America’s Child Care Deserts

From the Center for American Progress (http://www.americanprogress.org):

There is a serious shortage of child care supply in the United States.

A child care desert is defined as any community “with more than 50 children under age 5 that contains either no child care providers or so few that there are more than 3 times as many children as licensed child care slots.”

For the first time, the Center for American Progress is comprehensively tracking child care deserts in all 50 states.

• According to a new CAP report, 51% of people in the U.S. live in a child care desert.
• Overall, rural areas have the highest concentration of child care deserts.
• Hispanic/Latino populations disproportionately live in these areas.

The report also offers key policy recommendations:

• Improve data collection to help policymakers determine the solutions needed to address the child care supply gap.
• Increase public investments in child care and early education.
• Raise child care subsidy reimbursement rates.
• Invest in child care infrastructure in all child care settings.

Parents shouldn’t have to worry about access to safe, affordable, and available child care.

Check out America’s Child Care Deserts in 2018 and accompanying interactives that map America’s nearly 235,000 licensed child care providers across the country and assess various social factors like race and income by neighborhood.