Ensuring child care access for Latino^a families with low incomes is an important goal for researchers and policymakers alike. One in four U.S. children is Latino¹ and their families tend to be stable, employed, and interested in educational attainment for their children; however, many of these families are also economically strained.²

In 2013, the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families (Center) set forth a research agenda for studying Latino families’ access to child care, which would become a guidepost for our work over the next 10 years. Our research seeks to inform programs and policies so they are better able to serve Latino families with children, with a focus on programs administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF). This includes the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF)—the largest federal program aimed at increasing access to and affordability of child care for families with low incomes³—and promoting early child education (ECE) access among Latino families, more broadly, given ACF’s critical role in supporting family economic well-being and children’s development.

In this brief, we synthesize what we have learned since 2013 about the strengths and needs of Latino families who seek to access child care in support of their work and to enrich the lives of their children.

Using the Accommodation Model and Access Framework to Guide Our Approach

Our work uses the accommodation model of child care,⁴ which posits that child characteristics and family characteristics; community factors; and the larger societal values, norms, and laws (i.e., the macrosystem context) help shape and influence families’—including Latino families’—access to child care as a framework. The model seeks to explain how parents make tradeoffs between their families’ needs and the cost and supply of care within their communities.

Building upon this work, the Definitions of Access framework⁵ recognizes five essential components of ECE access. These include seeking early care and education arrangements that 1) require reasonable effort on behalf of parents (measured in our work through search patterns and administrative burden), 2) are affordable (measured in our work as the amount families pay for care and the proportion of families’ income spent on care), 3) meet children’s needs by supporting the child’s development (measured in our work through predictors of quality of care and teacher well-being), 4) meet the parents’ needs (measured in our work as the flexibility and accommodations that providers offer parents and the frequency of child care disruptions), and 5) prioritize equity. This fifth dimension of equitable access defines all our work by broadly applying a Latino lens to look at the other access dimensions, especially the administrative burdens that impact Latino families who search and seek to access care, and how the dimensions of access show up in the lives of Latino families with low incomes, for whom care must be affordable and accessible. Together, the accommodation model and the Access Framework have anchored our work for more than a decade.

What We’ve Learned About Latino Families and the Dimensions of ECE Access

Over the past decade, our work uncovered key challenges across multiple dimensions of ECE access (search and preferences, affordability, supporting children’s development, flexibility and accommodations for families, and equity), but also how access is improving for Latino families. We also learned about how the dimensions of access impact Latino families and how our work has informed policy changes that have the potential to benefit families. Specifically, our findings continue to reveal how many Latino families are experiencing a mismatch between their own priorities for their families and various aspects of the child care delivery system. Additionally, we found that COVID-19 and the experience of the pandemic not only negatively impacted child care, but Latino families and providers specifically.

This discussion begins with a focus on ECE utilization and the supply of child care, to set the stage for understanding what types of care and what ages of Latino children, relative to their White and Black peers, are being served by our present child care arrangements. We follow with a discussion of four dimensions of access —affordability, accessibility, meeting children’s needs, and meeting parents’ needs—based on our own studies using a Latino lens. We then follow with a discussion of our work on administrative burden and subsidy receipt among Latino populations, including the views of practitioners across high-Hispanic-serving states. We conclude the paper with our recommendations, based on research conducted to date, for how to address the needs and strengths of Latino families in their utilization and access to ECE. All work presented in this brief is taken from Center publications from the years 2013 to 2024.

Utilization of ECE

Rates of ECE utilization at the end of the last decade (2019) among Latino families with low incomes were similar to the rates we observed in 2012. Using the nationally representative National Survey of Early Care and Education (2019), we found that about half of all Hispanic children ages 3 to 5 from families with low incomes used some form of ECE, which is similar to their White peers but significantly lower than their Black peers.⁶ However, gaps in ECE use between Latino infant and toddlers and their White and Black peers were more pronounced.⁶

