ALESHA DURFEE Arizona State University
MARCIA K. MEYERS University of Washington*
Who Gets What From Government? Distributional
Consequences of Child-Care Assistance Policies
Given the fragmented structure of child-care
assistance in the United States, it has been diffi-
cult to obtain accurate estimates of which fami-
lies are assisted, through which mechanisms,
and at what level. Making use of survey data
from New York City, we analyze the distribution
of several forms of public child-care assistance.
Results suggest that about 40% of all families
with young children receive some form of
child-care assistance. Considering all forms of
assistance, the distribution of child-care help is
targeted in both expected and some unexpected
ways. Implications of these results are dis-
cussed in the context of U.S. child-care policies
governing access and benefit levels.
The use of nonparental child care has become
increasingly common for young children in
America. Federal and state governments help
some families with the cost of these services
through several programs, each of which target
different populations, use different mechanisms,
and provide different levels of assistance. We
know something about what the United States
Women and Gender Studies Program, Arizona State
University, P.O. Box 873404, Tempe, AZ 85287-3404
(alesha.durfee@asu.edu).
*School of Social Work and Evans School of Public Affairs,
University of Washington, 4101 15th Avenue NE, Seattle,
WA 98105.
Key Words: child care, family policy, low-income families,
maternal employment.
Journal of Marriage and Family 68 (August 2006): 733–748
spends on child-care assistance, but it has been
difficult to track the amount and distribution of
assistance through these separate and overlap-
ping programs. In the absence of knowledge
about which families are assisted, and the amount
of assistance they receive through various pro-
grams, it has been nearly impossible to evaluate
the adequacy of public child-care assistance.
In this article, we use survey data from a ran-
dom sample of families in New York City, along
with administrative data on public child-care
expenditures, to describe the total package of child-
care assistance received by families and to esti-
mate the level of assistance received by families
who vary in their child, parent, and family charac-
teristics. We find that a large share of all families
with young children receive some assistance
through tax credits, subsidies, or public preschool
programs. Although the level of child-care assis-
tance is progressive by income, the distribution of
any assistance is not, resulting in a system that is
only moderately progressive overall and targets
help in both intended and unintended ways.
BACKGROUND
About two thirds of all children younger than
5 years (Smith, 2002), and three quarters of chil-
dren younger than 5 years with an employed
mother (Capizzano & Adams, 2004), are in some
form of nonparental child care on a regular basis.
Whether they choose to use informal or formal
modes of care for their children, most families
pay for the care provided. Nearly all parents
who use child-care centers (other than public
733
734
programs), family child care, or in-home care-
givers pay for those services, and an estimated
33% of those who use relative caregivers also
pay for that care (Hofferth, Shauman, & Henke,
1998). Considering all types of care, data from
the National Survey of America’s Families indi-
cate that 48% of families with an employed
mother and at least one child younger than
14 years make cash payments for child care
(Giannarelli, Adelman, & Schmidt, 2003).
These expenses are substantial for many fami-
lies. Child care consumes nearly 8% of total fam-
ily income for families with an employed mother
and at least one child younger than 14 years
(National Research Council and Institute of Med-
icine, 2003). The child-care burden is consider-
ably higher for families with younger children,
averaging 10% of income among families with
children younger than 3 years. Child-care ex-
penses are also particularly steep relative to
income for poor families. Families with incomes
under $18,000, for example, spend nearly one
quarter of their income (23%) on child care.
Child-Care Assistance Programs
Federal and state governments provide selective
and targeted assistance with child-care expenses
through three main mechanisms: tax credits,
means-tested subsidies, and public preschool
programs. Government controls both the total
amount of assistance and its distribution at the
family level through budgetary appropriations
and through policies that govern eligibility and
benefit levels.
Tax credits are available to the broadest popu-
lation of child-care users, but they provide the
most modest benefits. Employed parents with
taxable income and work-related child-care ex-
penses are eligible to claim the Federal Child
Care and Development Tax Credit, which
deducts a portion of these expenses from their
taxable earnings. The Federal Child and Depen-
dent Care Tax Credit is progressive, declining
from 35% to 20% of allowable expenses for high-
er income families. Twenty-six states have
adopted similar credits against state income
taxes, and a small number of families use
employer-managed Dependent Care Assistance
Plans to deduct child-care expenses from their
taxable income. The federal tax credit is claimed
by a large number of families: In 2001, an esti-
mated 6.2 million tax filers claimed expenses
related to child or other dependent care (National
Journal of Marriage and Family
Center for Children in Poverty, 2004) and federal
tax expenditures totaled nearly $3 billion in 2000
(Campbell & Parisi, 2003). Because they are non-
refundable, however, the federal credit and about
one half of state tax credits are completely
unavailable to those whose incomes are too low
to incur tax liabilities. For families who can claim
the benefits, tax credits are modest. The credit
received through the federal credit averaged
$440 per claimant as of 2001 (National Center
for Children in Poverty).
Means-tested subsidies for the purchase of pri-
vate care provide a more substantial benefit to
a much more restricted population of low income
and employed families. The federal government
currently funds means-tested subsidies through
three block grants that are managed and supple-
mented by states: the Child Care and Development
Fund Block Grant, the Temporary Assistance to
Needy Families Block Grant, and the Social
Services Block Grant. Federal spending for the
three block grants approached $7 billion in
2000, and states spent an additional $2.7 billion
(Gish, 2002). Unlike child-care tax credits,
appropriations for means-tested subsidies are
capped and assistance is rationed by federal and
state eligibility rules and application procedures.
In their study of child-care subsidies in 17 states,
Collins, Layzer, Kreader, Werner, and Glantz
(2000) estimate that as of 1999, 4 of the 17 states
served between 20% and 25% of children who
were eligible for assistance under federal rules
and 6 served 15% or fewer of these children.
For families who receive subsidies, benefits are
often substantial, covering the cost of care up to
state-established maximum reimbursements
minus family copayments. There are no reliable
national estimates of average subsidy benefits.
A study of five states conducted by Meyers et al.
(2006) estimates that median family benefits
range between $190 and $363 per month. Sub-
sidy assistance is also limited in duration by eligi-
bility rules, income thresholds, and progressive
copayment schedules that limit or discourage
continuous receipt. Meyers and her colleagues
estimated that the median period of subsidy
receipt in the five states ranges from 3 to 7
months.
The third mechanism through which govern-
ment assists with child-care expenses is the provi-
sion of direct services, most commonly through
early education programs. Public preschool
programs are typically free or of very low cost for
parents but are limited in availability. Eligibility
Distribution of Child-Care Assistance
for most preschool programs is restricted to
4-year-old children and, outside of a small hand-
