Estimating need for nonparental care: An approach to refining measurement of child care demand

What is the extent of demand for nonparental child care in the contemporary United States? Despite a large body of research, scholars and policymakers have failed to capture the complexity of child care demand and adequately answer this question. Previous research has almost uniformly proxied demand as the number of young children, not yet in school, whose parents are in the labor force. The current study is one of the first to harmonize four nationally representative data sources to simultaneously account for a host of parental needs and decisions. Drawing on data from the American Community Survey (ACS), the Early Childhood Program Participation Survey, the Household Pulse Survey, and the National Survey of Early Care and Education, we find that a large share of parents who are not employed use nonparental care, and sizeable shares do not work because of problems with child care or have searched and failed to find adequate child care. Estimates that fail to include these parents underreport child care demand. Additionally, estimates of child care demand may be upwardly biased by parents who are employed but do not search for care and parents who work staggered shifts but do not use care. Accounting for all these factors simultaneously results in an estimate of child care demand that is larger than the traditional estimate. Thus, while the conventional estimate from the ACS remains a valuable proxy for practitioners and policymakers, it may systematically underestimate the extent of childcare demand in the contemporary United States.