High quality child care services have positive effects on children's developmental and long term educational outcomes, as well as promote their parents' stable employment. Center based care, which involves taking care of children in a formal or established child care center, has been found to have a higher quality compared to other types of care service, such as family home care and kinship care. States have used child care subsidy policies and quality regulations to support the choice of center based care among low income working families, but states' child care policy choices and the influences on the choice of different types of care have not been examined. This study conducted two different analyses to examine the variations in states' child care policy decisions and the influences of child care subsidy and quality regulation rules on working families' choice of care arrangement among various options of child care services. Cluster analyses showed significant variations in each policy rules across states. States strategically formed child care policy in consideration with each state's characteristics. Multilevel analysis revealed that the choice of center based care was significantly associated with higher child-staff ratios, higher copayment rates, and higher levels of tiered reimbursement rates. When investigating policy influences on specific types of care compared to counterpart by choosing specific populations, the choice of center based care rather than family home care had significant associations with a higher child-staff ratio in center based care and less training requirements for family home care among families using formal care. The choice of family home care versus informal care such as grandparents or relative care was significantly associated with higher family home care capacity and more training requirement for family home care. This study reveals that both child care subsidy policy and regulation significantly vary across states and have substantial roles in the choice of care service among working families. Given budget limitations and widening state authority, these findings support social workers in the policy area to effectively redesign child care policy to increase the use of better quality of service.
Read
