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Child Care Expense version 29.3

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Child Care Expense version 29.3

Version History

The TRIM3 Child Care Expense module performs two closely-related tasks: simulating eligibility for and receipt of child care subsidies funded by the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), and estimating the incidence and amount of child care expenses. CCDF is a federally-funded block grant program that provides funding to the states. States establish the detailed rules for the program within the federally-established guidelines. CCDF-funded subsidies are not an entitlement; some portion of the eligible families who want subsidies may not obtain them. Note that there are other government programs providing free or subsidized child care or child development services. However, CCDF is the only child care program currently simulated by TRIM3's Child Care Expense module.

TRIM3 simulates eligibility for CCDF-funded subsidies on a monthly basis. In other words, each family is checked for eligibility in each month of the simulation year, and a family might be found eligible for CCDF-funded subsidies in some months of the year but not the entire year. The eligibility rules are simulated in great detail, including the variations in eligibility rules across states. Like all TRIM3 modules, the Child Care Expense module can simulate either actual or hypothetical CCDF rules.

Child care expenses are also estimated on a monthly basis, for both for subsidized and non-subsidized families. For families simulated to be eligible for CCDF-funded subsidies, TRIM3 determines whether a copayment would be required, and if so, calculates the amount. For families simulated to receive CCDF-funded subsidies, child care expenses are assumed to be equal to that copayment. For other families, TRIM3 estimates the presence and amount of child care expenses based on the family's characteristics. The combination of copayments for families receiving subsidies and child care expenses for non-subsidized families can be used as input to other TRIM3 modules that need information on child care expenses in order to simulate child care deductions or tax credits or to compute alternate definitions of income.

This document describes the operation of the Child Care Expense module in detail. Note that the discussion refers to the many different "program rules" that control the operation of each TRIM3 Child Care simulation. Details on each program rule and its potential values can be obtained from the tools in the TRIM3 Navigator.

The remainder of this discussion is in these sections:

  1. Unit of Analysis
  2. Determining CCDF Eligibility
  3. Computing CCDF Copayments
  4. Simulating CCDF Participation
  5. Estimating Child Care Expenses
  6. Other Options
  7. Variables Read Directly From an Input File

1. Unit of Analysis

The unit of analysis for the Child Care Expense module is the family, with subfamilies (both related and unrelated) treated as separate families. However, within some families, some children may be eligible for subsidies while others are not, depending on their age and disability status.

2. Determining CCDF Eligibility

The Child Care Expense module determines whether each family, in each month of the year, is technically eligible for subsidies under the federally-funded Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF). The module also estimates the copayment that each eligible family would be required to pay if the family received subsidies. It is important to note that technical eligibility is not equivalent to needing or wanting child care subsidies. Some families simulated to be technically eligible for CCDF-funded subsidies may not need or want subsidized care; other families who are not technically eligible due to having a non-working parent may want subsidized care to facilitate employment.

To be eligible for CCDF-funded subsidies, a family must have at least one child who qualifies based on age or disability, parents/guardians who qualify based on employment or student status, and family income under the eligibility thresholds. Certain rules vary from state to state, and many state-specific variations can be captured by the model. The modeling of eligibility and potential copayments is described in the following sections:

a. Eligibility Criteria for Children

To be potentially eligible for CCDF-funded subsidies, a family must have at least one child who qualifies based on age or disability. All children at or under the age specified by the AgeLimit state program rule are potentially eligible for subsidies. In addition, most states also provide CCDF eligibility to older children who are physically or mentally incapable of caring for themselves. The age limit for disabled children is set in the DisabledAgeLimit state program rule. Currently, children can be identified as disabled only if they receive SSI; thus, the model probably underestimates the number of eligible children over AgeLimit.