Among Hispanic children from households with low incomes who participated in ECE, use of different types of care providers—center- or home-based—varied by child age and by whether their household included an immigrant member. Approximately one third of Hispanic infant- and toddler-age children in immigrant households were in ECE arrangements (33%), while nearly half of their non-immigrant Hispanic peers participated in ECE (48%).⁶ Among Hispanic children ages 3 to 5, those in non-immigrant households with low incomes (63%) were significantly more likely to be in home-based care than their counterparts in immigrant families (47%).⁶ And again among preschool-age children, those in non-immigrant households were more likely to be in home-based care (63%) than those in immigrant households (47%).⁶ Immigrant Hispanic families also were more likely to secure care from a paid (rather than unpaid) provider, which can add to the cost of care.⁶ Use of paid care providers may reflect less developed social networks among arriving immigrant families with young children or a lack of relatives living nearby.⁶

Use of center-based child care can be challenging for Latino families with nonstandard work schedules. Our findings show that 3 in 5 Latino children had at least one parent working a nonstandard schedule and that Latino parents tend to receive short notice of work changes to these schedules, which complicates their ability to secure child care providers.⁷

• In 2019, about 90 percent of children from non-immigrant Hispanic families and 88 percent of children from immigrant Hispanic families with low incomes used home-based arrangements, which was significantly higher than Black but not White families.⁸
• Relative to data from 2012, the reliance on home-based care among Hispanic households with low incomes was higher in 2019. This may indicate that home-based care offers families resources—such as a trusted caregiver who may share their language and cultural preferences—and/or reflect shortages in affordable center-based care.
• Our data suggest that Latino families may seek out home-based care at high rates to accommodate nonstandard work schedules and provide secure environments for their young children. Also, many Latino families use multiple arrangements to meet their children’s needs and home-based care may be a strategy to minimize cost of care.⁶

Supply of care

Nationally, in 2019, one in four center-based programs and roughly one in five listed and unlisted home-based providers served a high proportion of Hispanic children (25% or more of children enrolled were Hispanic).⁹ Providers working in these high-Hispanic-serving programs were more likely to have qualities that produce better experiences for Spanish bilingual children. Approximately half identified as Latino, just over half spoke a language other than English, and at least one quarter were born outside the United States.¹⁰

Reasonable effort

In considering effort to secure arrangements, we used the NSECE (2012) to examine the search preferences for Hispanic households, relative to their Black and White peers.¹¹ We found that, overall, Hispanic families searched at a lower rate than parents in other groups.¹¹ Hispanic parents with low incomes were also less likely than their non-Hispanic peers to consider center-based care for their infants and toddlers, and more likely to consider a familiar home-based provider for their child from birth to age 2, relative to Black parents.¹¹ Overall, availability of care seems to be of significant importance to Hispanic families, especially for infant- and toddler-age children. Reasons parents are seeking care are important factors to consider, and whether parents have enough time and information to make decisions is crucial.

Affordability of care

We also examined the issue of affordability of child care for Latino families.¹² We learned that there are multiple, intersecting factors that determine whether families will seek out ECE and how much that care can cost. Many Hispanic households with low incomes access no-cost or low-cost child care, signaling that these type of public investments are reaching Latino families.¹²

The 7 percent threshold

In 2019, over three quarters of Latino households with low incomes using regular child care had affordable arrangements, which are defined as arrangements in which families pay less than 7 percent of their household income for care.¹² Most of these households (71%) had no out-of-pocket cost burden because they used providers who were either unpaid or paid through another source (e.g., publicly or privately subsidized care).¹² In addition, a small percentage of households (6%) had low cost burden, meaning they paid something out-of-pocket for care but their costs were at or below the 7 percent of income affordability threshold.¹² Finally, roughly one in four Latino households (23%) with low incomes faced high child care costs, paying more than 7 percent of their income on child care.¹²

As of February 2024, CCDF regulations require that states provide subsidies such that out-of-pocket child care costs do not exceed the 7 percent threshold and costs are not transferred to providers.¹³ Further policy work can uncover how states plan to roll out this investment in child care, and how this change impacts both affordability and utilization rates for Latino families.

