Cost is a key factor shaping families’ decisions about whether and when to use different types of child care^a arrangements for children.¹ Recent federal guidelines suggest that affordable child care should cost no more than 7 percent of a family’s income.² Yet, national analyses indicate that the average market price of formal child care (e.g., centers and licensed or regulated family child care) exceeds the recommended benchmark of affordability in every state in the United States.³

For Hispanic^b households, which tend to have high levels of employment⁴ as well as low levels of income,^5,6 finding affordable child care options that meet both parents’ and children’s needs may be especially challenging. In an earlier brief, we reported that although approximately 6 out of 10 low-income Hispanic households with children in care pay no out-of-pocket costs, fewer than 1 out of 10 pay affordable costs according to the federal benchmark of 7 percent or less of income—and more than 3 out of 10 pay costs that exceed this threshold. Moreover, we found that households in the latter category spend, on average, nearly one-third of their income on child care.⁷

In the current brief, we draw on data from the 2012 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) to extend this earlier work and explore how various characteristics of households, communities, and nonparental care arrangements predict different levels of child care spending for a national sample of low income Hispanic households with young children (birth to age 5). Recognizing that such factors do not operate in isolation, we use a statistical method—multivariate ordinal regression—that allows us to consider multiple characteristics simultaneously while estimating the relative contribution of each one in predicting the percentage of income that Hispanic households spend to meet their child care needs.

Key Findings

Together, our findings suggest that child care affordability for low-income Hispanic households is a function of multiple characteristics of household composition, employment and economic status, community, and child care arrangements. Notably, several characteristics that might otherwise be associated with economic mobility (e.g., dual-earner households, low poverty, and suburban communities) are also linked to higher child care spending for low-income Hispanic households, signaling that opportunities for these families may come with additional costs.

Low-income Hispanic households are more likely to pay a larger share of their income on child care if they:

• Have an infant or toddler
• Are headed by a single parent
• Include working parents, especially more than one
• Receive public assistance
• Live in a low-poverty community
• Live in a suburban community
• Use multiple care providers
• Use center-based care arrangements

Low-income Hispanic households are less likely to pay a larger share of their income on child care if they:

• Include a co-resident grandparent

Factors found to be unrelated to low-income Hispanic households’ level of child care spending were the presence of older children in the home, availability of a nearby relative to provide care, household immigrant status and English proficiency, nonstandard parental work hours, household income level, and total hours of child care used per week.