United States Department of Labor National Database of Childcare Prices

Description:

The United States Department of Labor’s National Database of Childcare Prices (NDCP) is the most comprehensive federal source of childcare prices at the county level. The database offers childcare price data by childcare provider type, age of children, and county characteristics.
Childcare prices are derived from each state’s childcare Market Rate Survey. Prices are median yearly prices for one child at the market rate. School-age prices reflect the school-year arrangement (part day). Childcare prices and childcare price as a percent of median family income data are available for 2018 and 2022. 2018 childcare prices are based on the 2016-2018 data collection cycle and 2022 childcare prices are based on the 2019-2022 data collection cycle. Childcare data for New Mexico and Indiana are unavailable for all years. Areas with suppressed, missing, or unreported data display as Insufficient Data.

The Affordability Gap data was calculated by PolicyMap using the affordability quintiles provided by the NDCP. The methodology can be found in the info bubble of each map layer. Affordability quintile ranges for state-level shares can be found in Appendix H Exhibit B of the National Database for Childcare Prices Technical Report.