ful of states, by policies that target services
on disadvantaged families. The single largest
public program is the federal Head Start program
for low-income 4-year-old (and some 3 year old)
children. Federal appropriations for Head Start
totaled nearly $5.3 billion in 2000 (Administration
for Children, Youth and Families, 2002). Some
states supplement Head Start funding, and 36
states also fund prekindergarten programs, usually
targeting children at economic or educational risk
(Doherty, 2002). Children with disabilities and
other special needs may also receive public care
through early intervention (special education) pro-
grams. Preschools provide a benefit that is compa-
rable to the cost of private child care, averaging
$3,455 per child enrolled in public prekindergar-
ten and $6,934 for children enrolled in Head Start
(Barnett, Robin, Hustedt, & Schulman, 2003).
Like subsidies, these benefits are rationed by
eligibility rules and capped appropriations. As of
2000 – 2001, the share of all 4-year-old chil-
dren enrolled in some form of public early educa-
tion—including Head Start, prekindergarten
programs, and special education programs—
was about 31%, with considerable variation across
states (Barnett, Robin, Hustedt, & Schulman
2003).
Who Gets Help?
Given the fragmented structure of child-care assis-
tance in the United States, it has been difficult to
know how these budgetary and program policies
interact to determine the level and distribution of
assistance at the family level. Separate federal
and state programs collect enrollment and benefit
data using different and noncomparable measures,
and no national survey has collected comprehen-
sive information on child-care assistance for over
a decade. The most recent national estimate of
how many families receive assistance other than
tax credits is provided by Giannarelli et al.
(2003), who use data from the National Survey
of Families to estimate that about 12% of em-
ployed families with a child younger than 13 years
receive some type of nontax assistance from
government or other organizations. Unfortunately,
this survey does not include data on tax bene-
fits or on the amount of assistance received by
families.
Given data limitations, research has also been
limited on the question of how family character-
735
istics influence the receipt and amount of child-
care assistance. The size and characteristics of
the populations eligible for various forms of
assistance are determined by policies that limit
availability (e.g., through capped appropriations)
and that control access (e.g., through eligibility
and intake policies). No federal or state child-care
program serves all eligible families, however,
and the distribution of assistance within eligible
populations reflects individual and family factors
that influence parents’ decision to use nonparen-
tal care, the type of care they use, their decision to
take up benefits, and their success in obtaining
them.
Nearly all studies of the family-level determi-
nants of the receipt of child-care assistance have
examined the receipt of means-tested assistance.
As expected, studies find that the likelihood of
receiving such assistance is greater among fami-
lies with income below the federal poverty line
and among those in which all parents are
employed (Burstein, Layzer, & Cahill, 2001;
Giannarelli et al., 2003; Meyers et al., in press).
Research suggests that the probability of subsidy
receipt also varies with family characteristics that
predict greater need for nonparental care because
of employment and caregiving demands. Fami-
lies who have children younger than 6 years,
those headed by single parents, and those with
mothers having high school degrees or some
college are more likely to receive child-care sub-
sidies (Blau & Tekin, 2003; Georges & Wagmiller,
2001; Giannarelli et al.; Meyers, Heintze, & Wolf,
2002). Blau and Tekin (2003) and Georges and
Wagmiller (2001) report higher probabilities of
subsidy receipt among families with greater
nonwage income, which is consistent with other
findings that families with a prior history of wel-
fare receipt, and those in target populations for
welfare-to-work programs, are more likely to
be assisted (Burstein et al., 2001; Giannarelli
et al.; Meyers et al., 2002). Families who are
Black or Hispanic (Blau & Tekin) and those
who are nonimmigrant (Burstein et al.; Georges
& Wagmiller) are more likely to receive subsi-
dies, which may reflect differences in parents’
preferences, their welfare experiences, or their
success in negotiating the subsidy system. The
effect of maternal age appears to be curvilinear,
with the probability of assistance increasing with
age but declining beyond the age of 36 (Blau &
Tekin; Georges & Wagmiller).
Other, primarily qualitative evidence suggests
that the organization of public programs may
736
influence which eligible families receive assis-
tance. Adams and Snyder (2003) describe burden-
some application processes for means-tested
subsidies in some parts of the country, which, cou-
pled with complex eligibility requirements, may
prevent all but the most determined parents from
getting and retaining subsidies for which they are
eligible. These findings are echoed in studies from
the parent perspective, which reveal that parents
often have limited and inaccurate information
about their eligibility for assistance and encounter
substantial impediments in their interactions
with subsidy offices (Chaudry, 2004; Meyers &
Heintze, 1999; Powell & Cahill, 2000).
Research Questions
Our knowledge of who is getting assistance, and
how much they are receiving, remains limited in
important respects. Recent national surveys pro-
vide some information about child-care use but lit-
tle or no information about government assistance.
Nearly all studies examining the family-level varia-
tion in the receipt of child-care assistance have
studied means-tested subsidies, providing little
or no information about the full package of assis-
tance through subsidies, tax credits, and preschool
programs. Virtually, no research goes beyond esti-
mates of receipt to examine the value of assistance
received at the family level. Child-care assistance
programs have grown in recent years, but we still
know remarkably little about who is assisted
through these programs and what they receive.
In this article, we examine the distribution of
multiple forms of child-care assistance along
two dimensions: the probability of getting assis-
tance and the level of assistance received. We
use data from cross-sectional surveys of random
samples of New York City families with any chil-
dren younger than 6 years to answer the following
questions:
1. How many and which families receive some
form of child-care assistance through tax
credits, means-tested subsidies, and public
preschools?
2. Among families receiving assistance, how
much assistance do they receive?
3. Considering both the probability of receipt
and the value of assistance, how does total
child-care assistance vary with child, parent,
and family characteristics?
This article provides descriptive, rather than
causal, analyses of the distribution of assistance.
Journal of Marriage and Family
Estimating the relationship between family char-
acteristics and assistance is complicated by the
targeted structure of child-care programs. The
same family-level characteristics—such as chil-
dren’s ages and mothers’ employment status—are
likely to operate through ‘‘supply-side’’ program
dynamics (i.e., determining eligibility or priority
for assistance) and ‘‘demand-side’’ behaviors
(i.e., influencing parents’ decision to pursue and
success in taking up benefits) (Witte & Queralt,
2002). Given the cross-sectional data from a sin-
gle city used in this study, it is not possible to dis-
tinguish between policy and behavior factors or
to separate the supply- and demand-side effects
of family characteristics and behavior. Our intent
is to describe the current distribution of assistance
as it results from the interaction of policy, family
characteristics, and individual behavior.
Conducting these analyses with data from
a single city had the advantage of holding the pol-
