Today, CLASP released the latest edition of its report on inequitable access to child care subsidies, “Child Care Assistance Landscape: Inequities in Federal and State Eligibility and Access.” The report analyzes variations in eligibility and access to Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) subsidies in fiscal year (FY) 2020. State decisions on implementation within the CCDBG program, along with historically insufficient and limited funding, restrict parents' access to child care.  

In this national report and series of individual state fact sheets, we analyze state-level Administration for Children and Families CCDBG data by state, race, and ethnicity, with analyses of both state and federal income eligibility limits. This update also expands on the 2019 report by analyzing data on potentially eligible children, or children who are estimated to qualify for receiving CCDBG assistance.

Key findings include:

• Though 30 percent of all children ages 0-13 were potentially eligible to receive a CCDBG subsidy based on federal income eligibility, only 10 percent of all children had access to a subsidy. 
• Though 20 percent of all children ages 0-13 were potentially eligible to receive a CCDBG subsidy based on state income eligibility, only 14 percent of all children had access to a subsidy. 
• Across all states, none of the states had more than 50 percent of all potentially eligible children in any racial or ethnic group receive a subsidy based on federal or state income limits. 

Click here for a deeper analysis of these findings and additional data. And be sure to check out the individual state fact sheets we developed alongside the new national report.  

Want to share the findings from this report? Our social media toolkit includes several options for posts on this new analysis of FY2020 national data as well as findings from each state that reported sufficient data! 

For questions or additional information, please contact Stephanie Schmit, Director of Child Care and Early Education at CLASP, at [email protected].  

Interested in sharing these resources with others? We have included suggested tweets below.

• Why are so few children accessing #childcare subsidies?  @CLASPChildCare recently released a report detailing inequities in access to CCDBG with state-by-state and national data across race and ethnicity. Read the report and state fact sheets here: https://www.clasp.org/publications/report/brief/inequitable-access-2024/

• If every state raised its #childcare subsidy income eligibility level to the federal max of 85% State Median Income, @CLASPChildCare estimates the number of potentially eligible children could increase by nearly 50%. Read the new report: https://www.clasp.org/publications/report/brief/inequitable-access-2024/ 

• Only 1 in 7 children who are eligible for #childcare subsidies under state eligibility rules has access to assistance. Limited federal funding forces states to set eligibility thresholds below federal maximums, as seen in @CLASPChildCare’s new report: https://www.clasp.org/publications/report/brief/inequitable-access-2024/

For more options to share, see here.