Early Care and Education for Children in Low-Income Families
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Abstract
Use of early care and education (ECE) is a reality for many families with young children. Research
shows the importance of the early years for children’s development, and suggests that high-quality
ECE can be particularly important for children from low-income families. In addition, the U.S.
invests billions to support ECE. This paper assesses the patterns of ECE utilization by low-income
families, the implications for children's development of the extent and quality of ECE participation,
the evidence on the quality of ECE that low-income children receive, and the policy context that
shapes ECE. It concludes by laying out key policy considerations.
Executive Summary
Early care and education has become a reality for many young children in America as increasing
proportions of families have working parents. At the same time, a growing body of research shows
the importance of the early years for children’s future development, with some findings indicating
that high-quality early care and education can be particularly important for the development of
children in lowincome families. In addition, the United States is investing billions in public
funds to support early care and education with a particular emphasis on children in lowincome families.
The convergence of these realities suggests that this is an opportune time to assess what we know
about the patterns of usage and the quality of care that children in low-income families receive.
This paper focuses on these issues, with the goal of informing the policy discussion about supporting
the development of children in low-income families before they enter school.
Key Findings
This paper describes what is known in four key areas—each of which is summarized below.
Early Care and Education Usage Patterns of Children from Low-Income Families
Participation in early care and education settings is common for children from lowincome families. More
than half of children younger than 6 in low-income families are regularly in early care and education
settings. More than a third of all children in low-income families in this age group are in such
settings for more than 15 hours a week. Children in low-income families are found in all types
of care, including center-based arrangements, family child care, and care by relatives and nonrelatives
in home settings. More than a third are in more than one arrangement regularly.
Patterns of early care and education differ for families with higher and lower incomes. Children
younger than 5 in low-income families with employed mothers are slightly less likely to be in early
care and education settings overall. They are also less likely to be in center-based care than
their higher-income counterparts, and more likely to be in relative care. Child care patterns also
differ by age, parental marital and work status, and race or ethnicity.
The use of particular early care and education arrangements reflects access to different arrangements
as well as family preferences and constraints. Some factors that play a role in type of
care used include the family’s financial situation and access to child care subsidies;
the employment status and schedules of parent(s); whether another parent or relative can provide
care; the supply, cost, and quality of different care options available in the community or near
parents’
employment; access to information about care options; the location of the care and the availability
of transportation; parents’ preferences and the care they are comfortable with for the child;
and special needs of the child or children.
The Quality of Early Care and Education and Children’s Development
There is consistent evidence of a link between the quality of early care and education
and children’s development. This research is based both on findings of an association
between quality and child outcomes in the range of market-based early care and education settings
available in communities and upon evaluations showing impacts of participation in high quality
early care and education programs on child outcomes. For example,
- Research on market-based early care and education settings concludes that measures of quality
are consistently linked with children’s observed behavior while in the care setting as
well as with concurrent measures of the children’s development.. Linkages, while quite
consistent, are clearly smaller than the associations between family factors and children’s
development.
- There is also evidence that the quality of early care and education predicts children’s
later development, including their early progress in school.
- Some findings indicate that the quality of early care and education may be of greater importance
to children at risk for poor developmental outcomes.
- Rigorous evaluations of high-quality early childhood interventions indicate enduring effects
on key outcomes, with long-term follow-up studies showing impacts continuing into adolescence
and early adulthood. While these studies have generally focused on small, tightly controlled
demonstration programs, the evaluation of Head Start, involving a representative sample of programs
nationwide, indicates positive (albeit small) program impacts for 3- and 4-yearolds on outcomes
in different areas of development. A follow-up study of the Head Start Impact Study is currently
examining whether Head Start, too, has longer-term impacts and whether patterns of outcomes vary
in light of program quality.
Recent studies find that the type of care and extent of care also are important for children’s
development even after controlling for quality. In particular, children who participate
in more center-based care in their early years have been found to score higher on measures of
language and cognitive development. Children who spend more time in center care are also found
to be more engaged socially but to have more conflict with peers. In addition, children with
more extensive exposure to child care (i.e., more hours spent in care) over the first years of
life have been reported by mothers and teachers to show less positive social behavior.
Recent analyses have examined whether these patterns occur across major demographic subgroups.
Findings suggest that the pattern of less positive social behavior for children who participate
in more hours of nonparental care (controlling for type of care) does not differ based on family
income. That is, more hours in care are associated with less optimal social behavior for both low-
and high-income children. In addition, these recent analyses provide indications that while participation
in center-based care appears to boost cognitive scores at kindergarten entry for low-income children,
it may not influence their academic growth through early elementary school, emphasizing the importance
of both early and ongoing family and school experiences.
