EXAMINING THE IMPACT OF POLICY CHANGES ON CHILD CARE SUBSIDY RECEIPT AND CHILD CARE STABILITY AMONG LOW-INCOME FAMILIES WITH YOUNG CHILDREN IN ILLINOIS: QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

The main purpose of this project is to examine how state policy changes in child care subsidy affect child care subsidy receipt and child care stability among young children in Illinois. Specific aims are to examine: (1) How policy changes (increases in family income eligibility; increases in provider payment rates; and unionization of home-based providers) affect continuity of child care subsidy receipt. (2) How such policy changes affect stability in child care arrangements. (3) How such policy changes affect families with a history of TANF receipt. The study will use monthly child care subsidy administrative data from the state of Illinois from 2001 to 2013. The project will create a longitudinal dataset of young children under age three who first received a child care subsidy and follow them through age five. The project will employ a quasi-experimental design and create one group of children who experienced the 2005-2008 policy changes (experimental group) and an earlier group of children who did not (control group). Propensity score matching will be employed to compare how the two groups differ in continuity of child care subsidy and stability of child care. The study will also conduct analyses with subsets of the samples with TANF histories, to determine whether the policy changes affected this group differently from the rest of the low-income group.