Child Care and Housing: Big Expenses With Too Little Help Available
End Notes
[1] Douglas Rice is from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Stephanie Schmit and Hannah Matthews are from the Center for Law and Social Policy.
[2] Heather Sandstrom and Sandra Huerta, “The Negative Effects of Instability on Child Development: A Research Synthesis,” Urban Institute, 2013, https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/32706/412899-The-Negative-Effects-of-Instability-on-Child-Development-A-Research-Synthesis.PDF; Diana Becker Cutts et al., “US Housing Insecurity and the Health of Very Young Children,” American Journal of Public Health, 2011; and Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest and Claire C. McKenna, “Early Childhood Housing Instability and School Readiness,” Child Development, Vol. 85, 2014.
[3] Will Fischer, “Research Shows Housing Vouchers Reduce Hardship and Provide Platform for Long-Term Gains Among Children,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, updated October 7, 2015, https://www.cbpp.org/research/housing/research-shows-housing-vouchers-reduce-hardship-and-provide-platform-for-long-term.
[4] Thirty-one percent lived doubled up with friends or relatives at some point during the year. Michelle Wood, Jennifer Turnham, and Gregory Mills, “Housing Affordability and Family Well-Being: Results from the Housing Voucher Evaluation,” Housing Policy Debate, Vol. 19, No. 2, 2008, pp. 367-412.
[5] A large number of pre-school-age children likely live in similar circumstances. National Center for Homeless Education, “Education for Homeless Children and Youth, Federal Data Summary, School Years 2014-15 through 2016-17,” February 2019, https://nche.ed.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Federal-Data-Summary-SY-14.15-to-16.17-Final-Published-2.12.19.pdf.
[6] Alicia Mazzara, “Census: Renters’ Incomes Still Lagging Behind Housing Costs,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, September 13, 2018, https://www.cbpp.org/blog/census-renters-incomes-still-lagging-behind-housing-costs.
[7] Nicole Elsasser Watson et al., “Worst Case Housing Needs, 2017 Report to Congress,” Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Policy Development and Research, August 2017, https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/Worst-Case-Housing-Needs.html.
[8] Rebekah L. Coley and Caitlin McPherran Lombardi, “Does Maternal Employment Following Childbirth Support or Inhibit Low-Income Children’s Long-Term Development?” Child Development, Vol. 84, 2012. Results in this study were most significant for African American children.
[9] Jack P. Shonkoff and Deborah A. Phillips, eds., From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development, National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2000.
[10] ChildCare Aware of America, “The US and the High Cost of Child Care,” 2018 Report Appendices, http://usa.childcareaware.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/appendices18.pdf?hsCtaTracking=189a8ba7-22d8-476b-aa2e-120483a43702%7Ce7f035de-f88f-4732-8204-a30353610929.
[11] ChildCare Aware of America, “The US and the High Cost of Child Care,” 2018 Report, https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/3957809/costofcare2018.pdf?__hstc=&__hssc=&hsCtaTracking=b4367fa6-f3b9-4e6c-acf4-b5d01d0dc570%7C94d3f065-e4fc-4250-a163-bafc3defaf20.
[12] Lynda Laughlin, “Who’s Minding the Kids? Child Care Arrangements: Spring 2011,” U.S. Census Bureau, April 2013, https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p70-135.pdf.
[13] Ibid.
[14] For a review of the research, see Gregory Mills, Jennifer Compton, and Olivia Golden, “Assessing the Evidence About Work Support Benefits and Low-Income Families,” Urban Institute, 2011, https://www.urban.org/research/publication/assessing-evidence-about-work-support-benefits-and-low-income-families.
[15] Elizabeth E. Davis, Deana Grobe, and Roberta B. Weber, “Rural-Urban Differences In Child Care Subsidy Use And Employment Stability,” Applied Economics Perspectives and Policies, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2010, pp. 135-153.
