In this brief, we provide a national snapshot of ECE participation among low-income Hispanic households. We use publicly available data from the 2012 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) to describe the percentage of young children in low-income Hispanic households who are in non-parental care on a regular basis (more than 5 hours per week), and the different types of settings they experience. ECE is broadly defined in this analysis to include the full range of home- and center- based arrangements children experience when not in the care of their parents. We focus on low-income households because the challenges of coordinating parental employment and the care of young children are most acute for families with limited economic resources. Low-income families are therefore the primary target of policy efforts and public investments to improve ECE access, utilization, and quality. Households' ECE needs, preferences, and available options may vary by family members' demographic characteristics and/or child age. Thus, we report separate estimates for Hispanic children in immigrant households (i.e., including at least one foreign-born adult) and those living with U.S.-born adults only, and provide comparison data for young non-Hispanic white and black children from low-income households. We also examine ECE participation patterns separately for infants and toddlers (younger than age 3), and preschoolers (3 to 5 years). (author abstract)
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United States