Learning & Development
Policy Brief/Analysis
How Did the Covid-19 Pandemic Impact Child Care Use Among Infants and Toddlers in New Jersey?
Date
September 16, 2021
The Covid-19 pandemic upended the nation’s child care system and New Jersey is no exception. Over the last year, the Infant and Toddler Policy Research Center at the National Institute for Early Education Research (ITC@NIEER) conducted three surveys of parents of infants and toddlers (children under age 3) about their use of (non-parental) child care. The surveys were conducted in August 2020, February 2021, and June 2021 and were designed to represent New Jersey’s population of parents of infants and toddlers. The August 2020 survey also asked about use of child care prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. This data snapshot summarizes findings from simple analyses and from more complex models used to estimate changes in the use of infant and toddler child care over time beginning prior to March 2020.
The Authors
Allison Friedman-Krauss is an Assistant Research Professor at NIEER where she is also the Associate Director for Policy Research and Director of the Infant and Toddler Policy Research Center.
W. Steven (Steve) Barnett is a Board of Governors Professor and the founder and Senior Co-Director of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University. Dr. Barnett’s work primarily focuses on public policies regarding early childhood education, child care, and child development.
Dr. Zijia Li is an Assistant Research Professor at the National Institute of Early Education Research (NIEER). Her research interests are early care and education policy and quality, quantitative research design and evaluation tool development for field research that informs early education policy, and psychometric theories and applications in early education.