State program rule TempAlienEligible may be set to "Not eligible" to deny eligibility to temporary alien children. Likewise, state rule IllegalAlienEligible may be set to "Not eligible" to deny eligibility to illegal alien children. Setting these rules to permit eligibility will allow temporary and illegal alien children to be found eligible if they meet all other eligiblity criteria.

b. Eligibility Criteria for Parents/Guardians

To be eligible for CCDF-funded subsidies, both the head of the family and the spouse (if there is a spouse present) must meet the employment or other activity criteria established by the state of residence.  If the ParentIDs program rule contains the person identifiers of a person's parents, then unmarried parents of children who reside in single-person families are included in the child care units of their children and are treated the same as a spouse within that family.  If the ParentIDs program rule is left empty, then unmarried parents in other family units may not be identified, and this feature is not invoked.

An adult is considered to potentially need subsidies in a particular month if s/he has earnings in that month and is working at least the number of hours per week specified in the state rules HrsWorkRequired. In some states, minimum work requirements differ somewhat for married-couple families; the state rule HrsWorkOption holds that information.

CCDF regulations say that a child whose parents are attending a job training or educational program may be considered eligible. TRIM3 models adults who are in school as potentially eligible for child care subsidies if the national program rule EligibilityOfStudents is set to 1. The model can only observe that a person was in school during the calendar year if the person reported not working or working only part of the year due to being in school (MonthlyLaborForceActivity = 2); students who give another reason for not working will be missed. TRIM does not currently model any of the nuances in state rules for students, such as allowing child care subsidies for students in some levels of education but not others.

The model has the capability to treat a portion of AFDC/TANF recipients as being in an allowable activity even if they do not report earnings or being in school, on the assumption that they may be in activities that would not be captured in the model's input data. If the national program rule EligibilityOfWelfareRecipients is set to 1, TRIM3 will assign demographic eligibility to AFDC/TANF recipients who are non-exempt from work requirements (AFDC/TANF output variable WorkExemptionStatusOfPerson between 1 and 8) and whose random number for this purpose is less than the percentage specified in the national program rule FractionOfNonExempt. THe default setting for the EligibilityOfWelfareRecipients program rule is 0.

The Child Care model also includes a capability to assign demographic eligibility to unemployed parents/guardians; to activate this option, the national program rule EligibilityOfUnemployed is set to 1. The default setting for this program rule is 0.  The model also includes an option, invoked by setting OtherOptions to 1, to deny eligibility to a part-month worker whose sole period of eligibility is at the end of a spell of employment.

c. Definition of Income

To be fully eligible for CCDF-funded subsidies in a particular month, a family must have net income below the threshold for that family’s size and state of residence for the month.  A family's total monthly income may include all types of cash income for the head and spouse/unmarried parent, plus child support and TANF income of all eligible unit members, plus SSI income of head and spouse/unmarried parent and disabled children <= age 18.  The CashIncome, ChildSupportIncome, AFDCMonthly, and SSIMonthly  program rules contain the various income components.  The state program rule IncomeDisregardFormula may indicate that some income types are totally excluded, and the program rule EarnedIncomeDeductionFormula specifies state-specific deductions of a portion of earned income.

Note that for CCDF modeling, TRIM3 only counts the income of the parents/guardians, plus the SSI income of eligible children. In other words, the income of teenaged children or other adult relatives is not included. In reality, states may follow different practices concerning whose income is counted.

d. Income Test

The threshold against which a family's net income is compared varies by state of residence and family size, and may also vary by other factors. The size of the family is the total number of persons in the family (with subfamilies treated as separate families). The state array program rule LowerEligibilityLimit gives the threshold used in most cases, by state and by family size. The state rule HigherEligibilityReason tells whether each state also uses a higher set of limits, and if so, for what type of families--such as families that received subsidies in the prior month, or families with a disabled child. If the family qualifies for a higher limit, that limit is provided in the state array program rule (HigherEligibilityLimit).

When families use different limits for initial vs. continuing eligibility, TRIM3 treats all families as initial applicants in January of the simulation year. In subsequent months of the simulation year, TRIM3 determines applicant vs. recipient status on the CCDF participation status that was simulated for the prior month.