icy environment constant across families. This al-
lows us to examine variation across families who
differ by sociodemographic and other character-
istics but who experience the same set of pro-
grams, eligibility, and benefit rules. The use of
data from a single jurisdiction also allows us to
use administrative data for detailed imputations
of the value of assistance.
Conducting the analysis in a single city had the
disadvantage of representing a single population
and policy environment, potentially limiting gen-
eralizability to the United States as a whole. New
York City provides a particularly interesting case
study for examining child-care assistance in the
United States. New York State is one of only
six states that have authorized prekindergarten
services for all 4 year olds, although the delivery
of these services has lagged behind the promise
(Doherty, 2002). New York State is 1 of 26 states
that provides a child-care tax credit and 1 of 11 in
which this credit is refundable (Children’s
Defense Fund, 2003). New York City provided
an estimated $230 million in means-tested sub-
sidy assistance in fiscal year 1999 – 2000
(Fender, O’Brien, Thompson, Snyder, & Bess,
2002). Although this represents a substantial
investment, the city has been unable to serve all
eligible families. Priority is given to families cur-
rently receiving public assistance, and the city
maintains a significant waiting list of low-income
working families. By using data from New York
City, we can thus look across the full range of
child-care programs—tax credits, subsidies, and
early education programs—within a system that
Distribution of Child-Care Assistance
is similar to the United States as a whole in ration-
ing assistance in both early education and subsidy
programs.
In terms of comparability to the United States as
a whole, analyses by the Urban Institute indicate
families in New York State are about as likely as
those nationwide to have a child younger than
5 years in nonparental care and to use care arrange-
ments that are similar on average (Sonenstein,
Gates, Schmidt, & Bolshun, 2002). Relative to
other families, however, low-income families
(under 200% of poverty) in New York are less
likely to be using center-based care and more
likely to use relative care as a primary arrange-
ment. The proportion of families with an em-
ployed mother and a child younger than 13
years who receive some form of nontax child-care
assistance from government (or other organiza-
tions) is higher in New York (16%) than nation-
wide (13%), which is consistent with the
availability of both subsidy and preschool assis-
tance (Giannarelli et al., 2003). It may also reflect
higher levels of need in New York. Child-care
costs are higher in New York than they are nation-
ally; in 1999, families in New York State who
paid for child care spent an average of $348 per
month, more than the average of $303 spent by
families nationwide (Giannarelli et al.). The pro-
portion of children living in poverty in New York
State is also higher than that in the rest of the coun-
try. Nearly one quarter (22%) of New York chil-
dren lived in poor families in 1998, compared to
18% of children nationwide (Fender et al., 2002).
METHOD
Data
To analyze the level and distribution of child-care
assistance at the family level, we make use of
pooled data from Waves II (1999) and III
(2002) of the New York Social Indicators Survey.
The survey is designed to document individual
and family well-being across multiple domains;
it also measures the sources and extent of external
supports from government, family and friends,
community and religious programs, and employ-
ers. The survey is conducted every other year
using computer-assisted telephone interview
technology and random digit dialing to interview
a representative sample of approximately 1,500
families from the five boroughs of the city. (For
additional information about the New York
Social Indicators Survey, including sampling
737
methods, response rates, weighting procedures,
and detailed descriptions of imputation methods,
see Garcia & Meyers, 2005.)
The New York Social Indicators Survey de-
fines family as a respondent, the respondent’s
resident spouse or partner, and resident children
younger than 18 years. This differs from the
definition of both family and household used by
the census as it includes unmarried domestic
partners in the family unit but excludes other
family members, as well as nonrelated adults
and children, who may be living in the house-
hold. For these analyses, we restrict our sample
to families with at least one child between the
ages of 0 and 5. Of 703 cases in this sample, we
excluded 58 (8%) because of missing data on
mother’s employment (n ¼ 19, 3%), race (n ¼
13, 2%), ethnicity (n ¼ 5, 1%), immigration sta-
tus (n ¼ 8, 1%), or other demographic charac-
teristics. The number of cases excluded because
of item-missing data was small and was not ex-
pected to bias our estimates. The final analysis
sample included 646 families.
Measures
The New York Social Indicators Survey includes
unusually detailed questions about families’ use
and payment arrangements for child care in the
prior 12 months. Data on the use of child care,
and receipt of tax-based, subsidy, or public pre-
school assistance, are collected at the family level
for all children younger than 13 years. This limits
our ability to analyze care arrangements at the
child level but provides quite comprehensive
information about the total package of assistance
at the family level.
All respondents with children younger than 13
years were asked about their use of several forms
of child-care and preschool programs in the prior
year for all their children, and about direct pay-
ment and sources of assistance (if any) for each
type of care. Measures of the receipt of assistance
are constructed directly from survey responses.
Although survey respondents are expected to
provide accurate information on receipt, they
are unlikely to know the value of government
assistance that is often given directly to providers.
To estimate the value of assistance received, we
impute values (conditional on receipt) for public
preschool enrollment, child-care subsidies, and
child-care tax credits using both New York Social
Indicators Survey and New York City adminis-
trative data.
738
For families reporting any use of public pre-
schools, the value is imputed using government
cost methods; we divide total direct government
expenditures (for Head Start and public preschool
programs) by the number of children in the family
who were enrolled, adjusting for both the number
of months and whether they attended full- or part-
day programs. As we do not include public expen-
ditures on early intervention programs for children
with special needs, this imputation method may
underestimate the per child value of public pre-
school services. For families reporting the receipt
of means-tested subsidies, the value of these subsi-
dies is calculated using data from the New York
State Market Rate Survey, which contains infor-
mation on the average private sector child-care pri-
ces in each region of the state and is used to set
child-care subsidy reimbursements. The total
value of subsidized care is imputed for each family,
adjusting for factors that determine reimbursement
rates to private providers: the number and ages of
children in subsidized care, the type of care (e.g.,
center or relative care), and the duration of care
(i.e., number of months and full day or part time).
For families who reported claiming child-care tax
credits, the value of the federal and state Child
and Dependent Care Tax Credit and the New York
State Child Care Credit is simulated using federal
and state tax rules in combination with income
data from the New York Social Indicators Survey,
families’ reported child-care expenditures, and
estimated tax liabilities calculated using the TAX-
SIM model of the National Bureau of Economic
Research (Feenberg & Coutts, 1993).
Additional measures of child and family char-
acteristics are based on self-reported data from
the New York Social Indicators Survey, includ-
ing presence of any infants (aged 0 – 2) or pre-
