Abstract

This study gives a comprehensive, census-level assessment of the impacts of the COVID-19 widespread on the province child care advertise in a huge and different state, North Carolina, and the unbalanced impacts of the widespread on diverse sorts of suppliers and communities. We utilize county-level board information from 2016 to 2020 and a difference-in-differences plan to disconnect the impacts of the widespread from undetectable regular patterns in enrollments and closures. We found that the COVID-19 widespread decreased county-level child care enrollment by 40% and the number of suppliers by 2% as of December 2020. Heterogeneity examinations uncovered that the family child care division experienced not as it were less serious diminishments in enrollment and closure than center suppliers, but too a little development within the number of family suppliers. Decreases in enrollment were most significant for preschool-aged children.