Measures

To examine the effects of childcare supply on family-level childcare choices, I include elements from the data sources, discussed above, to measure different aspects that I’ve identified through the literature review and conceptual frameworks. These include the supply of childcare (section 4.2.2), the demand for childcare (family-level demand and community-level demand) (section 4.2.3), the immigration context (section 4.2.4), and the community context (section 4.2.5). Table B.1 in Appendix B lists all variables for the study and data sources for which they were collected. All dollar values are converted to 2010 values, when applicable.

4.2.1 Childcare choice (outcome measure)

A family’s childcare choice during the pre-K year is the outcome measure. In the ECLS- K:2011, parents were asked to identify the type of childcare their child received during the pre-K year. These childcare types can be categorized into six mutually exclusive options: parental care, relative care, non-relative care, center, state pre-K, and Head Start. The type of care used during the pre-K year is assigned the value of one while the other five unselected alternatives are assigned the value of zero. For children in the ECLS-K:2011 who had more than one care

arrangements during the pre-K year, the value of one is assigned to (1) the type of care where the child spent the most time, (2) the formal care arrangement (center, state pre-K, or Head Start) if the child spent equal amount of time in multiple care arrangements, one of which being formal preschool (center-based care, state pre-K, or Head Start), or (3) the one randomly chosen when the child spent equal amount of time in two formal or informal arrangements.

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Unlike the ECLS-K and ECLS-B that do not differentiate preschool beyond childcare centers and Head Start (Crosnoe et al., 2016; Gordon et al., 2012), the ELCS-K:2011 allows researchers to examine a third form of preschool, state pre-K. In the fall parent interview, parents were asked a series of questions that can help identify state pre-K participation: if the center their child attended during the year before kindergarten was “state funded,” “located in a public school,” or “located in the same school as kindergarten”, common features associated with state pre-K programs.

4.2.2 Supply of childcare6

Measures of childcare supply come from the five data sources mentioned above: the HIFLD, the CCD, the ECLSK, the ZBP, and the ECLS-K:2011. Because data from these sources are collected at different geographic units, I created a physical area around the child’s home zip code centroid, the physical center of the zip code polygon, called the buffer, to link the child in the ECLS-K:2011 to the various types of childcare. The goal of creating the buffer was that it sets the boundary within which I measured the number of care providers for each childcare alternative, as specified below. The area within the buffer was also referred to as the community. I described in more detail how the buffer was set up in section 4.3.

Supply of center-based care. The number of center-based day care centers available within each child’s community was aggregated from the HIFLD. The HIFLD includes specific addresses for each childcare facility. Addresses included to account for the supply of center- based care applied to those that (1) enrolled four-year-olds (by excluding infant and toddler centers), and (2) were labeled as either center-based or religious facilities (by excluding school-

6 _{I rescaled the number(s) of formal care arrangements to accommodate the small numbers of relative care, parental}

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based and Head Start programs). I then aggregated the number of childcare centers located within the buffer as the supply of center-based care.

Supply of state pre-K and Head Start. The numbers of state pre-K programs and Head Start centers are obtained from the CCD and ECLKC, respectively, for the 2009-2010 school year. Both data sets include addresses of program locations. Similar to the calculation of childcare centers, I used the aggregated numbers of these two programs within the buffer to measure the supply of state pre-K and Head Start locations, respectively. For state pre-K, in particular, I excluded those that meet this criterion, but are located in a bordering state because an eligible child can only enroll in the state program within his or her state of residency.

Supply of non-relative care. The number of childcare establishments with 0-4 employees (most likely FCC homes) from the ZBP was aggregated over all zip codes whose centroids fall within the buffer area. It accounts for the supply of non-relative care.

