The Evolution of the Early Childcare Market: Historic Trends and the Effect of Minimum Wage Changes on Access to Quality Care

This grant is co-funded by the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

Although demand for quality early childcare has increased in recent decades, the overall supply of educators has not kept pace. While state and federal policymakers have worked toward the professionalization of the early childcare workforce, these policies are rarely accompanied by increased funding to support professionalization or provide commensurate compensation. Doctoral student in public policy Katharine Sadowski will examine how the childcare workforce has evolved and how changes in compensation impacts worker wellbeing and the accessibility of quality childcare. She will analyze data from the Longitudinal Business Database, the Integrated Longitudinal Database, the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program, and the American Community Survey and will create a quarterly employee-level early childcare worker panel from 2000-2022 for her study.