
States Can Improve Child Care Assistance Programs Through Cost Modeling
The current process states use for setting child care subsidy reimbursement rates only looks backward, building low wages and scarce resources into the future of child care.
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Maureen Coffey is a policy analyst on the Early Childhood Policy team at American Progress. Her research interests are centered around understanding and supporting the economic needs of families.
Prior to joining American Progress, Coffey was at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research as a research associate for the Student Parent Success Initiative, where her work emphasized two-generation approaches to promoting women’s education and workforce equity. Coffey worked on the Study of Early Education through Partnerships with a focus on access to high-quality early education, specifically studying the early childhood workforce. With other research at the University of Virginia, Coffey examined the relationship between family economic stability and child well-being. The project connected recent high-interest policies, such as the child tax credit and universal child care, to decreases in child maltreatment among the youngest and most vulnerable children.
Coffey has a Master of Public Policy from the Batten School at the University of Virginia and received her bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College with honors in economics.
The current process states use for setting child care subsidy reimbursement rates only looks backward, building low wages and scarce resources into the future of child care.
Child care sites across the country are facing immense challenges hiring and retaining staff amid a shortage of good jobs, leaving parents struggling to find care and placing increasing stress on the workers that remain.
New, comprehensive data on child care workers in center-based programs—analyzing their demographics, education, experience, and wages—reveal widening pay gaps and inequality.
Targeted, long-term investments would help the many families in rural America who desperately need child care.
Hailey Gibbs and Maureen Coffey make the economic case for a comprehensive federal child care package.