schoolers (aged 3 – 5), total number of children
younger than 6 years, disability/health status of
one randomly selected focal child, the number
of nonparental adults living in the household,
total market and nonmarket family income as
a percentage of the federal poverty level, moth-
ers’ current participation in paid employment,
education or training activities, and the respond-
ent’s (usually mother’s) marital status, race/eth-
nicity, nativity and citizenship status, education,
and disability/health status.
Analysis
Our multivariate analysis proceeds in two stages.
We first estimate the association of child and fam-
Journal of Marriage and Family
ily characteristics with the probability of receiv-
ing child-care assistance and the value of
assistance received. As many families receive
zero assistance (because they do not use child care
or they use care but receive no assistance), the dis-
tribution of the dollar value of assistance is highly
skewed and precludes the use of ordinary least
squares (OLS) regression with the full sample of
recipient and nonrecipient families. Instead, we
derive our estimates in two steps. We first use
logistic regression to estimate the probability of
receiving any assistance and the probability of
receiving each of three forms of assistance (tax
credits, subsidies, and public preschool). We next
estimate the value of assistance conditional on
receipt, using OLS regression with the subsets
of families reporting any assistance. In the second
stage of the analysis, we use these coefficients to
estimate the total assistance received by families
who vary by selected sociodemographic charac-
teristics. We simulate the value of the total
child-care package by multiplying the estimated
probability of receiving any assistance by the esti-
mated value of assistance, holding all other char-
acteristics at the sample mean.
There are two alternative estimation ap-
proaches: a tobit or a two-stage (Heckman) model.
We reject the first approach because it assumes that
estimates will be biased if zero values represent
censored observations with an unobserved non-
zero value; for our descriptive purposes, we
assume that zero values represent valid cases of
no assistance rather than censored observations.
A two-stage approach would be expected to pro-
duce more reliable estimates if unobserved charac-
teristics of families that increase the probability of
getting assistance are correlated with the amount
of assistance received. This might be true, for
example, if families who expect to qualify for
higher subsidies are more likely to use child care
and to apply for and receive assistance. Because
the characteristics that determine families’ eligibil-
ity are the same as those that determine benefit
amount, however, we are unable to find a satisfac-
tory identification variable. In this regard, our esti-
mates should be interpreted as describing the
existing distribution of assistance within this pop-
ulation, given both policy and individual behav-
iors, rather than as a causal model. For a more
complete discussion of a similar estimation with
medical expenses, see Duan, Manning, Morris,
and Newhouse (1983).
On the basis of prior research, we expect that
families’ receipt of child-care assistance will vary
Distribution of Child-Care Assistance
with (a) characteristics affecting families’ needs
and resources for nonparental care, including
family structure and characteristics associated
with the probability of maternal employment;
(b) characteristics affecting eligibility for vari-
ous forms of assistance, including child age,
maternal employment status, and family
income; and (c) characteristics affecting pa-
rents’ decision to seek assistance and success in
obtaining it. Because these outcomes are highly
correlated, and sensitive to similar family chara-
cteristics, we choose to estimate reduced-form
models. We model the probability of receiving
assistance and the conditional value of assis-
tance as a function of child, parent, and family
characteristics that are expected to influence
child-care assistance directly, via eligibility and
take-up of benefits, and indirectly through their
effect on maternal employment and use of non-
parental care. In supplementary analyses, we
experimented with several interaction terms in
the models but none improved either the fit of
the model or the explanatory power of the
included terms.
We include an indicator for maternal employ-
ment, but, unlike many studies, we do not limit
our sample to families with an employed mother.
This allows us to estimate the distribution of
assistance within the entire population, as well
as to estimate the association of maternal employ-
ment with this assistance. We also do not limit our
sample to families using any form of nonparental
care. The large majority of families in the sample
report some use of nonparental care on a regular
basis (71%). We include all families in our esti-
mates because we are interested in the distribu-
tion of child-care assistance across the entire
population of families with young children. For
our final simulations, we limit the sample to fam-
ilies with an employed mother as these are the
families assumed to have the highest child-care
needs and are the targets of most child-care poli-
cies. All point estimates are weighted using data
from the 2000 census; regressions are estimated
using unweighted data.
RESULTS
Probability of Getting Assistance
In Table 1, we report rates of child-care assistance
receipt in the prior year (weighted) among all
families with children aged 0 – 5 and among fam-
ilies in which the mother is currently employed,
739
in school, or in training activities. Approximately
41% of families with any children younger than
6 years receive some form of governmental child-
care assistance during a 1-year period. Child-care
tax benefits are by far the most common form of
assistance, claimed by 25% of families. Approx-
imately 18% of families have at least one child
enrolled in a public preschool program. Only
9% of families reported that they received help
(through subsidies, vouchers, or direct payment)
for the costs of private care in centers, family
child care, or informal sitting arrangements.
When we consider only families in which the
mother is currently employed or in school or
training, 50% of families report some form of
assistance. Receipt of subsidies and preschool
services are about as common among families
with and without an employed mother, but the lat-
ter are 10 percentage points more likely to have
claimed child-care tax benefits.
As Table 1 suggests, families are likely to
receive more than one form of assistance during
the year. Among families receiving subsidies,
for example, 41% also have at least one child in
public preschool and 42% claim child-care tax
credits. Families receiving tax credits are less
likely to be receiving other types of help; 22%
also have a child in public preschool, and 15%
are receiving subsidies.
This rate of assistance is considerably higher
than that reported by the Urban Institute for
New York State. When we estimate receipt using
a sample and measures that correspond more
closely to those used by Giannarelli et al. (2003)—
considering only families with an employed
mother and measuring receipt of only means-
tested subsidies or preschool services—we esti-
mate that 25% of families in New York City
were assisted in comparison to the 16% esti-
mated by Giannarelli et al. This difference likely
results from more detailed questions in the New
York Social Indicators Survey and to the collec-
tion of data about assistance received in the prior
12 months, in contrast to the 1-month measure
used by Urban Institute analysts.
Table 2 reports the weighted demographic
characteristics for the full sample and for those
who do and do not receive any governmental
assistance. Results from the multivariate esti-
mates of receipt are reported in Table 3. Results
are consistent with prior research for most family
and child characteristics. Four results are particu-
larly notable. First, families in which the mother
is currently employed (or in school or training)
740 Journal of Marriage and Family

