Child Care during the First Year of School: How Extent, Type, and Quality Relate to Child Well-Being
A systematic examination of the links between extent, type, and quality of child care and children's social-emotional and cognitive well-being, using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-kindergarten cohort (ECLS-K). The sample for this study includes approximately 14,000 kindergarteners in the ECLS-K. The research explores the full range of child care options (formal and informal), focusing on sub-groups of children including low-income and subsidy-eligible. This study informs Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) policy regarding school-age child care, including how to design subsidy programs and cost effective quality enhancement strategies that best support school-age child well-being.
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
Maintaining Employment: The Impact of Child Care Subsidies
An examination of the relationship between child care subsidies and child care-related work disruptions that affect mothers' ability to maintain steady employment and work productively, including considerations of whether this relationship is mediated by variables that affect the type of care chosen, and whether subsidies impact the desire to change child care arrangements. The study applies cross-sectional and change regression models and path analysis to two samples: (1) a sample, collected in 2005-2006, of 40 low-income employed mothers who were interviewed twice--once while on the wait list for child care subsidies, and again eight months later, when the majority had subsequently received a subsidy--allowing for a quasi-experimental research design; and (2) a sample of predominately unmarried mothers with children aged 1-3 years from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being study.
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
Patchworks and Developmental Sequences: Impacts of Multiple Child Care Arrangements on Child Development
This ongoing study addresses examines relations between concurrent, multiple child care arrangements, or arrangement multiplicity, and young children's health. Specifically, a longitudinal, comprehensive dataset is used to relate changes in the number of children's child care arrangements to changes in children's communicable diseases and general health from birth through age 5. The mediating effect of peer exposure and the moderating effects of child gender and family income will be tested. It is expected that increases in the number of child care arrangements will be associated with increases in the incidence of children's communicable diseases and decreases in children's general health, and this relationship will be stronger among boys and those living in lower-income families. The research questions are: (1) Is the experience of multiple, concurrent child care settings related to increases in the incidence of communicable diseases and general health among children from birth through age 5?; (2) Is the relationship between arrangement multiplicity and child health mediated by the total number of children to which the child is exposed?; and (3) Is the relationship between arrangement multiplicity and child health stronger among boys and children from low-income families than among girls and children from higher-income families?
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