The Quality of Early Care and Education for Children from Low-Income Families
While we lack nationally representative data on child care quality, large-scale studies in
differing geographical regions suggest that overall (setting aside the issue of family income),
much of the care in the United States falls below a rating of
“good” on widely used observational measures. Further, different studies suggest
that about 10 to 20 percent of market-based child care settings have low overall ratings of quality,
and may be potentially harmful to children’s development.
We also lack a national picture of the quality of the market-based child care that children
from low-income families receive. Some studies, however, raise the possibility of lower
quality for segments of this care:
- A substantial proportion of children in low-income families participate in care provided by
family, friends, and neighbors in legally unregulated home-based settings. There are important
questions about the adequacy of existing observational measures to capture the quality of such
settings. For example, existing measures do not capture the tendency of such settings to permit
greater continuity between home and child care in language and culture, the forms of support
such settings provide to parents beyond the provision of child care, or the continuity of such
arrangements and therefore caregiver-child relationships over time. While acknowledging these
limitations with measures of quality, it is important to note that several observational studies
have found unregulated home-based care of lower quality than regulated home-based settings in
which low-income children participate. Studies question specific aspects of quality, such as
prolonged exposure to television, missed opportunities for learning, and health and safety issues.
- Research suggests that market-based center-based care is not uniformly of high quality as noted
above, and quality in centers may be lower for children from low-income families.
- A growing body of work looking at market-based care serving subsidized children provides mixed
results. Some studies indicate that child care settings serving families using subsidies are
similar to those in the overall market, and other studies indicate that they are of lower quality
on some indicators.
Studies indicate that the quality of program-based early care and education settings such
as Head Start and state prekindergarten differs by program type. Program-based early care
and education settings such as Head Start and state prekindergarten generally have stronger quality
standards as a condition of funding, though studies suggest that the quality of these settings
varies. In particular, studies of nationally representative samples of Head Start programs have
found that, on average, they are of good quality. However, though state prekindergarten programs
are generally strong on such structural characteristics as teacher qualifications and child-teacher
ratios, a study of prekindergarten classrooms in multiple states found that their average observed
quality scores fell below a rating of “good.” Some research indicates that the overall
quality of prekindergarten programs is even lower when classrooms have mostly children from low-income
families.
Children from low-income families may be more likely to experience changes in early care
and education arrangements. Frequent changes in arrangements or caregivers are assumed
to have negative implications for children’s outcomes, as stable and caring relationships
with adults are key for healthy child development. A recent review of research suggests that
children from low-income families and children in families receiving welfare may be more likely
than other children to experience changes in their early care and education arrangements.
The Policy Context that Shapes the Quality of Early Care and Education Settings
Public policies that affect the quality of early care and education tend to focus primarily
on one of three goals—supporting parental work, supporting children’s development
through access to early care and education programs with specific quality standards, or supporting
the quality or supply of market-based settings. While these goals are not mutually exclusive,
many federal and state efforts tend to focus more on one than another, with relatively few focusing
on multiple goals:
- Help low-income parents work. Policies and programs in this area focus primarily on
helping low-income parents work by providing subsidies—usually in the form of vouchers—to
defray some or all of the costs of market-based early care and education settings, with less
of a focus on affecting the quality of care that is purchased. These are primarily funded through
the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF).
- Provide early care and education services to children in low-income families to help prepare
them for school. These services are mostly targeted to 4-year-old children, with some
going to 3-year-olds and a little funding (through the Early Head Start program) to children
age 0–2. Most of these initiatives are targeted to lower-income children. These initiatives
include Head Start, Early Head Early Care and Education for Children in Low-Income Families
ix Start, and state prekindergarten programs. Generally these programs are not targeted to
the children of working parents, and they vary in the extent to which they match with parent
work schedules.
- Supporting the quality of market-based early education and care settings through various
initiatives and strategies. States use a number of strategies to support the quality of
market-based early care and education settings, primarily through a combination of state and
federal (largely CCDF) funds. For example, states support training and education for providers,
access to health and safety consultation, quality rating systems that give consumers information
on the quality of child care settings, activities around infants and toddlers, and Child Care
Resource and Referral (CCR&R) services. States are also primarily responsible for state
licensing activities, which focus on setting a floor of quality below which programs cannot
legally operate. While states have used these funds in ways that research indicates are important
to overall quality, the level of funding is relatively small in comparison to the size of the
overall market the funds are designed to affect.
The paper concludes by encouraging the consideration of policy approaches that simultaneously
support parents’ employment and children’s development; support quality in the range
of early care and education settings in which children from low-income families participate; focus
on the full period from birth to entry into school; and help address barriers to participation
in high-quality early care and education settings for families at greatest risk.
(End of excerpt. The complete report is available in PDF format.)
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