Description:
Access to affordable and appropriate child care is a crucial employment support for families and may be particularly salient for families with young children with disabilities. Without access to quality child care, parents may not be able to find and maintain employment, increasing the likelihood of economic precarity for families that are already likely to experience economic hardship. In this study, we use data from the ECLS-B to examine whether child care arrangements differ by disability status. We find that having an identified disability in childhood, and particularly IEP receipt, is associated with increased likelihood of attending center-based and part-time care as well as lower child care costs. We employ a difference-in-difference framework to examine changes in maternal employment rates at kindergarten enrollment by disability status; the results of the difference-in-difference analysis are generally not significant, but they do show a smaller rate of change in maternal employment at kindergarten enrollment for parents of children with disabilities compared to parents of typically developing peers. These results are consistent with the conclusion that current federal policies support access to child care for children with disabilities. (author abstract)
Resource Type:
Reports & Papers
Publisher(s):
Country:
United States