Table 1. Rates of Assistance, New York City Families With Any Child Aged 0 – 5 Years (N ¼ 646)

Receive Any Have A Child Receive

Governmental Assistance Receive Governmental Enrolled at a Child-Care
With Child Care Child-Care Subsidies Public Preschool Tax Benefits

n M SE M SE M SE M SE

All families 646 .41 .02 .09 .01 .18 .02 .25 .02
Families receiving 290 — — .23 .03 .45 .03 .62 .03
governmental assistance
with child care
Families receiving 64 — — — — .41 .07 .42 .07
governmental child-care
subsidies
Families with a 124 — — .21 .04 — — .30 .05
child enrolled
in public preschool
Families receiving 185 — — .15 .04 .22 .04 — —
child-care tax benefits
Families with an 349 .50 .03 .09 .02 .20 .03 .35 .03
employed mother
Families with an employed
mother who
Receive some form of 186 — — .19 .03 .41 .04 .71 .04
governmental assistance
with child care
Receive governmental 36 — — — — .52 .09 .41 .09
child-care subsidies
Have a child enrolled 69 — — .25 .06 — — .42 .07
in public preschool
Receive child-care 136 — — .11 .03 .24 .05 — —
tax benefits
Note: All values are weighted.

are significantly more likely to receive assistance
with child-care expenses. Second, among fami-
lies with any children younger than 6 years, the
probability of receiving any assistance is substan-
tially greater if a family has any children aged 3 –
5 in contrast to families in which all the children
are younger than 3 years. Third, probabilities are
not significantly different between naturalized
immigrants and native-born parents (the
excluded category) but are significantly and sub-
stantially lower for noncitizen immigrants.
Finally, and most surprisingly, even with controls
for other family characteristics, lower income
families are not significantly more likely to get
assistance than those with income greater than
300% of poverty (the excluded group); in fact,
the coefficients for the low-income indicators
are negative.
When we examine particular forms of assis-
tance, we see that family and household charac-
teristics have quite different associations with
different forms of assistance. As would be ex-
pected, low-income families are significantly
more likely than higher income families to
receive means-tested subsidies. Current maternal
employment status has a positive but nonsignifi-
cant association with subsidy receipt. This is sur-
prising given that eligibility for many subsidies is
contingent on participation in employment or
employment preparation activities. This may
reflect limitations in the survey measures of
employment, such as failing to capture prior
employment during the year. It may also reflect
New York City policy that gives priority for sub-
sidies to families receiving public assistance who
may not report their current status as employed or
in school or training activities. As with any assis-
tance, families headed by noncitizen immigrants
are significantly less likely to be receiving subsi-
dies than are those headed by native-born parents.
Distribution of Child-Care Assistance 741

Table 2. Sample Characteristics, New York City Families With Any Child Aged 0 – 5 Years

Families Receiving Families Not

Full Sample Assistance Receiving Assistance
(N ¼ 646) (n ¼ 290) (n ¼ 356)

Variables M SE M SE M SE t test

Any infants (age 0 – 2) .55 .02 .45 .03 .61 .03 **

Any preschoolers (age 3 – 5) .62 .02 .75 .03 .53 .03 **
Number of children aged 0 – 5 1.10 .02 1.13 .03 1.09 .02
a
Child in poor health .07 .02 .08 .02 .06 .02
Respondent is single .33 .02 .40 .03 .27 .03 **
Number of nonparental adults residing in household 1.36 .07 1.13 .09 1.51 .09 **
b
Respondent is U.S. born .49 .02 .52 .03 .47 .03
Respondent is naturalized immigrant .21 .02 .26 .03 .19 .03
Respondent is noncitizen immigrant .30 .02 .22 .03 .35 .03 **
Respondent is Hispanic .38 .02 .37 .03 .40 .03
Respondent is Black .26 .02 .36 .03 .20 .02
Respondent’s education , high school degree .21 .02 .16 .03 .23 .03
Respondent’s education ¼ high school degree .35 .02 .36 .03 .35 .03
Respondent’s education
some college .43 .02 .48 .03 .43 .03
c
Respondent in poor health .10 .01 .05 .01 .14 .02 **
Family income  75% of federal poverty level .24 .02 .24 .03 .23 .03
Family income 76% – 200% of federal poverty level .32 .02 .29 .03 .34 .03
Family income 201% – 300% of federal poverty level .23 .02 .24 .03 .23 .03
Family income . 300% of federal poverty level .21 .02 .23 .03 .20 .02
d
Mother is employed .49 .02 .60 .03 .42 .03 **
Survey conducted in Wave II (1999) .51 .02 .37 .03 .60 .03 **
Note: All values are weighted.
a b c
Child is in poor health or has chronic health condition. Includes Puerto Rico. Respondent is in poor health or has chronic
d
health condition that limits employment. Mother is employed, in school, or in job training program.
*p , .05. **p , .01. ***p , .001.

