Report: Mass. Child Care Unequal

Though Massachusetts has nearly twice as many child care centers per 1000 children in middle-income families than the national average, the state child care system is still suffering from striking inequalities, according to a recent report by a professor and a graduate student at the Graduate School of Education.

Middle-income Massachusetts communities have an average of 10.3 child care centers per 1000 children aged three to five, compared to a nationwide average of 5.7 centers, the pair found.

But the report, "Can Poor Families Find Health Care?" published by Associate Professor of Education Bruce Fuller and doctoral student Xiaoyan Liang, said Massachusetts has 40 percent fewer child care centers for children in poor communities than in wealthy communities.

According to the report, there are 12.1 child care centers per 1000 children in upper middle-class neighborhoods, compared to 8.3 in welfare neighborhoods and a mere 7.4 in neighborhoods with a high concentration of single-parent families.

The findings are particularly pertinent in light of the recent Welfare Reform Bill sponsored by Governor William F. Weld '66, which proposed a so-called "workfare" system that will force approximately 17,000 single mothers into the work force 60 days after they start receiving welfare.

Fuller said this type of cut in welfare spending is harmful if the state cannot adequately provide child care for families on public assistance.

"Two thirds of all welfare recipients have pre-school aged children," Fuller said. "If just a fraction of welfare parents go to work, the immense demand for preschooling in the inner-city will bring down an already fragile system."

Fuller advocated the creation of a "targeting mechanism" in child care before the state makes welfare cuts.

This mechanism would increase or redirect subsidies in child care to those communities where the service is most desperately needed, he said, locations with residents who are on welfare and unable to pay for child care.

At present, subsidized child care exists for both rich and poor communities in Massachusetts. Fuller argued for a mechanism to ensure that federal funds provided under the Child Care and Development Block Grant Program are distributed in the form of subsidized child care to poorer communities rather than middle and upper class communities.