Note that, like other aspects of the Child Care Expense module, the income test is applied on a monthly basis. The module implicitly assumes that all families are required to report any change in income as soon as it occurs, and that all families make those reports. If a family's income changes during the year, the family's eligibility status may also change. The Child Care Expense module is not currently able to simulate proposals that would allow families to remain eligible for a certain number of months despite income changes.

e. Treatment of Families with Non-Parent Caretakers

In some states, a child who is not in a family headed by his/her parent(s) may be treated differently for purposes of CCDF eligibility. The state program rule NonParentCaretakersOption indicates whether some or all children living with non-parent caretakers are treated as "child only units". "Child only" status may be modeled for all children living with non-parent caretakers, only for children living with non-relative caretakers, or only for foster children. When a child is being treated as "child only", only the income of the child is counted (typically 0, unless the child receives SSI), with that income compared against the threshold for a family size that includes only the child(ren). (Note that for families that contain both "own" children and children belonging to child-only units, the unit size for the "own" children is still everyone in the family.) Under the default setting for NonParentCaretakersOption, no children living with non-parent caretakers are treated as "child only units".

3. Computing CCDF Copayments

For each month in which a family is simulated as technically eligible for CCDF-funded subsidies, TRIM3 computes the copayment that the family would pay if the family's children received subsidies. The model currently computes the potential copayment at the family level, assuming that all of a family's children who are eligible based on age or disability receive subsidies.

Rules for copayments vary widely across the states. For instance, some families may be exempt from paying a copayment in some states. State program rule ExemptFromCopayOption specifies whether any families are exempt from copayments, such as families without earnings or families receiving TANF.  Program rules PovertyGuidelineUS, PovertyGuidelineAlaska, and PovertyGuidelineHawaii contain the poverty guidelines used to identify families that may be exempt from copayments due to poverty.  (The more detailed poverty thresholds in the DetailedPovertyThreshold program rules are used to tabulate simulation results.)

For non-exempt families, states use different strategies to calculate the copayment. The state program rule CopayType indicates whether the copayment is a flat amount by income level and family size, a percentage of family earnings, a percentage of the cost of child care, or a percentage of the state's maximum payment rate. Numerous additional rules are required to capture all the details of the calculations, as follows:

  • The exact dollar amounts or percentages for each state, family size, and income category are given in the CopayLevels program rules. Program rule CopayLevelTimeIncrement tells whether dollar amounts are in daily, weekly, or monthly terms.
  • The income categories used by each state for purposes of determining copayments are defined in the CopayIncomeLimits program rules. Income for copayment purposes is generally defined the same as for eligibility purposes, but state program rule CopayIncomeFormula can capture some variations.
  • For states that determine copayments using state maximum payment rates, the rules MaxRateInfant, MaxRateToddler, MaxRatePreSchool, and MaxRateSchoolAged hold those rates, four other rules (AgeThresholdInfant, AgeThresholdToddler, AgeThresholdPreSchool, and AgeThresholdSchoolAged define these age categories, and MaxRateTimeIncrement tells whether the maximum rates are in daily, weekly, or monthly terms.
  • The effect on the copayment of having more than one child receiving subsidies is captured by state rules CopayAdjustMultChildOption and CopayAdjustMultChildFactor.
  • Many states that use flat rate copayment schedules reduce the fee for families that do not use full-day care. Those rules are captured in state rules CopayAdjustPartTimeOption, CopayPartTimeDefinition, and CopayPartTimeFactor.
  • State rule CopayAdjustOption captures any final adjustment to the copayment calculated by the above rules, such as placing a specific floor on the copayment.
  • Form rule FullCostOfCare may be used to adjust the copay rate.

For some types of copayment computations, an estimate of a child's hours of child care is needed. TRIM3 makes several simplifying assumptions in order to estimate hours of child care. Parents/guardians are assumed to work the same number of hours each day of the work-week, travel time to and from work is assumed to be a total of one hour, part-time workers with school-aged children are assumed to work during the school-day, and school-aged children are assumed to be in school for 6 hours per day. (Note that there is no adjustment for the summer months; all months are treated as school months.) These simplifying assumptions result in an estimate of 0 hours of care for all school-aged children with a parent/guardian assumed to be working and traveling to/from work for fewer than 30 hours per week. For the purpose of estimating expenditures, whenever hours-of-care is initially estimated as 0, it is reset to 1—simply to allow the code to produce a potential copayment in all cases.

