Latest Kids Count Shows Child Care Elusive for the Poor

By Linda Jacobson

Increasing child-care subsidies, rewarding employers that provide child-care assistance, and expanding tax credits to stay-at-home parents are just a few ways to make child care more affordable for low-income families, according to this year's Kids Count Data Book .

An annual project measuring the well-being of children at the state and national levels, Kids Count follows trends on such issues as the percent of low-birth-weight babies, the rate of violent teenage deaths, and the proportion of adolescents who are high school dropouts.

But this year's report, which has been published by the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation since 1990, focuses on the 29 million young children who need care while their parents are at work and pays special attention to the 10 million such...