Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Working parents with young children at low-income levels may have a hard time getting affordable childcare services. Previous studies state that while low-income families spend up to 25% of their income on childcare, expanding the availability of childcare subsidies increased poor mothers' work participation rates nationally from 29% in the 1990s to 44% in 2000. In addition, working parents tend to prefer childcare facilities that are closer to their home rather than near their work site. Across many childcare settings, such as on-site childcare centers and referral services, subsidy programs seem to be the most preferable choice. Among subsidy programs, the most popular and needed program is an informal care, which allows parents to pay to anyone, such as a grandmother, neighbor, brother, or sister. The informal child care service is cost efficient, convenient, and safe though it may be less reliable. The current study identifies factors influencing working parents' choosing of a modality for child care services. The factors include the household's monthly income, the age of children, the number of children in the household, and a region in which a sample family resides. The sample includes randomly selected 132 working parents of subsidy recipients, who started receiving child care subsidy between October, 2003 and March, 2004 through New York Union Child Care Coalition (NYUCCC). Their monthly income is lower than 275% of Federal Poverty Level and they are working full-time and raising children under 13 years of age. Although NYUCCC provides childcare support in several different areas, such as Bronx, Yonkers, and Lower Manhattan, the target population of the study is limited to those in Bronx. Findings indicate that 43.2% of subsidy recipients chose an informal service provider while 56.8% of the recipients chose public child care providers for their children. Working parents tended to seek private child care arrangements when their children's age is over 7years old while the number of children in a household did not affect significantly in choosing the modality of the care. In addition, the percentage of choosing informal service providers varied depending on the region. It was found that working parents prefer the informal care as much as public child care services when they are able to select the modality of care. Although it is rare to receive government support for informal child care services because of a lack of reliability, this study shows demands toward the informal care. As there are the demands of the informal care, especially for children under 2 years old and school age children, appropriate support for informal child care services should be implemented.