Children’s ages and price

Among Hispanic households with low incomes who paid out-of-pocket for care, those with at least one child under age 3 spent a significantly higher percent of household income on care (30%) than those with preschool-age or older children.¹² Work hours are also a significant factor when predicting cost of ECE, as Latino infants and toddlers in households with two working parents are more than three times as likely to use ECE than households in which there is only one working parent.¹⁴

In general, the likelihood that families will use ECE for children from birth to age 2 increases with parents’ number of work hours: Each additional hour of work in the prior week increases the odds of using nonparental care by 2 percent.¹⁴ Nonparental care is 1.75 times more likely to occur when a grandparent resides in the household, or when a nearby relative is available to provide care. It is less likely to occur when there are preschool and school-age children living in the home.¹⁴

Availability or accessibility of care

In a related issue to affordability, we conducted a study of availability and accessibility to determine the potential for ECE providers to meet Hispanic families’ needs, as well as variability in the degree to which they do so.⁹ We found that, among all ECE centers, roughly half offered full-time hours and/or year-round care but less than 10 percent offered evening, overnight, or weekend hours.⁹ Among listed home-based providers, most offered full-time hours and year-round care but less than 20 percent offered evening, overnight, or weekend hours.⁹ Among unlisted home-based providers, approximately 30 percent offered full-time hours and more than half offered year-round care. Nonstandard hours (and weekend hours in particular) were more common for this type of care than for others, but were nevertheless offered by fewer than half of providers.⁹

Additionally, care for infants and toddlers, especially culturally and linguistically supportive care, seems to be scarcer among unlisted home-based providers than in arrangements that are available for preschool age children.⁹ These scheduling factors can constrain Latino families who have nonstandard working hours and are seeking care for children.

Meeting children’s needs

Our work in this area focused on access to high-quality care and positive child outcomes such as teacher-child relationships and peer-peer supports for educators. The physical health of the Latina ECE workforce is relatively strong, but some teachers struggle with depressive symptoms, which can compromise their ability to provide for children.¹⁵ We also found some workforce supports that were associated with well-being among teaching staff, including things like others respecting teachers and providing support for teachers.¹⁵ We have also examined predictors of quality using the NSECE (2012) data, showing that high-Hispanic-serving centers (defined as those enrolling at least 25% Hispanic children) conduct more developmental screenings and have more teacher mentoring than low-Hispanic-serving centers, which are factors that can help promote child development and meet children’s needs.¹⁶ These programs also have more public funding, with two thirds of high-Hispanic-serving centers receive public sources of funding compared to one third of low-Hispanic-serving centers.¹⁶

Parental preferences for their children

Overall, the majority of Hispanic, White, and Black parents view centers favorably on preparing children for school and teaching children to get along with peers.¹⁷ However, Hispanic parents are less likely than White parents to perceive centers as affordable, and less likely than Black parents to perceive them as nurturing.¹⁷ These differences represent general preferences, but they may relate to why Latino children are enrolling in different arrangements over time. For example, the findings suggest that many Hispanic parents, like many Black and White parents, have concerns about the affordability of center-based care¹⁷—a concern that may be alleviated with access to publicly funded pre-K programs and publicly subsidized child care.

Insufficient pay and workforce

In 2019, many Latina ECE providers reported pay that was insufficient to meet their needs; as a result, many reported looking for a new job or additional work.¹⁵ We also found that informal supports, such as respect for teachers and teamwork, were associated with lower depressive symptoms, suggesting that organizational climate and resources for teachers could enhance their well-being.¹⁵ The numbers of providers looking for additional work and facing various mental health needs underscores the urgent need for greater support and access to treatment for Latino individuals. Unfortunately, we know that many Latino parents (many of whom are also ECE providers) are underserved by mental health systems,¹⁸ which suggests the need for a major investment in wellness to accompany improvements in compensation following the pandemic. As child care continues to build back from the pandemic, we will examine how center- and home-based care providers are responding to the needs of Latino children and how the ECE Latina workforce is faring.

Meeting parents’ needs

Overall, the types of work that Latino parents perform—exacerbated by the impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic—have played a significant role in our understanding of how ECE meets parents’ needs. In many situations, mismatches occur, creating problems for accessing care that meets families’ schedules or is adaptable for families facing disruptions to their work schedules.

