A National Portrait of Unlisted Home-Based Child Care Providers: The Communities Where Providers Live. HBCCSQ NSECE Analysis Brief. OPRE Brief 2023-146

In 2019, more than 5 million providers cared for one or more children either in their own home or in a child's home. Home-based child care (HBCC) providers are a varied group that includes listed providers and unlisted providers who do and do not receive payment. HBCC is especially prevalent in communities of color, communities with high concentrations of people from immigrant backgrounds, areas of concentrated poverty, and rural communities. Yet, research on HBCC lags behind research on center-based child care and early education (CCEE), and the least is known about unlisted providers who do not appear on state or national provider lists and work outside the formal systems supporting CCEE programs. This brief focuses on describing the characteristics of the communities in which unlisted HBCC providers live and, for many, where they typically care for children. It uses the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE), the American Community Survey (ACS), and the Child Opportunity Index (COI) 2.0.