Evidence of dynamic geographic shifts in metropolitan child care markets over the 1990s.

• Author: Covington, Kenya
• Position: Decade overview

Abstract

This paper provides an exploration of the spatial properties of the child care market. It brings attention to the accumulative impact of neighborhood structural barriers on the geographic distribution patterns of the child care market. In this context, three major questions are addressed: 1) What is the level of access that families have to their neighborhood child care options and is there variation by race, 2) Has access changed over the last decade?, and 3) If it has, what caused the change over the 1990s? Using both the Economic Census and the U.S. Census this research offers a methodology for estimating relative access to formal child care options using the dissimilarity index. Results indicate that nationally the supply of formal child care options within metropolitan areas has improved over the decade and there is significant variation in improvement for residents when race is considered. Generally, improvement in child care access is a result of dynamic metropolitan shifts; that is, new entrants and movement of existing child care facilities to poor access neighborhoods occurred within metropolitan areas over the period between 1990 and 2000.

Introduction

The heightened importance of child care is evident by recent growth in the number of scholarly works, yet, rarely has a scholar explored the child care market in spatial terms. Undoubtedly, geographic imbalance of the child care market across neighborhoods imposes certain costs, and generally, the larger the imbalances the higher the costs imposed on families. How child care is distributed geographically determines the distances families must travel and the amount of time it will take to commute to work. Parents' daily routines link together the geographies of child care, home, and work and seldom do these geographies overlap (England 1996a, 1996b). In most cases, difficulty finding a child care provider renders work or school participation problematic (Boushey 2002).

Given the importance of geography, especially in sprawling metropolitan landscapes, it is critical that a scholarly discussion ensue focused on three major questions. What is the level of access that families have to their neighborhood child care options? Has access changed over the last decade, and is the change greater for certain groups? And if any change is evident, what caused the change over the 1990s? This discussion is particularly necessary since as a work support, millions of families depend on child care services.

Demand for child care has escalated persistently over the last five decades. Dating back to 1947, it was unusual to find the mother of a preschool-aged child in the labor force; only 12 percent (2) of mothers with children under the age of six were in the labor force (U.S. House Ways and Means 1998). Yet, by 2002, more than 71 percent of single mothers, 60.8 percent married mothers and 77.9 percent of widowed, divorced or separated mothers with preschool-aged children participated in the labor force (U.S. Census 2003). Combined with the growing necessity for families with young children to consist of two bread winners, these trends have intensified concerns about access to child care and the importance of gauging relative access over time.

Nevertheless, before access can be gauged one needs relatively standard measures that also take into consideration spatial distribution to systematically gauge child care access across the nation. Hence, this research offers a methodology for estimating relative access to formal child care options within neighborhoods across metropolitan areas in the U.S. looking to the dissimilarity index; a measure of geographic population distribution often employed by urban sociologists to gauge segregation. The equation for the dissimilarity index allows consideration of the distribution of neighborhood child care supply enumerated over the entire metropolitan area. This measure is suggestive of how much reshuffling across neighborhoods is necessary to render the metropolitan area child care supply relatively balanced between demand and supply. Further interpretation of this measure is discussed throughout the paper.

Using the Economic Census and the U.S. Census, this paper will track access to child care over the 1990s and attempt to identify reasons for any changes that are exhibited. The data included in the analysis are limited because they do not include informal options, school-based programs such as pre-kindergarten, or small licensed family establishments. Although the data only allow a systematic exploration of child care centers within metropolitan areas, exploring the child care market in this way will begin to illuminate market inefficiencies. This will allow the establishment of benchmarks whereby supply and access can be gauged while also making it possible to effectively target resources that may stimulate market growth, especially in those places with extremely sparse supply. The extant literature on child care cost and quality is rich; however, much more needs to be understood about the national supply of child care and metropolitan dynamics responsible for its spatial distribution across neighborhoods.

Literature Review

In this section, three areas of the literature will be discussed. First, a review of important structural components of metropolitan areas potentially influential over the child care market is shared. Second, the status of child care policy at the national level is presented focusing particularly on recent changes in the nation's welfare policy. Last, it explores past efforts and new ways to measure access to child care services.

Structural Barriers to Access

Less affluent neighborhoods who consistently confront blight and a stagnant local economy may present barriers to both the demand and supply of child care. As Ficano (2006:454,455) suggests these barriers might include a lack of adequate transportation, low levels of human capital, linguistic isolation, and geographic dispersion. But the "spatial mismatch" literature indicates that the barriers may be more extensive and may have more detrimental effects than Ficano (2006) attests. The body of work provided by Kain (1968), Massey and Denton (1986, 1993), Orfield (1995) and Fernandez (1997) documents how the effects of racial segregation and the polarization of the poor within central cities is significantly related to differences in the distribution of key community resources (decent housing and quality public schools) and decreased employment opportunities; arguably barriers that significantly explain persistently high unemployment rates and low wages of inner city minority residents.

Generally, the community's economic viability determines the amenities that neighborhoods have to offer, which in turn impact the overall desirability of the neighborhood. Thus, with regards to the child care market, the amenities or disamenities could potentially cause child care establishments to enter into the market in a particular community, remain in the neighborhood, or relocate into another neighborhood.

Despite the harsh effects that structural barriers could have on the child care market, metropolitan regions across the U.S. enjoyed economic prosperity during the 1990s and child care access improved over this period. During this period, unemployment rates dropped considerably. For example, as a result of the economic boom, unemployment by 2000 was at an all time low. In 1999, the black unemployment rate was 8 percent (Office of the President 2001:Table B-42). While this was nearly double the national unemployment rate, the annual rate of 8 percent is the lowest recorded value for black unemployment rates since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began to collect separate data for African Americans in 1972.

The noticeable increase in prosperity, especially for blacks and other disadvantaged groups occurred as urban job growth which may have generated economic vitality and commercial activity in areas that once were neglected. Additionally, the growth could have raised the incomes of the poor and other marginalized groups, possibly spurring their residential mobility to the suburbs where jobs and economic growth is relatively stable (Raphael and Stoll 2002).

On the other hand, as argued by Stoll (2006), as metropolitan areas across the U.S. became simultaneously characterized by residential and job sprawl, distances between important "daily trip" nodes increased leading to further isolation of people within the region from important economic opportunities.

These arguments suggest that the viability of the neighborhood may influence the child care market. Reports indicate that when compared with economically viable communities, distressed neighborhoods have a significantly lower supply of licensed-center care (Gordon and Chase-Lansdale 2001; Queralt and Witte 1998; Fuller et al. 2002). It appears that large chain for-profit child care providers prefer site locations near: major highways, locations between middle-class residential areas and commercial areas, communities with high female labor force participation rates, and traditional two-parent families with two-wage earners and more than 50 percent above the median family income (Kahn and Kamerman 1987:105). Some have attempted to explore the supply of child care and the community features that seem to determine supply (Queralt and Witte 1999; Collins and Li 1997; and Kreader, Piecyk and Collins 2000), but few have done so systematically across the nation (Ficano 2006) and none have explicitly considered race. However, public policy has the ability to mediate the influence of economic and social features of communities and the structural barriers that may dominate the metropolitan region overall.

Recent Federal Child Care Policy

Major changes in welfare policy over the 1990s created an environment which demands that every "able bodied" adult even if they have young children work (Loprest 2002)...