Critical importance of nonstandard work

Work hours outside of the traditional 9:00–5:00, Monday to Friday work schedule is a common experience for parents with low incomes, including many Latino parents. More than three in four Hispanic children whose parents reported work activity in the past week had a parent who worked during nonstandard times.⁷ Most of these parents also reported some work during standard weekday times. Early morning (5:00–8:00 a.m.), evening (6:00 p.m.–12:00 a.m.), and weekend parental work hours were a relatively common experience for low-income Hispanic children, affecting one third to two thirds of those with working parents, depending on the type of hours and whether the child lives with one or both parents.⁷ Hispanic children in two-parent immigrant households were more likely than their peers in U.S.-born households to have a parent who worked weekend hours.⁷ Additionally, Hispanic children in immigrant households were more likely than those in U.S.-born households to have a parent who received short advance notice of their work hours (roughly 60% and 40%, respectively).⁷

Some types of care are mismatched to the work needs of Hispanic families and may help explain the high use of home-based care among this population. Indeed, rates of home-based care were almost 90 percent for both Hispanic immigrant and non-immigrant infants and toddlers, 47 percent for preschool-age immigrant Hispanic children, and 63 percent for non-immigrant Hispanic children.⁸ These figures could also relate to the types of care available for infants and toddlers, suggesting a need for more investment in both the quality of home-based child care options for Hispanic children as well as greater availability of centers for those working nonstandard schedules.

COVID-19 pandemic disruptions

In many ways, the global COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmed existing child care programs, and families were forced to cope without child care for a period of time. Some of our work documented the ways in which Latino families were impacted negatively.

In 2020 and beyond, the global COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmed existing child care programs and many centers and home-based providers struggled to continue to care for children, with Latino children experiencing disproportionate shutdowns and disruptions.¹⁹ Our work captured insights into the child care disruptions that Latine families encountered during the pandemic. For example, in Spring 2021, one year after the March 2020 national shutdown, more than one in five Latino households reported child care disruptions, with 23 percent of those experiencing disruptions reporting that they had lost their job or quit work due to these disruptions.²⁰ We also reported on Latino parents with low incomes post-pandemic, finding that their lack of job flexibility—including limited employer-provided benefits (e.g., the ability to take sick or dependent care leave), nonstandard hours, lack of control over their schedules, schedule instability, and inability to work remotely—represented major complicating factors when securing care for children.²¹

Practitioners’ perspectives to improve subsidy access for families

Our four-state survey of state administrators and subsidy workers provided great insight into how the federally funded state CCDF programs were implemented in four high-Hispanic-serving states (NC, CA, TX, and NY).²² We gained a deeper knowledge regarding what states were doing well and how they were seeking to respond to challenges faced by Latino families. Results showed substantial variation in the documents required for families to establish eligibility and in the availability of applications online or in Spanish, suggesting that more work is needed to reduce administrative burden to increase access for Latino families.

In a review of state practices in states that serve upwards of 80 percent of Hispanic children, we reported examples of websites and applications that were not available in Spanish.²³ Doing a deeper dive across four of these states, we found consensus around recommendations from local subsidy administrators and front-line workers to reduce administrative burden. These included²⁴:

• Expand community outreach by providing information about available services and eligibility requirements and partnering with organizations that are trusted within the Hispanic community.
• Increase Spanish-speaking staff and provide materials in Spanish for every subsidy office, including application and recertification forms and information sheets.
• Increase subsidy funding and culturally responsive child care capacity so that more Hispanic and Latino families can be served within the system.
• Address immigration concerns for Hispanic families, including uncertainty about whether immigration status impacts eligibility and any potential chilling effects on families with immigrant members.
• Provide more training to staff around cultural awareness and diversity, Spanish language skills, addressing immigration status with families, and general subsidy program policies and procedures to increase certainty and reduce learning costs about the program.

Recommendations

Based on our learning about Hispanic families and their strengths and needs over the past decade, we offer the following recommendations to federal and state-level policymakers to further support Latino families. They can consider the following changes to ensure that Latino families are provided with the resources needed to raise their children and successfully engage in work experiences that lead to economic enhancements.

