic of 33 percent of centers and
34 percent of family day care homes compared with 47 percent of fathers,
45 percent of grandparents, and 56 percent of in-home babysitters. This
differential may be due to the fact that the ORCE instrument emphasizes
responsiveness to the individual child, and thus it might tend to produce
higher quality ratings in small groups or individual care settings. It is
important to emphasize that the figures presented in Table 3-6 are averages,
and that there is substantial variation in quality within each type of care.
This is illustrated for centers in Table 3-5 by the fact that the standard
TRENDS IN THE CARE OF CHILDREN 63
deviations within states and within type of child care center are on average
about one point on a seven point scale.
SUMMARY
The evidence reviewed in this chapter highlights several important find-
ings. The type of child care used by parents in the United States is very
diverse in terms of setting, quality, and cost. Child care settings range from
institutional arrangements, such as child care centers and preschools, to
smaller family day care homes and in-home arrangements, with one adult
hired to care for one child, to relative care. Child care is very diverse in
quality, both within and across types of arrangements. About 56 percent of
employed-mother families with preschool-age children only and 31 percent
of families with older children only pay for child care. Among families that
pay for child care, in 1999, the average percentage of family income spent
on child care was 7.5 percent, for families with preschool age children only
it was 9 percent, and it was 5.3 percent for families with school-age chil-
dren. However, while low-income families are less likely to pay for care,
child care is a major expenditure for those families who do pay, consuming
about 23 percent of family income for families with annual incomes under
$18,000. The average quality of child care in centers has been character-
ized as "mediocre," and the quality of child care by relatives, in-home
babysitters, and other informal providers has not been highly rated either
(Kontos et al., 1995).
Three implications of this portrait of child care are important for child
development and public policy. First, the child care market has grown
rapidly in the last 20 to 25 years, and many children and adolescents are
spending many hours in the care of someone other than their parent.
Nonrelative care is now the dominant source of child care in the United
States, although relatives still play an important role in the care of children,
particularly while they are very young. With regard to child care centers,
the for-profit sector has grown the most rapidly. Thus the context in which
public policy about child care will be made in the United States for the
foreseeable future will in all likelihood include continued heavy reliance on
a range of providers, rather than on a single delivery system. Most propos-
als for reform of public policy about child care are based on the presump-
tion that the bulk of child care in the United States will continue to be
provided though this diverse delivery system, perhaps with greater subsidies
from the public sector (e.g., Barnett, 1993; Helburn and Bergmann, 2002;
Blau, 2001; Gormley, 1995; Walker, 1996; Lombardi, 2003). New combi-
nations of financing child care are emerging, which build public supports
into the child care that is delivered in a variety of child care settings (Vast,
1998; Stoney, 1998; Lombardi, 2003). While these new financing strate-
64 WORKING FAMILIES AND GROWING KIDS
gies are promising, they are currently too small in scale to address the large
amount of additional financing that may be needed to address problems in
the child care market.
Second, the major federal welfare reform of 1996 required or induced
many low-income mothers to enter the labor market. Some of the reforms
discussed during the debate over reauthorization of federal welfare legisla-
tion in 2002 would impose even stricter work requirements for participa-
tion in welfare. Child care during the mother's work hours is crucial for a
successful transition from welfare to work. While many low-income moth-
ers are able to find child care at no monetary cost from relatives and other
sources, many other low-income mothers who do pay for child care spend
a large fraction of their income on such care. The welfare reform of 1996
increased funding for child care subsidies, but the amount of child care
subsidy funds available remains much lower than the amount that would be
needed to serve the population eligible under the federal child care subsidy
program. Thus an important implication is that funding for public child
care subsidies may have to increase substantially if low-income families are
to participate in the private market for child care in the new welfare envi-
ronment. Chapter 9 discusses further the importance of expanding public
subsidies for child care.
Finally, the quality of child care is likely to have important conse-
quences for the development of young children. A substantial amount of
research on the impact of child care quality on development indicates that
there is an effect, although the size of the effect is variable. The fact that the
average quality of child care is mediocre in day care centers thus warrants
concern. More generally, the lack of data on child care quality from a
nationally representative sample of child care arrangements makes it diffi-
cult to draw firm conclusions about the adequacy of child care quality in
the United States, although indicators of structural aspects of quality raise
serious concerns. Given the mediocre average for centers in large-scale but
local studies, we are reasonably confident that a substantial portion of
center care is in fact of minimal or inadequate quality. The child develop-
ment literature does not provide clear guidance on the threshold, if any,
below which child care quality becomes a serious risk to the development of
children. But it seems safe to conclude that low quality is potentially an
important concern in the child care market in the United States. Moreover,
given the amount of time that children are spending in care, including a
growing number of very young children, child care provides an important
opportunity to promote their healthy development and overall well-being
(Lombardi, 2003).
