Child Care Subsidy Impact Study

The Child Care Subsidy Impact Study is a small, pilot study of the impact of child care subsidies on recipients’ child care reliability, parental satisfaction with child care, and parental employment.  This study was designed in collaboration with the Child Care Commission of the study county and takes advantage of a recent allocation of funds in a mid-Atlantic county to conduct a pre-/post-test study on families who are currently on the waiting list for a child care subsidy and will receive a child care subsidy within the next couple months.  Fifty low-income research participants will be interviewed twice by the researcher, once while on the child care subsidy waiting list and again six months later.  Ordinary least squares regressions as well as descriptive statistics will provide information to be shared with the Board of Commissioners in the study county regarding the demographics and child care choices of families on the waiting list for a child care subsidy and the impact of child care subsidies on families. There are two aims to the study.  The first aim is to provide information to policymakers and researchers regarding the impact of child care subsidies on families’ reports of child care reliability, parental satisfaction with child care and parental employment in the study county.  The second aim is to use data from this study to apply for additional funding from the National Institute of Child and Human Development which would allow the researchers to conduct additional analyses with a larger, nationally representative sample and more sophisticated statistical techniques.