The probability of having a child enrolled in
public preschool has the expected, strong associ-
ation with having at least one child in the categor-
ically eligible age group. The coefficient for
maternal employment is small and nonsignifi-
cant, which is consistent with the availability of
preschool for both employed and nonemployed
families. The probability of public preschool
enrollment is sharply higher for families in which
the (focal) child has a chronic health or disabling
condition, likely because of enrollment in early
intervention programs. Noncitizen immigrant
families are not significantly less likely to have
children in public preschools than are native-born
families, though the coefficient is large and neg-
ative. Indicators for low family income (in com-
parison to the excluded high-income group) are
positive but not significant.
Like subsidies, the probability that families
receive tax credits is strongly associated with
income. Those families with income levels at or
below 200% of poverty are much less likely to
claim child-care tax credits than more affluent
families. Holding family income constant, fami-
lies with employed mothers are more likely to
claim child-care tax credits than are families
where the mother is not employed, in school, or
in job training. As with other forms of assistance,
noncitizen immigrants are less likely to be getting
help. In contrast to results for subsidies and pre-
school, the probability of claiming tax credits is
also lower for respondents with limited education
and disabilities or health problems.
The Value of Assistance
Table 4 reports the average annual value of assis-
tance received (weighted), for all families and for
families receiving assistance. Among all fami-
lies, child-care assistance averages $1,617;
742 Journal of Marriage and Family

Table 3. Logistic Regression Results, Receipt of Assistance for New York City Families With Any
Child Aged 0 – 5 Years (N ¼ 646)

Child
Receives Enrolled Receives
Receives Any Child-Care at Public Tax
Assistance Subsidies Preschool Benefits
B B B B
Predictor B SE B e B SE B e B SE B e B SE B e

Any infants (age 0 – 2) .09 .28 1.10 .93 .49 .39 .08 .30 .92 .13 .32 .88
Any preschoolers (age 3 – 5) .93** .29 2.54 .33 .53 .72 3.20** .57 24.64 .09 .32 1.09
Number of children aged 0 – 5 .13 .27 1.13 .33 .41 1.40 .08* .29 1.08 .27 .32 1.31
Child in poor health .66 .36 1.93 .30 .50 1.35 1.02** .39 2.79 .34 .46 .71
Respondent is single .31 .23 1.36 .06 .34 .94 .09 .28 1.10 .53* .25 1.69
Number of nonparental .29* .13 .74 .32 .21 .73 .04 .15 .96 .23 .15 .79
adults in household
Respondent is naturalized immigrant .09 .23 1.10 .17 .36 .84 .59 .31 .55 .28 .24 1.33
Respondent is noncitizen immigrant .56* .24 .57 .88* .39 .41 .32 .29 .72 .63 .28 .53
Respondent is Hispanic .73** .24 2.08 .27 .43 1.31 .65* .33 1.91 .74** .28 2.09
Respondent is Black 1.06** .26 2.90 .49 .44 1.63 .68* .35 1.97 .95** .28 2.59
Respondent’s .14 .30 .87 .04 .40 1.04 .30 .34 1.35 .94* .41 .39
education , high school degree
Respondent’s education ¼ some .09 .22 .91 .12 .34 .88 .04 .27 .96 .13 .24 1.14
college or more
Respondent is in poor health .97** .34 .38 .05 .45 1.05 .66 .45 .52 1.27** .47 .28
Family income , 75% .40 .33 .67 2.17** .59 8.73 .57 .42 1.76 1.06** .38 .35
of poverty level
Family income 75% – 200% .45 .27 .64 1.74** .54 5.69 .40 .36 1.50 .64* .29 .53
of poverty level
Family income 201% – 300% .11 .26 .90 .84 .57 2.32 .48 .35 1.62 .30 .27 .74
of poverty level
Mother is employed .44* .20 1.55 .31 .31 1.36 .08 .25 1.09 .65** .22 1.91
Survey is from Wave II .92** .18 .40 .86** .30 .42 .48** .23 .62 .94** .21 .39
Constant .72 2.76 4.64 1.07
2
v 131.29 55.12 139.78 135.19
df 18 18 18 18
% receiving 44.9 9.9 19.2 28.6
Note: Analyses are unweighted.
*p , .05. **p , .01. ***p , .001.

among families receiving any form of assistance,
the average total benefit is a more substantial
$3,979. The dollar value of benefits is greatest
for preschool programs, followed by subsidies,
and it is much lower for tax credits. These esti-
mates confound the value of assistance with the
probability of receipt, however. When examined
only for families receiving each type of benefit,
the value of subsidies is the highest at $7,103, fol-
lowed by preschools at $6,417 and tax benefits at
$851 per recipient family.
In Table 5, we report the results of OLS
regressions for the total amount of assistance re-
ceived, conditional on the receipt of any assis-
tance. We use the total value of the assistance
package, rather than estimating the values for
specific programs, because the sample of recipi-
ent families is too small for reliable estimates. A
separate analysis (not shown) comparing the
two approaches indicates that they produce simi-
lar substantive results.
2
The adjusted R suggests that the model ex-
plains 15% of the variation in the value of assis-
tance. Relatively few individual coefficients
achieve significance, however. This is likely
because of the imputation of values using only
Distribution of Child-Care Assistance 743

Table 4. Average Value ($) of Assistance Received, All Assistance, and Conditional on Receipt

Receiving Any Child

Full Receiving Child-Care Enrolled in Receiving
Sample Any Assistance Subsidies Public Child-Care
(N ¼ 646) (n ¼ 290) (n ¼ 64) Preschool (n ¼ 124) Tax Credits (n ¼ 185)

Variable M Mdn SE M Mdn SE M Mdn SE M Mdn SE M Mdn SE

Total amount of 1617 0 149 3979 3079 283 9283 8122 674 5739 3753 441 2845 1152 360
government
assistance with
child care
Market value of 654 0 106 1610 0 243 7103 6874 574 1442 0 355 1149 0 316
child-care
subsidies
Market value of 1174 0 122 2889 0 245 2732 0 528 6417 6800 253 1414 0 247
public preschool
Amount of child-care 214 0 21 527 400 42 440 0 120 204 0 48 851 768 49
tax benefits
Note: All values are weighted.

