Research & Data
We are proud to undertake research on the child care landscape and use it to advocate for child care policies that improve the lives of children and families.
Featured Sections

Catalyzing Growth: Using Data to Change Child Care
Explore our latest research report that provides detailed information about the child care system in the United States.
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Demanding Change: Repairing our Child Care System.
This 2020 report outlines how the U.S. child care system has changed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Interoperability
As a national convener, CCAoA is helping lead the drive toward interoperability across the U.S. child care field.
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Child Care Licensing Benchmark Project
We’ve developed a revised set of child care licensing standard benchmarks, a scoring rubric and state snapshot resources.
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Child Care Data Center
Child care data is difficult to collect, standardize and visualize. That's why we built the Child Care Data Center to display data on child care affordability, supply and quality across all 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico. Explore the interactive map now.
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The US and the High Price of Child Care
A review of child care as a sound return on investment and our recommendations for supporting families & child care providers.
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Millennial Map
Story map about issues facing millennial parents, and a look at the affordability of full-time center-based care for an infant and of full-time center-based care for two children.
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Mapping CACFP Participation
The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) is a federal program that reimburses child care programs for serving nutritious meals and snacks to eligible children in their care.
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Mapping the Gap
Story maps showing challenges in child care supply and demand and useful resources to ensure accessibility to quality child care.
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Closing the Gap
Examine 15 examples of CCR&Rs and other policy-focused organizations to understand their approaches to closing the gap in child care supply and demand at state and local levels.
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It's About Time
Learn about the families working nonstandard schedules who are inequitably affected by lack of child care.
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Archived Reports
Browse our library of previous reports, research and publications from Child Care Aware® of America
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Leadership
Dr. Clare Waterman joined CCAoA in June 2022 as the Senior Director of Research.
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