The Care Burden During COVID-19: A National Database of Child Care Closures in the United States

Abstract

Access to child care centers reduces the care burden of parents, promotes child development, and creates employment opportunities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, many child care centers closed due to capacity restrictions and declining demand for in-person care. This study uses anonymized and aggregated mobile phone data to track year-over-year changes in visits to child care centers across most counties in the U.S. during each month of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings reveal that two-thirds of child care centers closed in April 2020, while one-third remained closed in April 2021. Moreover, we find that non-White families are more likely to be exposed to child care closures than White families. Our findings point to widening inequalities in access to child care and potential inequalities in the pace of labor market recovery after the pandemic subsides. We make our monthly-updated database on child care closures publicly available for use in future research.

Acceptance of Different Self-sampling Methods for Semiweekly SARS-CoV-2 Testing in Asymptomatic Children and Childcare Workers at German Day Care Centers

“…Far-reaching infection control measures were initially introduced, including closure of day care centers (DCCs) and schools, despite growing evidence in the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic pointing against a relevant role of young children as important sources of infection . Closure of childcare facilities may result in developmental delay in young children and has been identified as a relevant stressor for families during the COVID-19 pandemic . Loss of access to nonparental childcare has been shown to be associated with increased job loss risk for mothers .…”

COVID‐19 and the role of gender, earnings, and telecommuting in parents' employment

“…Thus, domestic intensifications driven by the pandemic may have uniquely challenged primary-earner mothers. Specifically, most childcare centers and public schools closed for extended periods at the start of the pandemic (Education Week, 2020; Lee & Parolin, 2021). School closures were particularly prolonged in the United States (Bariola & Collins, 2021;UNESCO, 2022).…”

The Impact of U.S. School Closures on Labor Market Outcomes during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…We contribute to this nascent literature in several ways. First, we use county-level school and childcare closure data from Parolin and Lee (2021) and Lee and Parolin (2021) respectively, that tracks in-person visits to schools and childcare facilities. This allows us to exploit variation in actual school and childcare closures at the sub-state level rather than the discrete treatment of the occurrence of state-level school closure mandates found in some of the existing literature.…”

“…2 We utilize the school closures database from Parolin and Lee (2021), which tracks visits to K-12 public schools in 94 percent of school districts spanning 98 percent of counties in the country. We combine this with childcare closures from Lee and Parolin (2021) containing visits to about 78 percent of the total 109,414 licensed childcare institutions in the United States. These institutions are classified as North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 62441, which identifies all places that are primarily engaged in providing daycare of infants or preschool children.…”