a subset of family characteristics (described
above) that determine different program costs
or reimbursement levels. Among families re-
porting any assistance, we adjust for the type,
amount, and duration of care, but we cannot
adjust for other characteristics that might influ-
ence the value of assistance received, for exam-
ple, differences in program quality and cost and
individual provider rates.
Significant predictive factors for the total value
of governmental assistance include the presence
of an infant, race and ethnicity of the respondent,
and family income. The value of assistance to
families with children younger than 2 years is
significantly lower than assistance received by
families who only have preschoolers aged 3 – 5.
The total value of assistance declines substan-
tially with family income; controlling for other
family characteristics, families with incomes at
or below 75% of poverty receive more in benefits
than do families with incomes at or above 300%
of poverty (the excluded category), consistent
with differences in the value of assistance avail-
able to lower and higher income families (i.e.,
subsidies and tax credits, respectively).
Who Gets What From Government?
In Table 6, we combine the two steps to simulate
the total dollar value of assistance associated with
selected child, parent, and family characteristics,
holding all other characteristics at the sample
mean. Predicted rates of receipt, 43% for all
families and 48% for families with an employed
mother, are similar to the observed means in the
sample.
To examine differences in total assistance by
specific family characteristics, we set values for
selected characteristics, although holding the
value of other characteristics at the sample mean.
Rather than estimating these results for ‘‘aver-
age’’ maternal employment, however, we set this
value to 1 (mother is currently employed or in
school or training). Results for families with non-
employed mothers (not shown) are substantively
the same, although overall levels of assistance are
lower.
Considering all forms of assistance, total ben-
efits are progressive with income and child
disability. Controlling for all other family charac-
teristics, employed families with income below
75% of the poverty threshold receive about twice
the total benefit (about $2,700) per year in assis-
tance than do those with incomes at or above
300% of the threshold (about $1,300). Families
with a disabled child receive about $1,400 more
than those without because of both a greater like-
lihood of getting help and a higher conditional
benefit amount.
The distribution of assistance is less progres-
sive with respect to other indicators of disadvan-
tage and potential need. Families who have
children aged 3 – 5, but not younger, receive
almost $2,000 more in aid per year than do fam-
ilies who have only infants, and over $800 more
per year more than those families who have both
744 Journal of Marriage and Family

Table 5. Ordinary Least-Squares Regression Results: Value of Assistance, Conditional on Receipt (N ¼ 646)

Value of All Child-Care

Assistance Among Those
Receiving Any Assistance

Variable B SE B

Any infants (age 0 – 2) .09 .28

Any preschoolers (age 3 – 5) .93** .29
Number of children aged 0 – 5 .13 .27
Child in poor health .66 .36
Respondent is single .31 .23
Number of nonparental .29* .13
adults residing in household
Respondent is naturalized immigrant .09 .23
Respondent is noncitizen immigrant .56* .24
Respondent is Hispanic .73** .24
Respondent is Black 1.06** .26
Respondent’s education , high .14 .30
school degree
Respondent’s education ¼ some .09 .22
college or more
Respondent is in poor health .97** .34
Family income , 75% of federal .40 .33
poverty level
Family income 75% – 200% of .45 .27
federal poverty level
Family income 201% – 300% of .11 .26
federal poverty level
Mother is employed .44* .20
Survey is from Wave II .92** .18
2
R .22
Note: Analyses are unweighted.
*p , .05. **p , .01. ***p , .001.

infants and preschoolers. Surprisingly, single-
parent families actually receive slightly less in
total aid than do two-parent families, even with
controls for the number of young children in the
family; although their probability of getting help
is somewhat higher, the average benefit for those
assisted is lower. Largely because of their lower
receipt of assistance, noncitizen immigrant fami-
lies receive about $1,000 less in total child-care
assistance than do native-born families and over
$800 less than citizen immigrants.
DISCUSSION
These analyses are among the first to measure the
distribution of various forms of child-care assis-
tance received by families with young children.
Because of the level of detail in the New York
Social Indicators Survey, we are able to estimate
the receipt of the full package of child-care assis-
tance available to families in the United States
and to use administrative data to estimate their
value at the family level.
These analyses are also limited in some impor-
tant respects. Our data on the receipt of assistance
is quite detailed at the family level but our impu-
tation of the value of assistance is necessarily
limited. Our imputation of the value of nontax
assistance is based on average program costs
and reimbursement rates, adjusting for the type
of care, type of assistance, number and ages of
children in subsidized care, and the amount and
duration of that care. This does not adjust for
variation in other factors that influence the cost
of specific care arrangements, for example, varia-
tion in production costs across public preschool
Distribution of Child-Care Assistance 745

Table 6. Marginal Probability of Receiving Any Child-Care Assistance, Conditional Amount, and Estimated Total Amount

Probability of
All Child-Care Predicted Value of Predicted Value
Assistance Among Assistance Conditional Adjusted for
Those Receiving on Receipt of Any Predicted Probability
Any Assistance Assistance of Receipt

All families with child aged 0 – 5 .43 $3,823 $1,644

Family with an employed mother .48 $3,967 $1,904
Family with an employed mother and
Single-parent household .54 $3,552 $1,918
Two-parent household .46 $4,378 $2,014
All children younger than 6 years are infants .36 $2,539 $914
All children younger than 6 years are preschoolers .56 $5,029 $2,816
Family has both infants and preschoolers .59 $3,272 $1,930
Family income , 75% of poverty .44 $6,130 $2,697
Family income 76% – 200% of poverty .43 $4,578 $1,969
Family income 201% – 300% of poverty .52 $3,370 $1,752
Family income . 300% of poverty .54 $2,418 $1,306
Respondent is naturalized citizen .54 $3,841 $2,074
Respondent is noncitizen immigrant .38 $3,139 $1,193
a
Respondent is native-born U.S. citizen .52 $4,287 $2,229
Focal child does not have a disability .47 $3,873 $1,820
Focal child is disabled or in poor health .63 $5,069 $3,193
Note: All values are weighted. Marginal probabilities and predicted values are calculated holding all other independent vari-
ables at their mean.
a
Includes Puerto Rico.

