Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education (2018) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
4 Current Financing for Early Care and Education: Affordability and Equitable Access (Principle 2)
4 Current Financing for Early Care and Education: Affordability and Equitable Access (Principle 2)
Pages 115-134
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 115... ...
Next, the chapter discusses the adequacy of current financing to support access to high-quality early care and education and assesses whether the structure of provideroriented and family-oriented financing mechanisms support equitable access to high-quality early care and education for all children from birth to kindergarten entry. CURRENT ECE USAGE AND AFFORDABILITY FOR FAMILIES Families' current ECE usage patterns reflect the programs, costs, subsidies, and quality of currently available early care and education.
|
From page 116... ...
Still other families cannot find available nonparental care that meets their needs. For example, available and affordable ECE programs may only offer half-day programs that do not meet the needs of parents with full-time jobs, while some families live in areas that have a low supply of ECE programs or long waiting lists for the available programs.
|
From page 117... ...
Rural areas and those with lower aver age incomes tend to have fewer ECE providers (Cochi Ficano, 2006; Gordon and Chase-Lansdale, 2001; Hofferth and Wissoker, 1992)
|
From page 118... ...
SOURCE: Based on Latham (2017) , using data from the 2012 National Survey of Early Care and Education Public Data Set.
|
From page 119... ...
(National Survey of Early Care and Education Project Team, 2015d) , supports the view that many low- and moderate-income families would use center-based care but currently cannot afford to do so.
|
From page 120... ...
Nonetheless, comparing the utilization rates for paid care and center-based care across income levels provides information about the shortcomings of the current ECE financing system in the United States. The results suggest that families with lower incomes likely would increase their use of early care and education if it were more affordable.
|
From page 121... ...
At the same time, some education-focused ECE programs provide services only on a part-day or part-week basis, so they may be difficult for working parents to use. For instance, most prekindergarten programs are like K-12 education in not offering summer care, which is a major challenge for working parents.
|
From page 122... ...
5 FPL 0 . 5 - 1 FPL 1 - 2 FPL 2 - 3 FPL 3 - 4 FPL 4 - 5 FPL > 5 FPL FIGURE 4-4 Average weekly hours of care per child, by ratio of household income to federal poverty level.
|
From page 123... ...
Provider-Oriented Financing Mechanisms This section analyzes the two major programs that distribute funds through provider-oriented mechanisms: federal-funded Head Start programs and public prekindergarten programs that are funded primarily by states or local jurisdictions (see Chapter 2 for details on these programs)
|
From page 124... ...
and the District of Colum bia cared for greater than 70 percent of their 4-year-olds in state-funded prekindergarten programs in 2012–2013, while 11 states served less than 10 percent of their 4-year-olds (U.S. Department of Education, 2015)
|
From page 125... ...
For eligibility, both Head Start and public prekindergarten focus on the developmental needs of children, rather than the employment status of their parents. Thus, children are eligible for service if they meet income and/or geographic requirements regardless of parental employment or participation in education or training.7 However, because the main goal of these programs is to support child development and not specifically parental employment, many of these programs do not serve children on a full-day, fullyear basis.
|
From page 126... ...
. Although current federal law and regulations pertaining to the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF)
|
From page 127... ...
Family-Oriented Mechanisms for Service Delivery Family-oriented mechanisms may help address issues of equitable access to early care and education by providing assistance for low- and moderate-income families who would otherwise be unable to afford paid ECE services. However, how these mechanisms are structured is important for ensuring equitable access; if a mechanism is structured so that small increases in earnings produce a large drop in benefits, then this "cliff effect" creates a work disincentive and may limit access to early care and education for certain families.8 For example, Child Care Assistance Programs (CCAP)
|
From page 128... ...
Moreover, although the federal government sets the maximum income level for assistance at 85 percent of the state median family income, most states have established even lower income-eligibility levels, preventing some lowincome families from accessing the state ECE subsidy. For example, a family with an income greater than 200 percent of the FPL9 would not be eligible for financial aid in 39 states (Schulman and Blank, 2016)
|
From page 129... ...
. Many other family circumstances besides employment can make participation in early care and education desirable for children (such as parental desire to enable their children to engage socially with other children, fostering school readiness through structured early learning, or supporting parents in poor health or parents who care for other family members)
|
From page 130... ...
The percentages of children meeting federal requirements who receive subsidies are calculated by dividing, for each state, the number of children receiving subsidies in their state by the estimated number of children that meet federal eligibility requirements. The MOEs for 37 states are less than +/ 5 percentage points and the MOEs for the remaining states are at or below +/- 10 percentage points.
|
From page 131... ...
This instability disrupts parental employment and education, harms children, and runs counter to nearly all of CCDF's purposes." 14 The large share of low-income tax filers receive hardly any ECE benefits partly because many of them have no income tax liability. Moderate-income families ($30,000–50,000)
|
From page 132... ...
CDCTC FSA/DCAP Total Returns FIGURE 4-7 Share of tax benefits versus share of returns, by income group, 2014. NOTE: CDCTC = Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, DCAP = Dependent Care Assistance Program, FSA = Federal Student Aid.
|
From page 133... ...
To the extent that prekindergarten programs are universally provided, meaning they are provided for free to all children in the target age range, they do not exacerbate inequality in access.15 As currently structured, the family-oriented mechanisms of tax preferences benefit middle- and upper-income families to a greater degree than low-income families, which typically have little or no income tax liability prior to applying a tax credit or reducing taxable income with pretax contributions. The exception to this generalization are the refundable ECE credits provided by several states.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.