4. Simulating CCDF Participation

For each month in which a family is simulated as eligible for CCDF-funded subsidies, the Child Care Expense module simulates whether or not the family receives CCDF-subsidized child care. A family may be simulated to participate in all, some, or none of the months in which the family is simulated as technically eligible for CCDF-funded subsidies. The participation decision is made on a family basis; the module makes the simplifying assumption that either all or none of a family's eligible children will receive CCDF-subsidized child care.

The participation decision is made on a probabilistic basis. A probability of participation is calculated for the family and compared to a random number which has been assigned to the family. If the random number is less than or equal to the probability, the family is selected to participate.

The participation method is described in detail in the following sections:

a. Determining a Family's Probability of Participating

The family's probability of participation is determined by first obtaining a probability of participation for each eligible child, and then taking the mean of those probabilities to produce a family-level probability. For eligible children age 13 and older, the national-level rule PartProb13 gives the probability of participation. For children under 13, the probability of participation is based on the child's age as well as several characteristics of the family:

  • Marital status of the family head (single or married)
  • Income of the family (lower or higher)
  • State of residence (group 1, 2, or 3)

The program rule group Part Probs for Under 13 (which contains the rules PartProb0 - PartProb11and12) is used to specify these probabilities. Categorizing a family as low vs high income is done by comparing their monthly income to the cutoffs specified in the rule PartProbIncomeCutoffs, while the rule ParticipationStateGroups indicates which group each state belongs to. (States are grouped according to the relative level of their eligibility thresholds.) These probabilities can be modified based on a family's state of residence, the presence of earnings, or receipt of TANF by using the rules PartProbStateAdjustments, PartProbEarnAdjustment, PartProbNoEarnAdjustment and PartProbTANFAdjustment. The income cutoffs in PartProbIncomeCutoffs are not adjusted for inflation, so they should be set according to the year of data being simulated.  The state-level program rule NoParticipationFraction contains the fraction of eligible units that are excluded from participating, regardless of their calculated probability.

b. Assigning a Family a Random Number

The random numbers assigned to a family can be thought of as representing all factors not captured by the probabilities, including the family's "taste" for participating. A family with a high random number is less likely (all else equal) to be selected to participate than a family with a lower random number (since selection is based on the random number being less than or equal to the probability). This guarantees that a family's participation decision in an alternative run will be consistent with it's decision in the baseline run. For example, if a family is not selected to participate in the baseline, and its probability of participation is lower in an alternative run, it will also not be selected to participate in the alternative run (i.e. if the random number is greater than the baseline probability, and the alternative probability is less than the baseline probability, the random number will continue to be greater than the probability in the alternative). Similarly, if the family is selected to participate in the baseline, and its probability or participation is higher in the alternative, it will continue to participate in the alternative.

The random numbers used by the family when making the participation decision are calculated and stored with the family during a baseline run (i.e. a run where the rule SimulationMode is set to "baseline"). Initially, all eligible families are assigned 12 random numbers (one for each month) uniformly distributed between 0 and 1. Although a different random number will be used for each month's decision, the user has the option of correlating the random numbers across the months so they are not completely independent. This is done during the baseline run via the rule DegreeOfMonthlyCorrelation. If that program rule is set to model full correlation, all 12 random numbers will be the same. In that situation, a family's participation outcome will vary across months of eligibility only if the probability of participation varies. The lower the correlation between the monthly random numbers, the more that families may have breaks in their CCDF receipt during the year that are not tied to changes in the estimated probability of participation.

The Child Care Expense module can also make adjustments to the random numbers that allow some or all eligible families to have automatic participation status based on the information they reported in the input data. The rule ReportedReceiptOfCSServices holds the name of the variable from the input data (if present) that indicates receipt of some type of child care assistance, and the rule AllocReceiptOfCCServices holds the variable telling whether the reported receipt was an actual report (rather than an "allocated" report to fill in initially-missing data). The analyst can specify in a baseline simulation that a certain percentage of CCDF-eligible families with non-allocated reports of child care assistance (given by the rule PctReportersToParticipate) be automatically simulated to receive CCDF-funded subsidies. The setting of the percentage depends on the analyst's judgment of the correspondence between the type of assistance captured in the reported data and the CCDF program.