[16] “Factsheet: Estimates of Child Care Eligibility and Receipt for Fiscal Year 2015,” Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Department of Health and Human Services, https://aspe.hhs.gov/pdf-report/factsheet-estimates-child-care-eligibility-and-receipt-fiscal-year-2015.
[17] Child care also receives funding from the “mandatory” side of the budget, and these funds remained frozen over this period. Thus, overall funding for child care increased by a smaller percentage overall than the sizable increase in discretionary funding.
[18] National Women’s Law Center, “States Use New Child Care and Development Block Grant Funds to Help Children and Families,” January 2019, https://nwlc-ciw49tixgw5lbab.stackpathdns.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/NWLC-report-on-state-uses-of-new-child-care-funds.pdf.
[19] Karen Schulman, “Overdue for Investment: State Child Care Assistance Policies, 2018,” National Women’s Law Center, October 2018, https://nwlc-ciw49tixgw5lbab.stackpathdns.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/NWLC-State-Child-Care-Assistance-Policies-2018.pdf.
[20] Urban Institute, “Mapping America’s Rental Housing Crisis,” updated April 27, 2017, https://apps.urban.org/features/rental-housing-crisis-map/. “Extremely low-income” means household income is less than 30 percent of area median income or the poverty line, whichever is higher. “Affordable” means rent and utilities do not consume more than 30 percent of household income, which is the federal standard of affordability.
[21] Wood et al., op cit. Daniel Gubits et al., “Family Options Study: 3-Year Impacts of Housing and Services Interventions for Homeless Families,” Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Policy Development and Research, October 2016; Daniel Gubits et al., “Family Options Study: Short-Term Impacts of Housing and Services Interventions for Homeless Families,” Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Policy Development and Research, July 2015; both reports are available at https://www.huduser.gov/portal/family_options_study.html.
[22] Gubits et al. (2015 and 2016), ibid.
[23] Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Chart Book: Economic Security and Health Insurance Programs Reduce Poverty and Provide Access to Needed Care,” updated March 21, 2018, https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/chart-book-economic-security-and-health-insurance-programs-reduce#part1.
[24] National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, “A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty,” February 2019, http://sites.nationalacademies.org/dbasse/bcyf/reducing_child_poverty/index.htm.
[25] Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence F. Katz, “The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment,” American Economic Review, Vol. 106, No. 4, 2016, pp. 855–902, https://opportunityinsights.org/paper/newmto/.
[26] Jeffrey Kling et al., “Moving to Opportunity and Tranquility: Neighborhood Effects on Adult Economic Self-Sufficiency and Health from a Randomized Housing Voucher Experiment,” National Bureau of Economic Research, 2004; Jens Ludwig et al., “Neighborhoods, Obesity, and Diabetes — A Randomized Social Experiment,” New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 365, No. 16, October 2011, https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1103216.
[27] “HUD Reports Homelessness Unchanged in U.S. in 2018 with Notable Declines Among Veterans and Families with Children,” Department of Housing and Urban Development press release, December 17, 2018, https://www.hud.gov/press/press_releases_media_advisories/HUD_No_18_147.
[28] One particularly promising idea is to target new housing vouchers on families with young children who are either homeless or living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty. This is a joint proposal by the Urban Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that was developed as part of the U.S. Partnership on Mobility from Poverty, which was funded by the Gates Foundation. See Barbara Sard, Mary K. Cunningham, and Robert Greenstein, “Helping Young Children Move Out of Poverty by Creating a New Type of Rental Voucher,” February 2018, https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/rental_vouchers_paper.pdf.
[29] Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Three Out of Four Low-Income At-Risk Renters Do Not Receive Federal Rental Assistance,” updated August 2017, https://www.cbpp.org/three-out-of-four-low-income-at-risk-renters-do-not-receive-federal-rental-assistance.
[30] Alicia Mazzara, Barbara Sard, and Douglas Rice, “Rental Assistance to Families with Children at Lowest Point in Decade,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, updated October 18, 2016, https://www.cbpp.org/research/housing/rental-assistance-to-families-with-children-at-lowest-point-in-decade.