Patterns of Child Care Use for Preschoolers in Los Angeles County. Technical Report

This report was produced as part of the First 5 LA-RAND Research Partnership. First 5 LA is the new name for the Los Angeles County Children and Families First-Proposition 10 Commission. First 5 LA was established as a result of passage of Proposition 10 in November 1998 by the voters of California. Effective January 1, 1999, Proposition 10 added a 50-cent tax to cigarettes and other tobacco products. The revenue generated from this tax was earmarked for programs that promote early childhood development for children from birth to age 5. Twenty percent of the tax dollars were allocated to the California state Proposition 10 Commission. The remaining 80 percent is distributed to individual county Proposition 10 Commissions based on the proportion of children born in each county. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors established the Los Angeles County Children and Families First-Proposition 10 Commission (now known as First 5 LA) in December 1998. The Commission's goal is to use the funds generated by the implementation of Proposition 10 to invest in the health and development of young children in Los Angeles County. For more information on First 5 LA, go to www.first5.org.The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit, independent, objective, and nonpartisan research institution, which helps to improve public policy through research and analysis. Additional information on RAND and RAND research can be found at www.rand.org. The First 5 LA-RAND Research Partnership was established to analyze the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS) data and disseminate research findings related to policy questions surrounding school readiness, child care choices, children's health, the contribution of neighborhood characteristics to young children's well-being, and children's health insurance coverage, access, and utilization. to facilitate access to L.A.FANS results and other data by developing and implementing a strategy for outreach to organizations, agencies, and community groups concerned with early childhood development in Los Angeles. to develop standardized measures of school readiness, child care choices, and children's health that can be used in other studies and evaluations.Under the Research Partnership, RAND Labor and Population, a unit of the RAND Corporation, and First 5 LA research staff collaborate on identifying key policy questions on which policymakers and the public need more information. Although First 5 LA also provides funding to RAND to conduct the analyses, RAND research staff carry out the analyses and are responsible for all of the findings and conclusions. Like all RAND publications, this report has been carefully reviewed for accuracy and objectivity as part of RAND's quality assurance program. This report examines patterns of child care use in 2000-2001 for children ages 0-5 who were not yet enrolled in kindergarten or first grade. Specifically, the report examines whether or not non-parental child care was used, the primary type of child care used, the amount of child care used per week, the number of arrangements, the cost of care, and child-to-adult ratios in child care settings. It investigates the relationships between these child care measures and neighborhood, family, and child characteristics in Los Angeles County. It also considers the differences in child care patterns between the poorest families and others. The goal is to provide descriptive information on basic preschool child care use patterns in Los Angeles. The report is based on the results of the 2000-2001 Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS), which is a representative survey of the county of Los Angeles. This report contains five chapters. Following an introduction, Chapter Two provides a brief overview of the L.A.FANS study and outlines the child care measures collected by L.A.FANS. The results of the analysis are presented in Chapter Three, examining the association between child care patterns and key geographic, socioeconomic, and demographic characteristics. The specific variables included in the analysis were chosen primarily because they represent major socioeconomic and demographic groups of interest to policymakers in Los Angeles County. At the neighborhood level, differences by service planning areas (SPAs)--which represent geographic regions of Los Angeles County--and neighborhood poverty levels are examined. At the family level, the report examines the relationship of child care with maternal education, work status, income, race/ethnicity, maternal nativity status, marital status, and whether the mother was a teenager when she had the child. It also examines differences in child care by children's age and sex. Chapter Four focuses on child care use by poorer families in the sample and investigates how they pay for child care. Low-income families are of particular interest to policymakers because they are least able to afford high-quality child care. Finally, Chapter Five summarizes the main conclusions of the report. Appended are "Questions on Child Care in L.A.FANS" and a bibliography. (Contains 13 figures and 8 tables.) [This report was prepared for the First 5 LA.] Child care has an important impact on children's development. High quality child care is especially important for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. In this report we examine non-parental child care for children in Los Angeles County in 2000-2001, based on the first wave of the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey. In Los Angeles County, non-parental child care was used by only a minority (37 percent) of children ages 0 to 5 who were not yet in kindergarten or school. Among the target group for universal preschool (UPS) initiative (children 3 to 5) only 39 percent received any type of non-parental child care. Only about 14 percent of 0- to 5-year olds and 21 percent of 3- to 5-year olds attended child care centers or preschools at the time of the survey. If these figures continue to characterize preschools currently - as seems likely - than less than one quarter of the target age group for UPS is currently in center care. UPS is intended to be a voluntary program. However, if UPS succeeds in attracting and providing preschools for even half of the four-year-olds in Los Angeles County, it will be a very major change in the experiences of young children and families. Three key results from this study suggest that initiatives such as UPS and expansion of high-quality, developmentally oriented child care programs may be especially important for children from poorer families. First, children in poor families are less likely than others to attend child care centers, despite the availability of subsidized care. Second, children who receive exclusively parental care are more likely to have mothers with lower educational attainments than other children. Third, poor families who did use child care were likely to have had a difficult time paying for it. Our results also show that, with two exceptions, child care use patterns do not differ significantly by ethnicity or maternal nativity. One exception is that Latino children are less likely to receive non-parental child care than other children. Second, African American children were considerably more likely to use center-based care than whites. Contrary to conventional wisdom, African American children in Los Angeles were less likely to be cared for by relatives than to be in center care, compared with white children. High quality child care is especially important for child development. In this report, we examine child care in Los Angeles County in 2000-2001. Non-parental child care was used by 37 percent of children ages 0 to 5 who were not yet in kindergarten or school. Our results suggest that universal preschool and high-quality child care programs may be especially important for children from poorer families. Introduction -- Los Angeles Family And Neighborhood Survey (l.a.fans) -- Results -- How Do Poorer Families Pay For Child Care? -- Conclusions. Laura Chyu, Anne Pebley, Sandraluz Lara-cinisomo. Tr-116. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 54-56). Also Available Via The Internet. Since the 1960s, women's participation in the labor force has increased markedly.