Design choices: Universal financing for early care and education

The Financing Universal Early Care and Education (ECE) For America’s Children Project analyzes the costs and impacts of alternative approaches to financing early care and education for American children age 0-5 on a universal basis. We are developing a computer model to compare different financing approaches by estimating the costs of paid care to families, employers and government, estimating changes in amount and type of ECE used by families, and estimating changes in the employment of mothers of young children. The costs of different levels of regulation, staff qualification and compensation will be estimated. We will also work with several pilot states to explore how what we learn about different financing approaches can be utilized in efforts to expand ECE financing policy toward universality. In this Policy Brief, we describe the components of our modeling effort. We also discuss lessons we have learned from analyzing key features of near-universal social benefits in the U.S., and how they might be applied to ECE.