programs or in fees across private providers. Our
estimates of the value of tax credits is based on
family income and general tax rules but may
not capture some adjustments to income that
affect the amount of credit for individual tax fil-
ers. To the extent that these costs and tax credits
vary systematically with family characteristics,
our analyses will underestimate this association.
Our analyses also represent the experiences of
families in only one city, with relatively generous
child-care programs by U.S. standards. Earlier es-
timates by Giannarelli et al. (2003) suggest that
the receipt of nontax child-care assistance is more
common in New York than in the United States as
a whole. This suggests that our estimates of gov-
ernment help reflect the high end of what families
in the United States are likely to receive given
current federal and state policies.
With cross-sectional data from a single city, we
cannot disentangle the causal mechanisms
through which policy and individual behavior
interact to determine the distribution of child-care
assistance. We can, however, describe at an
unusually detailed level how this assistance is
currently distributed. Our results suggest that
when we consider all forms of assistance, the
receipt of any child-care help is more common
than analysts often assume. Although the United
States lacks any universal child-care programs,
about 40% of families with children younger than
6 years report help with child-care expenses, and
about 50% of those with an employed mother
receive some type of help. In a jurisdiction with
multiple forms of assistance—through pre-
schools, state tax credits, and subsidy pro-
grams—families who receive any help are also
likely to receive help from more than one source.
Although a large share of families receive assis-
tance, the amount of assistance is very modest
for most. The average value of all assistance—
about $1,620 annually among all families and
$3,980 among families receiving any assistance
—obscures substantial variation across families
receiving various forms of help. The most com-
monly received form of assistance, child-care
tax credits, are claimed by 25% of families
but average only $851 annually per recipient
family. In comparison, means-tested subsidies
746
are received by only about 10% of families but
average more than $7,100 per family. The result-
ing distribution is highly skewed, with about one
half of all families receiving nothing, many
receiving modest levels of assistance, and a few
receiving more substantial aid.
These analyses also reveal that the current dis-
tribution of child-care assistance is targeted in
some expected and some unexpected ways. As
we would expect, families in which mothers are
employed receive more assistance than those in
which they are not; families in which a child is
in poor health or disabled are more likely than
others to get help and to receive a larger package
of assistance. Single-parent families are more
likely to receive help than those with two parents,
but they receive less assistance; the net result is
a similar package of assistance for single- and
two-parent families. More surprisingly, high-
and low-income families are about equally likely
to receive some form of child-care assistance.
Among recipients, the amount of assistance is
higher for low-income families, who are most
likely to receive means-tested subsidies, than
for higher income families who receive tax
credits. The resulting distribution is progressive
by income, but less so than we expected: More
than one half of low-income families receive no
assistance, and, adjusting for both the probability
and the value of assistance, families with incomes
under 75% of poverty receive only about $1,400
per year more than those with incomes above
300% of poverty. Families headed by a citizen
immigrant receive less assistance than those
headed by a native-born parent, and those that
are headed by a noncitizen immigrant receive less
than either.
What accounts for this distribution? No form
of child-care assistance is universal for American
families, and tax-based, subsidy, and preschool
programs restrict assistance in a variety of ways.
Most fundamentally, child-care tax credits are the
only form of assistance provided as an entitle-
ment for categorically eligible families, although
even these benefits exclude families who are too
poor to have a tax liability. Neither means-tested
subsidies nor public preschools are entitlements,
and neither are funded at levels sufficient to
serve all eligible families. Within these funding
constraints, federal and state child-care programs
restrict access, through eligibility criteria and
application procedures, and benefit levels through
program design, reimbursement, and copayment
policies.
Journal of Marriage and Family
These policies interact with family characteris-
tics and individual behavior to produce the final
distribution of assistance. This analysis does not
tell us how policy and family factors interact to
distribute assistance. It does suggest that separate
child-care programs, when considered as a total
system, may have both intended and unintended
distributional consequences. Providing higher
benefits to lower income families, through means-
tested subsidies, are consistent with target
efficiency. The failure of so many low-income
families to get any help, however, results in
a considerably less progressive final distribution
and leaves a substantial share of poor families
without any help. The extension of preschool
programs to many 4-year-old children is consis-
tent with efforts to prepare children for the start
of public school. But families with children aged
3 – 5 receive nearly three times more assistance
than do those with infants younger than 3 years,
creating substantial inequities between families
with infants and those with older preschool-aged
children.
Beyond categorical exclusions and restric-
tions, the child-care system may produce unin-
tended and systematic biases. Whereas there is
no explicit policy vis-a-vis parents’ nativity, for
example, families headed by immigrant parents
get considerably less assistance than those with
native-born parents. This may reflect differences
in parents’ preferences about child care and gov-
ernment assistance. It may also reflect institu-
tional barriers that render child-care assistance
less accessible and/or acceptable to these parents.
Additional research should focus on why some
families are receiving help but others are not, and
examine these distributional issues with nation-
ally representative data. Scholars are examining
the organizational and family dynamics that
influence availability and take-up of means-
tested subsidies among low-income families.
These programs are only one part of the total sys-
tem for child-care assistance in the United States,
however. To understand and evaluate this sys-
tem, it is important to broaden our inquiry to con-
sider the full array of child-care assistance
programs and the total population of families
who benefit from them.
These results, although limited to New York
City, raise important questions for policy. The
United States differs from many other industrial-
ized countries in its lack of an integrated national
program for early childhood care and educa-
tion. Federal and state governments fund and
Distribution of Child-Care Assistance
administer multiple programs that target specific
populations and use a variety of policy tools.
Taken together, these programs may provide
the foundation for universal child-care assistance
in the United States. Indeed, this study suggests
that in a high-provision jurisdiction, assistance
is reaching close to half of families with young
children. As a system, however, these programs
are poorly coordinated in both policy and deliv-
ery, are failing to achieve a fully inclusive and
equitable system, and may be targeting assistance
in ways that are unintended by policymakers.
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