Are Child Care Subsidies Effective? BU Researcher Ha Begins Inquiry with $1.6M Grant
Yoonsook Ha, assistant professor of social work at Boston University, received a $1.6 million research grant from the Department of Health & Human Services’ (HHS) Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to continue her innovative work on social policy change for children and families. Ha’s proposed project, an investigation into the relationship between the quality of subsidized child care and children’s early educational outcomes, will be funded for four years.
As the project’s principal investigator, Ha will collaborate with researchers from Brandeis University and the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care to conduct a statewide survey assessing the quality of childcare providers that serve children receiving child care subsidies. Using data from the survey and administrative data from the Massachusetts Dept. of Early Education & Care and the Dept. of Education, Ha will assess the root causes of disparities in care and educational outcomes. Ha describes the project as “action-oriented” and will bring her recommendations back to the state to guide their quality improvement efforts.
“This project will be one of the first studies that empirically examines the link between access to quality child care, care stability, and early educational outcomes,” Ha says.
“Our early studies found a significant disparity and variation in access to high-quality care among low-income children, yet there is not enough evidence to tell us why some low-income children do not have stable access to high quality care when others do. More surprisingly, there is very little research done on how the quality of child care for subsidy-receiving children is linked to their early educational outcomes.”
Ha’s project is one of ten awarded the ACF’s Child Care Policy Research Partnerships grant, a program intended to fund research on the efficacy of child care subsidy policies through collaborations between researchers and child care stakeholders.