70% of Mass. infants live in child care deserts, according to state data

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4 days ago

A family child care center run by Martha Conlon of Dedham, Mass. (Courtesy Neighbor Schools)
The vast majority of infants and a plurality of toddlers in Massachusetts live in child care deserts, new state data show. Despite the recent increases in early education system capacity, sizeable gaps remain between available seats and the overall number of children, and program capacity falls short for tens of thousands of young children in each early education age group across the state.
Around 59,000 (70%) of infants, around 43,000 (43%) of toddlers, and around 10,000 (5%) of preschoolers in Massachusetts live in an access desert. The state defines this as areas where for every three children there is only one child care slot, though there are regions particularly in central Massachusetts where the ratio is greater than 10 children to one slot.
Enrollment differences between regions, student age groups, and income levels paint a picture of a system struggling to meet potential demand and that is most available to those at the highest income brackets.
'We know the need is considerable, so we know that growth is good, but it doesn't tell us whether or not that growth is particularly responsive to where child and family need is perhaps strongest and greatest,' Tom Weber, executive director of the Massachusetts Business Coalition for Early Childhood Education, said at a recent meeting focused on improving early education data practices. 'Or is it in fact responsive to other environmental factors, like the rules and policies that we put in place or where we have decided presently to concentrate our public funding?'
The data was presented at the second meeting of the Data Advisory Commission on Early Education and Care, an entity created in the state budget signed in July 2024 to better understand the gaps in the child care landscape. Comprised of state, education, and business leaders, the commission's goal is to improve the quality of data collection on child care needs, figure out how best to use it, and make sure the public has access to it.
Coming out of the peak of the Covid pandemic, which shuttered centers and placed much of the child care burden on parents juggling remote or essential in-person work, enrollment and capacity have been on the rise, researchers with the Department of Early Education and Care noted.
Over the last two years, the early education and care system has added about 17,000 new seats, bringing the total capacity of licensed center-based care, licensed family child care, and state-funded programs to 259,744. Care options for infants and toddlers have the fewest overall seats compared to other age groups, but their capacity has risen the most – 5% over the last year compared with 3 percent growth for preschoolers and 1 percent growth for school-age children.
While all regions of the state have seen increased capacity since 2023, the rate of growth slowed in central and southeast Massachusetts over the past year – regions already struggling with accessible child care. Enrollment in formal care for newborns to five-year-olds peaks at 56% in the Boston area and northeast Massachusetts, with the least (48 and 47%) in central and southeast Massachusetts, respectively.
In families earning less than half of the average median income, 51% of children are enrolled in formal care. That drops to between 37 and 35% for families making half to 100% of the standard income, and spikes to 66% at the highest wage brackets of more than 150% of the standard income.
'We see the highest enrollment rates or those who have higher financial resources,' said Michelle Saulnier, a data analyst at the early education department. 'This is an opportunity for us to maybe conclude that those who are in the higher income bracket may be a closer measure to parent preference and demand for enrollment in formal care,' she said.
Essentially, the families with the most resources are enrolling about two-thirds of their children in formal care, which can give education researchers clues about how many children may need spots to meet true demand.
Research published last year from Professor Jeffrey Liebman at the Harvard Kennedy School found that 80 percent of families surveyed who were not currently using formal care would use it if they could afford it. Plus, 70 percent of those currently using it would use more hours if it were more affordable.
We see the highest enrollment rates or those who have higher financial resources.
– Michelle Saulnier, data analyst at the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care
Ashley White, research director for the early education department, noted that the state collects information on child age, care type, and region for those using child care financial assistance programs. But there are still holes in data on family income, race and ethnicity, country of origin, disability status, and household language. Improvements to systematically collecting that information would bolster the data sets, White said.
The department does not currently collect data on early intervention for developmental delays, though partner groups and sister agencies focused on these interventions have some relevant data that the early education department can aggregate.
There are similar data gaps for families on wait lists for licensed programs, making it hard to gauge the demand for the different types of child care and where it would make sense to add seats. Across the state, data on children and families is generally limited to those accessing care funded through the Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) grant program that supports child care providers, so White said there is a need to 'think creatively' about how best to gather information on education and care needs outside of the C3 program.
The state is also reimagining the family portal and case management system for child care financial assistance programs, which at the moment involves a number of different tools and applications. Some parts involve more of an open notes field, which makes it hard to capture and sort information systemically. A better digital intake process would let them collect more 'granular' data, unify the experience for families, streamline care management, and improve operational efficiency.
'I think one of the wonderful things about the family portal is that it's going to allow us to collect more information earlier in the process and have to do less verification and going back to families and asking for them to update information,' White said. 'So we'll know more initially than we ever have before.'
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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