How do program and childcare outcomes vary by race, ethnicity, and geography for children enrolled in Georgia’s subsidized child care program?
Children’s enrollment in high-quality early care and education (ECE) differs markedly by race, ethnicity, and geography. Differential access to ECE services can, in turn, widen gaps in children’s school achievement, socio-emotional development, health, and adult economic outcomes, perpetuating inequities. Childcare subsidies offered through programs supported by the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) have the potential to close opportunity gaps, but only if they lead to equitable high-quality ECE experiences for participating children and families.
This study examines how numerous program and childcare outcomes—including care schedules, care settings, quality ratings, proximity, subsidy payments, co-payments, subsidy receipt durations, subsidy spells, and provider changes—vary by race, ethnicity, and geography, using weekly subsidy records from Georgia’s Childcare and Parent Services (CAPS) program. The study distinguishes between (a) unconditional, or gross, differences that it observes in children’s experiences by race, ethnicity, and geography and (b) conditional disparities that it estimates after accounting for children’s ages, bases for eligibility, local contexts, and other characteristics through multivariate models. The study interprets the conditional disparities as evidence of inequity. The study additionally uses the Blinder (1973)-Oaxaca (1973) counterfactual method to decompose the gross differences in outcomes into portions that are attributable to observed and unobserved differences in characteristics between children.
The results provide evidence of substantial racial, ethnic, and geographic equity in participating children’s use of Georgia’s subsidized ECE program. Most notably, non-Hispanic Black and White children have few substantial differences across most care utilization outcomes. The findings demonstrate the importance of moving beyond comparisons of unconditional averages in outcomes, and taking into consideration how differences in children’s underlying characteristics can mask similar outcomes. The differences that remain after accounting for children’s characteristics, including higher payments for children outside of cities in urban areas, can inform the creation of a more equitable subsidized childcare system for children and their families.
To learn more, please download the academic paper below.
