Magaly Queralt

Influences on Neighborhood Supply of Child Care in Massachusetts

In examining the relationship between socioeconomic characteristics and neighborhood supply of licensed child care in Massachusetts, we find a limited supply of center care, especially full‐day care, in low‐income neighborhoods. Although there is a better supply of family child‐care providers, it is nevertheless more limited than in higher income neighborhoods. The number of children ages 5 and under emerged as the most important factor determining availability of care. We base our findings on 1990 census tract data, arguing that zip code data provide too large a geographic area to capture the nuances of supply at the neighborhood level. Other variables considered include employment levels, residential stability, the ratio of adult men to women, the ratio of infants to children under age 11, the ratio of young children to adults, and the proportion of single working mothers.

Changing Policies, Changing Impacts: Employment and Earnings of Child‐Care Subsidy Recipients in the Era of Welfare Reform

We examine the impact of increased child‐care funding on the employment and earnings of 4,399 current and former welfare families in Miami‐Dade County. We find that the dramatic increase in funding for child care during the early stages of welfare reform significantly increased the likelihood of employment for these welfare clients, even those with substantial barriers to employment. Our results also indicate that very low co‐payment rates may have no significant effect on earnings, but higher rates can lead to a significant decline in the earnings of those making the transition from welfare to work.

Estimating the Unmet Need for Services: A Middling Approach

In this article, we use a child‐care illustration to develop a concept of unmet need applicable to the human services and to demonstrate a systematic method of identifying the geographic areas where it may exist. First we catalog the licensed and regulated supply of child care and early childhood education services in Hampden County, Massachusetts. To ascertain the main factors that determine the supply, we estimate a series of reduced‐form equations derived from a child‐care market model of supply and demand. In accordance with our concept of unmet need, we then predict the supply of child‐care services that would be available if each neighborhood (proxied by a census tract) in Hampden County had its own demographic characteristics and a socioeconomic level equal to the county median. Finally, using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), we map the areas predicted to have the greatest unmet need.