Supply of relative care. In the parent interview of the ECLS-K:2011 conducted in fall of the kindergarten year, one question asked if relatives lived with the focal child. If the answer was yes, the supply of relative care is assigned the value of 1, otherwise, the value of 0. Admittedly, this measurement is less than accurate. On the one hand, there was no additional information the relative(s). The relative(s) would only be considered available to care for the child if s/he was unemployed and capable to care for a child. On the other hand, it is impossible to know if there was a relative living nearby who could also be available to care for the child. Therefore, I could only rely on information from the ECLS-K:2011 to proximate the number of relatives available to care for the child, which may be lower or higher than the actual availability of relative care.

Parental care. In the parent interview, one question asked if the focal child in the ECLS- K:2011 was cared for by a parent exclusively during the year before kindergarten. If the parent

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answered yes, the number of parental care provider is assigned the value of 1 or the value of 0 if the family used non-parental care during the pre-K year, assuming parental care was not

available during the pre-K year. 4.2.3 Demand for childcare

Child and family attributes. This array of family-level attributes has been discussed in the in Chapter 2 under resources and needs (section 2.2.1). Specifically, I included two sets of variables representing the child’s development before the pre-K year and family characteristics, respectively. For the child, several variables can account for the child’s prior abilities that are believed to draw responses from the parent who would attempt to choose the best care

arrangement to meet the child’s needs. These included the child’s age, gender, race, and

indicators for low-birth weight, preterm birth, breast feeding, special needs, twin/multiple birth, birth complication, first word spoken after 15 months old and first step taken after 15 months old.

For the family characteristics, measures included the family’s socio-economic

characteristics as well as family structure, such as maternal education, family income, family size, single-parent household, number of siblings, household food security, public assistance at child’s birth, and mother’s age at first birth, religion, and region. As discussed earlier, maternal employment and childcare decisions are considered jointly determined, making it inappropriate to control for maternal employment (Powell, 1997; Magnuson et al., 2007).

Market-level demand. In addition to the individual child and family characteristics that influence childcare choices, I included the number of children under age 5 as a demand variable at the community level. More children needing childcare may attract more childcare services to the area, thus expanding access for all needy families. Conversely, more children in need of

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childcare may also lead to long wait lists to enroll in existing childcare services, thus negatively affecting access to childcare services.

4.2.4 Immigration context

There is an array of variables collected in the ECLS-K:2011 to describe the parental and the child’s immigration status. In addition to the key variable, parental foreign-born status, I also included the following variables to capture the family’s immigration context—child’s citizenship status, parental age of migration to the U.S., and years in the U.S. prior to first child birth. Immigrant parents not only come from different countries and regions, but they also differ in the stage of their own development at the time of immigration and their socialization for parenthood since arriving in the U.S. The parental age of migration may have differential effects on

children’s social development and early cognitive development (Glick et al., 2009, 2012). Years in the U.S. prior to the first child’s birth may also capture the social capital immigrant parents have accumulated when making the childcare choice for the pre-K year, though these measures may risk collinearity with socioeconomic status. In cases where both parents are immigrants, I average these measures between the two parents.

The ECLS-K:2011 also collected additional information regarding the parent’s English proficiency, information that was not available in previous ECLS studies (Crosby & Mendez, 2016). In the fall parent interview, parents were asked to rate their abilities in reading, writing, speaking, and understanding English, where 1 indicated very well and 4 not so well. I reversed the scale so that a higher value indicates a higher level of proficiency. These reversed values across the reading, writing, speaking, and understanding domains are aggregated to create a composite English proficiency measure, ranging from 1 to 16.

69 4.2.5 Neighborhood context

The immigrant concentration and local socioeconomic conditions can also have great implications for the residents and the local supply of childcare. At the individual level,

immigrant parents may have preference over the density of immigrants when making residential decisions. However, the level of immigrant concentration doesn’t always correspond to the same level of socio-economic conditions. Therefore, I included other measures from the ACS 2007- 2011 5-year estimates: percentage of foreign-born population, tract median household income, female labor force participation, and the composed poverty rate, and average them across census tracts within the buffer.