1. Prevent administrative exclusion for Latino applicants by limiting the paperwork burden for families applying for subsidies. Information such as Social Security numbers and number of people living in the household creates undue burden on applicants, as most Latino children are U.S.-born²⁵ and are eligible for subsidies. This recommendation aligns with the 2024 CCDF Final Rule, which posits that children should be “presumptively eligible for subsidy prior to full documentation and verification.”¹³ This would allow children to enroll in ECE as families finalize their CCDF applications.
2. Reform CCDF applications in ways that advance language modifications such that Latine families have access to information in the languages they speak in a timely manner. Without further modifications that consider home language, technology use, and meaningful outreach, some Latine families will continue to be marginalized and excluded from CCDF and from other government assistance programs.²⁶
3. Continue research on federal and state action following the 2024 CCDF Final Rule to determine whether the 7 percent limit is sufficient to make affordable the out-of-pocket costs paid by 1 in 10 Latine families. As states begin to implement changes, monitor how states—especially high-Hispanic-serving states—are reducing costs for Latino families to make care affordable.  
4. Given that many Latino families have more than one child care arrangement⁸ and work nonstandard hours,⁷ consider expanding the available hours of service delivery for child care and Head Start programs. Also, consider integration across the various types of care that Latino families use, with staff helping families coordinate their care arrangements, thereby saving parents time and energy.
5. Carefully consider the best ways to support care options for Latino infants and toddlers from families with low incomes, as well as those from immigrant families, given the gaps in the data we observed during the past decade. Investments in home-based care seem to be a promising and affordable strategy.

In general, due to high levels of child care disruptions and high costs to families and employers—factors exacerbated by the pandemic—we also renew calls for fresh ideas to offer workplace support for families. These could include access to paid leave and a reduction in just-in-time schedules. Such reforms would offer Latino families flexibility in their work schedules and minimize the risk of job loss following child care disruptions.²⁰

Conclusion

Ensuring equitable access to affordable, high-quality care for Latino families requires continued work to identify ways to enhance CCDF policy—a key federal investment that is not reaching all income-eligible Latino families. We also know that it’s critical to build out and maintain a healthy ECE provider supply in Hispanic families’ communities and to create opportunities for the types of child care they seek. Lastly, providers should continue to strengthen their cultural and linguistic capacity and state administrators should ensure that subsidy front-line workers have the appropriate cultural and linguistic capacity (i.e., tools and resources) to help families connect to resources that will be helpful in securing high-quality child care.

Footnotes

^aWe use “Hispanic,” “Latino,” “Latinx,” and “Latine” interchangeably throughout the brief. The terms are used to reflect the U.S. Census definition to include individuals having origins in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Cuba, as well as other “Hispanic, Latino or Spanish” origins.

Suggested Citation

Mendez, J., & Crosby, D. A. (2024). Reflections on a decade of research on early childhood education access for Latino families with low incomes. National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families. DOI: http://doi.org/10.59377/994e1263e

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Steering Committee of the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families—along with Ivelisse Martinez Beck, Mayra Parada, Kristen Harper, Laura Ramirez, and Ana Maria Pavić—for their helpful comments, edits, and research assistance at multiple stages of this project. The Center’s Steering Committee is made up of the Center investigators—Drs. Natasha Cabrera (University of Maryland, Co-I), Danielle Crosby (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Co-I), Lisa Gennetian (Duke University; Co-I), Lina Guzman (Child Trends, PI), Julie Mendez (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Co-I), and María Ramos-Olazagasti (Child Trends, Deputy Director and Building Capacity lead)—and federal project officers Drs. Ann Rivera, Jenessa Malin, and Kimberly Clum (Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation), and Dr. Shirley Huang (Society for Research in Child Development Policy Fellow, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation).

Editor: Brent Franklin

Designers: Catherine Nichols & Joseph Boven

About the Authors

Julia Mendez, PhD, is a co-investigator of the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families, co-leading the research area on early care and education. She is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her research focuses on risk and resilience among ethnically diverse children and families, with an emphasis on parent-child interactions and family engagement in early care and education programs.

Danielle A. Crosby, PhD, is a co-investigator of the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families, co-leading the research area on early care and education. She is an associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her research focuses on understanding how policies and systems shape early education access and quality for young children in low-income families.

About the Center

The National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families (Center) is a hub of research to help programs and policy better serve low-income Hispanics across three priority areas: poverty reduction and economic self-sufficiency, healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood, and early care and education. The Center is led by Child Trends, in partnership with Duke University, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and University of Maryland, College Park. This publication was supported by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) of the United States (U.S.) Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of two financial assistance awards (Award # 90PH0028, from 2018-2023, and Award # 90PH0032 from 2023-2028) totaling $13.5 million across the two awards with 99 percentage funded by ACF/HHS and 1 percentage funded by non-government sources.

The contents are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by ACF/HHS, or the U.S. Government. For more information, please visit the ACF website, Administrative and National Policy Requirements.

Copyright 2024 National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families