Participation in non-parental child care arrangements is now the norm for preschool-age children in the U.S. However, child care services are becoming increasingly expensive for many families, and quality is highly uneven across providers and sectors, raising questions about the impact of child care costs and quality on parental employment and child development. The U.S. policy landscape is dominated by three policies that subsidize costs for low-income families or attempt to improve the safety and quality of providers: the Child Care and Development Fund, regulations, and quality rating and improvement systems. In this paper, I provide a thorough review of the evidence on each policy, focusing on how they influence a wide range of family and provider outcomes. The paper begins with a detailed description of the structure and functioning of the child care market, using the most up-to-date data on families’ utilization of care services and provider characteristics. I then draw on a diverse set of studies across multiple fields to summarize the evidence on the impact of child care policy. In the final section of the paper, I offer recommendations for future research in each policy area.

中文翻译：

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美国的儿童保育：市场、政策和证据

参与非父母托儿安排现在是美国学龄前儿童的常态 然而，托儿服务对许多家庭来说变得越来越昂贵，而且提供者和部门之间的质量极不平衡，引发了对儿童影响的质疑照顾成本和质量对父母就业和儿童发展的影响。美国的政策格局由三项补贴低收入家庭成本或试图提高提供者的安全和质量的政策主导：儿童保育和发展基金、法规以及质量评级和改进系统。在本文中，我对每项政策的证据进行了全面审查，重点关注它们如何影响广泛的家庭和提供者结果。本文首先详细描述了儿童保育市场的结构和运作，使用了有关家庭对保育服务的利用情况和提供者特征的最新数据。然后，我利用跨多个领域的一系列不同研究来总结有关儿童保育政策影响的证据。在论文的最后部分，我为每个政策领域的未来研究提出了建议。