Estimating the impact of expanding high-quality early education and care

What would the impact be of expanding high-quality early education and care (EEC) across the state?

The University of Massachusetts Boston offers answers in a new policy brief.

Released by the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy and the Institute for Early Education Leadership, the brief describes CUSP — the UMass Boston Early Ed Cost and Usage Simulator Project – which estimates the “impacts of the expansion of affordable quality child care and early education under the provisions of Massachusetts Senate Bill 301.”

That bill — An Act Providing Affordable and Accessible High Quality Early Education and Care to Promote Child Development and Well-Being and Support the Economy in the Commonwealth — calls for changes that would increase access and affordability. 

The bill’s impact would be positive, according to an executive summary, because it would provide financial assistance to families that would “effectively enable more children access to licensed care as well as substantially reduce the cost burden on families.”

The aggregate cost of this financial assistance would be $1.7 billion.

This investment would also mean that parents would be able “to afford reliable care,” and “a portion of them, especially mothers of young children, would be able to engage in more employment opportunities,” which would lift “some families, especially single-parent families, out of poverty.”

A State House News Service story published by MassLive.com adds that the brief says “almost half of all Massachusetts families with children under 14 (or under 17 for children with special needs) would be eligible for the legislation’s proposed financial assistance, saving the average eligible family $13,260 per year.”

Among the brief’s other specific findings about the proposed legislation:

• 92,100 additional children (a 34% increase) would have access to child care

• “For all income-eligible families with children who are not yet school-age the legislative proposal [S. 301] reduces all child care costs (licensed and unlicensed) as a percentage of income from 13.6% to 4.2%”

• and poverty rates would decrease, especially in single-parent households with preschool-age children

Stay tuned: this brief is the first of a series of publications that will “provide essential information to guide policymaking on child care and [on] early education a­ffordability, quality, and access in Massachusetts.”