UMass Boston Report Shows Variation in Child Care Shortfalls Across Massachusetts
Estimated Demand for Licensed Early Education and Child Care Indicates Severity of Shortfalls in Gateway Cities and Other Areas of the State
A report released today by the UMass Boston Early Education Cost and Usage Simulator (CUSP) Project team demonstrates that the Commonwealth’s current licensed capacity for early education and child care is uneven across the state. Further, the report’s maps show pockets of severe and extreme shortfalls in infant and toddler capacity in centers and family child care settings.
Led by the Early Education Leaders Institute and Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy, the UMass Boston CUSP Project has developed a statistical model to produce estimates of key impacts resulting from expanding access to affordable, quality child care and early education.
Mapping Child Care and Early Education Capacity to Needs in Massachusetts’ key findings include:
- Areas facing moderate shortfalls for all ages are concentrated in public use microdata areas (PUMAs) located in the Western, Central, and Southeastern regions
- 3 areas (specifically PUMAs--one that includes Lowell, another that includes Revere, Chelsea, and Winthrop, and a third that includes Brockton, Stoughton and Avon) have extreme shortfalls in center infant and toddler care at current implementation
- 71% of the estimated demand for full-time equivalent slots in centers can currently be accommodated in the Northeast region at full implementation, 69% in the Southeast region, and 47% in the Western region
- By age group, the highest need as a percent of effective capacity for center-based care would be among toddlers, at full implementation
“With so many families in need of licensed child care and early education, the state and localities must carefully consider how to best address shortfalls in those areas with the least capacity to meet current and future demand,” said Anne Douglass, PhD, professor of early childhood education policy and founding executive director of Early Education Leaders.
Alan Clayton-Matthews, associate professor emeritus in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and the Department of Economics at Northeastern University, explained: “As the Commonwealth continues to expand funding for child care and early education, it will be important to make sure resources flow to the right areas and type of care to meet the needs of all families.”
“We know how important it is for working parents to have access to child care and how not having affordable licensed care options negatively impacts women in particular. Our report highlights shortages across the Commonwealth and can inform efforts to expand capacity in an inequitable manner” added Laurie Nsiah-Jefferson, Director of UMass Boston’s Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies.
The report offers analyses based on two levels of geographic analysis (Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) licensing region and U.S. Census Public Use Microdata Area-PUMA) and on two policy scenarios (current and full implementation of family financial assistance). Full implementation refers to the Massachusetts law and regulations expanding child care financial assistance eligibility up to 85 percent of State Median Income (SMI) with no family paying more than 7% of their income above the poverty line threshold toward child care.
Mapping Child Care and Early Education Capacity to Needs in Massachusetts is the fourth in a series of policy briefs released by the UMass Boston CUSP Project. The first, Estimating the Impacts of Legislation to Expand Affordable Quality Child Care and Early Education in Massachusetts: Initial Findings on Utilization, Employment, and Financial Assistance, was issued in 2023. Two additional briefs were released in 2024: Building a Foundation for Racial and Ethnic Equity: Estimated Impacts of Massachusetts Legislation to Expand Affordable Quality Child Care and Early Education and Addressing the Cliff-Effect Problem in Massachusetts Legislation to Expand Affordable Quality Child Care and Early Education. All may be found at: https://blogs.umb.edu/earlyed/2024/06/26/cusp/