If the random numbers of some families are modified to ensure simulated participation, the random numbers of other families must be modified in the opposite direction -- to guarantee that those families will not participate, regardless of their actual probability. If this is not done, the aggregate number of participants will likely be greater than that amount indicated by the probabilities. For example, if the probability of a certain group of families to participate is 50%, and there are 100 eligible families in that group, one would expect the number of families selected to participate to be around 50. Given TRIM3's method of selecting participants (comparing a random number to the probability) this is indeed what would happen if every eligible family was assigned a truly random number. However, if 20 of those families had their random numbers adjusted to guarantee that they would participate and the remaining 80 families were subject to the probabilistic method, the total number of participants would be closer to 20 + 40 = 60. To correct this, 20 of the remaining 80 families would need to have their random numbers adjusted to guarantee that they would not participate, thus leaving only 60 families in the pool that is subject to the probabilistic method. This would result in total participants closer to 20 + 30 = 50. The rule PctToNotParticipate is used to specify what portion of families should have their random numbers adjusted to guarantee that they do not participate.

c. Determination of Participation during an Alternative Run

As described above, the usual method of selecting participants guarantees that the decision made for a family in an alternative run is consistent with the decision made by the family in the baseline, since the same set of monthly random numbers is used in both runs. To ensure that the same random numbers are indeed used, the rule BaselinePartRandomNumber should contain the name of the monthly random number variable created by the baseline run (Part_ChildsRandomNumber).

For some purposes the user may wish to modify the way the participation decision is made in an alternative run. The rule ParticipationOption allows the user to do that. Note that some of these options require that the user specify result variables from the baseline run for the rules BaselineEligibility and BaselineParticipation. One option indicates that all CCDF-eligible families participate, regardless of the probabilities in the matrix. This is a simple way to execute a "what if" simulation in which all eligible families and children receive subsidies. Two other options can control the participation decisions of families who were eligible in the baseline simulation. In an alternative simulation, the analyst can specify that all eligible families that were also eligible in the baseline simulation make the same participation decision that they made in the baseline, regardless of any change in their probability of participation. Or, an analyst can specify that a unit that participated in the baseline not stop participating (but allow non-recipient baseline eligibles to start participating). In the absence of such options in an alternative simulation, a family/child might stop or start participating if there is a change in the probability caused by changes in other TRIM3 modules. For instance, if the amount of simulated SSI or TANF income changes in the alternative series of simulations, a family might be in a different income category than it was in the baseline simulation. The change in income could lead to a change in the family's participation decision. Whether the analyst wants to allow such changes depends on the particular questions being asked, including whether the analyst is interested in long-run or short-run effects of the policy changes.

5. Estimating Child Care Expenses

The Child Care Expense module estimates child care expenses for all families with children, both subsidized and non-subsidized, on a monthly basis. As discussed above, subfamilies are treated as separate families.

If a family is simulated to receive CCDF-funded subsidies in a particular month, then the family's child care expense in that month is set equal to the CCDF copayment. Note that this assumes that a subsidized family has no child care expenses for children who are not eligible for CCDF.

For months in which a family does not receive CCDF-funded subsidies--either because the family is not eligible, or because the family is eligible but was simulated not to receive subsidies--the model uses a logit equation and regression equation to impute whether the family has child care expenses and, if so, the amount of expense. The equations were estimated using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. The universe for the equations includes all families with at least one child age 14 or younger.

Using the following rule settings, the expense imputation may be bypassed for non-subsidized families:

  • In alternative simulations, the program rule UseBaselineExpForUnsubFamilies may be set so that a family's expense is set to the same value that was simulated in a baseline simulation for families that are simulated as unsubsidized in both the baseline and alternative simulations.  The BaselineExpense program rule contains the variable with the monthly expense value that was simulated in the baseline that is to be used in the alternative simulation.
  • TotalChildCareExpense may be used to specify the monthly childcare expense for non-subsidized families. If a variable is not specified, the expense imputation is used instead.

