Child Care Expenses of America's Families. Occasional Paper Number 40. Assessing the New Federalism: An Urban Institute Program To Assess Changing Social Policies.

This report uses a recent survey--the 1997 National Survey of America's Families, or NSAF--to look at the child care expenses of working families with children under age 13. The report begins by describing child care expenses of America's families at the national level and then turns to analysis of 12 focal states. For both the national-level and state-level analyses, three aspects of expenses are examined: the percentage of working families paying for child care, the average expenses among those that do pay for care, and the average percentage of earnings paid for child care. These three aspects of child care expenses are examined for all families overall and for three particular groups of families: those with younger versus older children, single-parent versus two-parent families, and families with different earnings levels. Among the findings at the national level are the following: about half of all working families with children under age 13 paid for child care in 1997; the average monthly expense among those paying for care was $286, about 9 percent of their earnings; these figures vary significantly by family characteristics. Among the findings at the state level are the following: in each of the NSAF states, about half or slightly more than half of all working families with children under 13 paid for child care; for those families that paid for child care, there are large differences in the average expense in dollar terms: from $209 in Mississippi to $370 in Massachusetts, compared with the national average of $286; when expenses are examined as a percentage of earnings in order to adjust for differences in earnings levels across the states, there is much less cross-state variation, with most states not significantly different from the national average of 9 percent of earnings. Overall state-level findings mask some significant variations when different groups of families are examined separately. National and state findings indicate that child care expenses are a particular concern for families with younger children, single-parent families, and families with low earnings. The report's appendix presents data for additional groups of families not discussed in the text. (HTH)