Federal subsidies for child care don’t necessarily lead to higher-quality child care for low-income children, a new report concludes.
The study, published in June in the journal Child Development, found children whose families used the subsidies were less likely to receive high-quality care programs than those in demographically similar families who enroll their children in Head Start or some other public preschool program.
Among families who opted for home-based programs, however, the subsidized families tended to choose better-quality settings than low-income families without subsidies, according to the study.