Note that if the input data includes a variable indicating that a family reports paying for child care for a particular child, that variable can be entered via the rule ReportedToBeInChildCare (with the allocation flag provided in AllocInChildCare.) Currently, the model does not make use of this information in imputing the incidence of child care expenses. However, the correspondence between the reported and simulated incidence of expenses is tabulated during baseline alignment.

The expense estimation for non-subsidized families is described in the following sections:

a. Probability Equation

The first equation used by the module is a logit equation for the probability of paying for child care (see Explanatory Variables, below). Coefficients for the equation are stored in the array program rule ProbabilityCoefficients. The result of the logit is converted to a probability, and that probability is then multiplied by a parameterized adjustment factor (array program rule ProbabilityFactor). This program rule can be used to align the module’s probability numbers with targets for 13 non-overlapping groups (TANF/AFDC recipients, Food Stamps recipients who are not receiving TANF/AFDC, and 11 groups defined by level of family income). The modified probability is then compared with a random number to determine if the family will be considered to have positive child care expenses. That random number stays constant over the year. If a family’s characteristics stay the same from one month to the next, the family will either have expenses in both months or neither month.

b. Expense Equation

If a family is predicted to have expenses, then the second equation is run. This equation is a regression that predicts a weekly dollar amount of child care expense (see Explanatory Variables, below). Coefficients for the equation are stored in the array program rule ExpenseCoefficients. The weekly amount predicted by the equation is then multiplied by the number of weeks of expense for the family (see Weeks of Expense, below), in order to produce a monthly amount. Due to this process of initially estimating a weekly amount, if a family’s earnings change from month to month solely due to a change in weeks of work, there will be a proportional change in child care expenses.

The monthly amount is multiplied by a parameterized adjustment factor (array program rule ExpenseFactor) and may be capped by the percent of a unit head's monthly earnings when a cap is specified by the PctEarningsExpenseCap program rule.  The ExpenseFactor program rule may be used to align the module’s expense numbers with targets for the same 13 non-overlapping groups as were used for the probability calculations.

c. Weeks of Expense

The number of weeks of expense for a family is the lesser of the head’s weeks of potential expense and the spouse’s weeks of potential expense, if there is a spouse present. A person is considered to have had weeks of potential expense if the person was going to school that month (MonthlyLaborForceActivity = 2), or if the person had earnings that month (Earnings not = 0). The total number of weeks of potential expense for students is the number of weeks in the month, whereas the total number of weeks of potential expense for earners is the input variable MonthlyWeeksWorked. (Note that we do not have an estimate of the number of weeks that a student was in school.)

d. Explanatory Variables:

The probability and expense equations use the same set of explanatory variables:

  • Whether the mother is white
  • Whether the mother is of Hispanic origin
  • Whether the mother’s highest educational attainment is less than high school

      This includes all grade-completed codes less than "high school graduate or equivalent"
  • Whether the mother’s highest educational attainment is high school

      This includes only the code "high school graduate or equivalent"
  • Whether the mother is married with spouse present
  • Number of children age 0-18 in the family
  • Number of children age 0-2 in the family
  • Number of children age 3-4 in the family
  • Number of children age 5-9 in the family
  • Number of children age 10-14 in the family
  • Number of children age 15-18 in the family

      Note that the head and spouse are not counted as children even if they are teenagers.

      Only children in the family are counted (using the narrow definition of family that treats subfamilies separately), not other children in the household.

  • Whether this family is part of a household that includes one or more other families (with subfamilies considered separate families)
  • Whether the mother works 1 to 20 hours per week
  • Whether the mother works 21 to 34 hours per week
  • Whether the mother works 35+ hours per week

      No more than one of these may be set to 1. If the mother does not work, all will be 0. This is based on the variable "hours per week usually worked last year." It is currently an annual variable, so it will be the same for every month that the mother worked.

