In keeping with the growing focus on areas with limited availability of specific resources, such as food deserts and medically?underserved areas, there is a burgeoning interest in examining places lacking an adequate child care supply. A "child care desert" is defined as a ZIP code containing at least 30 children under age 5 that has limited or no center?based early care and education programs (i.e., there are more than three times as many children under age 5 as there are spaces in the child care settings). The Center for American Progress mapped these areas in eight states across the U.S., finding that 42 percent of young children in the study area lived in child care deserts. Here, we undertake similar analyses to explore child care availability in the greater Tucson area. We look first at child care programs for all young children, birth to 5, and then focus on early education programs targeted to the preschool ages of 3 and 4 years. This study has two objectives: (1) to identify and map "child care deserts" and describe local communities with limited access to child care in terms of the prevalence of young children, socioeconomic factors, and race and ethnicity; and (2) to explore the accessibility of early education programs for preschool?age children. (author abstract)