Parents in several Massachusetts cities are still struggling to find a child-care spot, even after years of big state investments. A new mapping brief from the University of Massachusetts Boston finds that many parts of the commonwealth do not have enough licensed child-care seats for local families, with moderate to severe shortfalls showing up in multiple regions, according to UMass Boston.
The analysis points to persistent gaps in western, central and southeastern Massachusetts, and warns that those shortages are likely to get worse as the state expands financial assistance and more families seek licensed care. Infants and toddlers are feeling the squeeze most, with center-based care for the youngest children in especially short supply in several city clusters.
The findings come from a mapping brief produced by the UMass Boston Early Education Cost and Usage Simulator (CUSP) Project. As detailed by UMass Boston, CUSP uses a simulator to estimate how policy changes shift families into licensed care and how much additional capacity communities will need to keep up.
Where shortages are worst
According to WCVB, the brief singles out three areas with extreme shortfalls in center-based infant and toddler care: one covering the Lowell area; another spanning Revere, Chelsea and Winthrop; and a third that includes Brockton, Stoughton and Avon.
The CUSP mapping also estimates how close each region could get to meeting demand if proposed financial assistance is fully implemented. In that scenario, the Northeast region would be able to cover about 71 percent of demand for center-based care, the Southeast about 69 percent, and the Western region only about 47 percent.
How the model works
The CUSP team built a statistical simulator that goes well beyond simply counting children and existing slots. Instead, it models how parents actually make choices, adjusting for income, employment status, demographics and other factors that affect whether families use licensed care.
As laid out in the project’s technical documentation from UMass Boston, the simulator is designed to predict how families might respond to expanded subsidies and other policy shifts, rather than just tallying available seats on paper.
Cost and state response
Affordability remains another major pressure point. Center-based care in Massachusetts averages about $26,343 a year, according to the First Five Years Fund — a price tag that rivals college tuition in some places.
The Healey-Driscoll administration has maintained and expanded Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) grants in an effort to stabilize programs and grow capacity, according to Mass.gov. But UMass researchers caution that expanding subsidies can increase demand faster than new seats appear, unless investments are carefully targeted to the places most in need.
“With so many families in need of licensed child care and early education, the state and localities must carefully consider how to best address shortfalls in those areas with the least capacity to meet current and future demand,” Anne Douglass, a study author, said in remarks reported by WCVB. Researchers and providers told the station that targeted investments, from bolstering family child-care homes to offering incentives for infant-care classrooms, will be crucial to turning subsidy dollars into actual seats where families are waiting.
Policy makers in the cities and towns with the deepest shortages will need detailed, neighborhood-level data to decide whether to focus on expanding centers, supporting family child-care networks, boosting workforce pay or upgrading facilities. State officials say they will continue to rely on data and programs like C3 to guide spending, according to Mass.gov, and UMass CUSP’s mapping gives them a clearer roadmap for where those dollars should go.