  • Hours worked, for mothers working 1-20 hours per week
  • Hours worked, for mothers working 21-34 hours per week
  • Hours worked, for mothers working 35+ hours per week

      No more than one of these will be set to a positive number. The rest will be 0. If the mother does not work (or if she is in school this month but not working), then all will be 0. This is based on the variable "hours per week usually worked last year."

  • If the mother is enrolled in school

      The mother is considered to be in school if the monthly labor force indicator says she is in school.

  • Spouse’s hours worked per week

      If the head of the family is married with spouse present, then this is the hours worked for the male spouse. Otherwise, this variable is 0.

  • Family’s monthly earned income

      This is the earned income (wages, farm self-employment, and non-farm self-employment) of the head, and the spouse if there is one, adjusted for full-month work. The following calculation is done separately for both head and spouse: If the number of weeks worked is less than the full weeks in the month, the monthly earnings are divided by the number of weeks worked and then multiplied by the total number of weeks in the month (either 4 or 5, depending on the month). The family’s monthly earned income is the sum of the head’s adjusted income and the spouse’s adjusted income.

      Ideally, our explanatory variable would be weekly earnings instead of monthly earnings. But we did not have a weeks-worked variable easily accessible in our analysis file used for the estimation. By following this procedure, we make sure that weekly child care costs reflect a family’s underlying earnings level even in weeks of partial work. (Otherwise, the same weekly expenses would be estimated for a woman working one week full-time for $24/hour vs. a woman working four weeks full-time for $6/hour.)

  • Family’s monthly earned income, squared
  • Whether the family receives AFDC/TANF benefits
  • Whether the family resides in an MSA or not

      This is based on the variable "Central city MSA code". If that variable is coded as either "central city" or "balance of MSA" this variable is coded as 1. Note that the unknowns will be lumped in with the rural families.

  • Whether the family resides in a Northeastern state
  • Whether the family resides in a Midwestern state
  • Whether the family resides in a Southern state

      This is based on the "Region" variable.

  • Average annual state child care wage, in thousands

      The value of this variable is the same for every family in a particular state, and is set in the state program rule AverageChildCareWages.

6. Other Options

The Child Care Expense module includes two special capabilities to facilitate certain types of simulations. First, the program rule StateToProcess can be used to run a Child Care simulation on only one or a subset of states instead of the entire input file. Second, the national program rule AnnualInflationFactor can be used to globally modify the dollar amounts used in the CCDF eligibility determination process. If a number is specified in AnnualInflationFactor, the amounts in both the lower and higher income limit program rules (as well as any earnings brackets used in summary tables) will be multiplied by that number. This may be useful if the analyst wants to apply the rules of one year, in real terms, to the data from another year.

7. Variables Read Directly from an Input File

This section lists the variables that are read directly from an input file without the use of program rules, and it provides an indication of how the variables are used within the module.
Term Usage
Age Identify children; eligibility; tabulations; copay calculation; participation; tabulations
CentralCityMSACode Expense imputation; tabulations
EconomicAdult Identify children; tabulations
EthnicOrigin Expense imputation; tabulations
ExpandedHhRelation Identify foster children
FamilyID Identify unmarried parents and step-parents
FamilyWeight Tabulations
FipsStateCode Eligibility; participation; tabulations
HhFamilyRelation Identify unmarried parents
HighestGradeCompleted Expense imputation; tabulations
LastHoursPerWeek Eligibility; expense imputation; identify unemployed; tabulations
LastRemainingActivity Identify unemployed
MaritalStatus Identify step-parents; expense imputation; participation; tabulations
MonthlyEarnings Student non-earner cap calculation
MonthlyLaborForceActivity Eligibility; student non-earner cap calculation; expense imputation; identify unemployed; tabulations
MonthlyWeeksWorked Eligibility; expense imputation; identify unemployed
NumberOfFamilies Tabulations
OtherPublicAssistance Eligibility
PersonWeight Tabulations
RaceAndSex Expense imputation; tabulations
Region Expense imputation; tabulations