DOI: 10.3886/icpsr38203.v2
title: Child Care and Development Fund Administrative Data, [United States], Federal Fiscal Year 2018
title: Version 2

description: This administrative dataset provides descriptive information about the families and children served through the federal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF). CCDF dollars are provided to states, territories, and tribes to provide assistance to low-income families receiving or in transition from temporary public assistance, to obtain quality child care so they can work, or depending on their state's policy, to attend training or receive education. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 requires states and territories to collect information on all family units receiving assistance through the CCDF and to submit monthly case-level data to the Office of Child Care. States are permitted to report case-level data for the entire population, or a sample of the population, under approved sampling guidelines. The Summary Records file contains monthly state-level summary information including the number of families served. The Family Records file contains family-level data including single parent status of the head of household, monthly co-payment amount, date on which child care assistance began, reasons for care (e.g., employment, training/education, protective services, etc.), income used to determine eligibility, source of income, and the family size on which eligibility is based. The Child Records file contains child-level data including ethnicity, race, gender, and date of birth. The Setting Records file contains information about the type of child care setting, the total amount paid to the provider, and the total number of hours of care received by the child. The Pooling Factor file provides state-level data on the percentage of child care funds that is provided through the CCDF, the federal Head Start region the grantee (state) is in and is monitored by, and the state FIPS code for the grantee.
description: To obtain representative national statistics, weighted statistics must be generated using the number of families and children served as the weighting factor. Where applicable, sampling weight adjustments have been included in the files. Children from the same state get the same weight, and results reflect the entire sample size of the United States and its territories. There are two weight variables available for analysis: A_FCHWT and U_FCHWT. A description of these weights is provided below: A_FCHWT: Annual Adjusted Weight for Families/Children Served. This sampling weight adjustment accounts for the pooling factor, and it weights the data by the number of families and children served by CCDF in each state/national. U_FCHWT: Annual Unadjusted Weight for Families/Children Served. This sampling weight adjustment does not account for the pooling factor, and it weights the data by the number of families and children served from all reported funding sources in each state/national. Separate child and family online data files have been produced for each of the two weights described above. Users of these data are strongly encouraged to read through the accompanying technical documentation file for further discussion of methods by which to obtain weighted statistics and for guidance with the use of these methods for proper analysis of these data.
description: This sample dataset consists of monthly data provided by states that reported sample data and states that reported full population data, as well as any territory data received. Sampling of the data from states reporting full population data was done in accordance with Technical Bulletin #5, Appendix II: Annual Sampling Plan, Example A. The month with the lowest caseload was selected for determining the sampling rate so that at least 200 samples were selected for each month. Additional information on the development of this sample dataset is provided in the accompanying technical documentation.
description: Datasets: DS0: Study-Level Files DS1: Summary Records DS2: Family Records DS3: Child Records DS4: Setting Records DS5: Pooling Factor DS6: Adjusted Child Records File (Online Analysis Only) DS7: Unadjusted Child Records File (Online Analysis Only) DS8: Adjusted Family Records File (Online Analysis Only) DS9: Unadjusted Family Records File (Online Analysis Only)
description: Children and families receiving assistance through the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), through their state, territory, or tribe. Smallest Geographic Unit: State
description: States continually review the quality of their data processing. As states identify systematic errors, they may revise or replace historical data files. While this practice improves the dataset over time, reported historical statistics may change slightly from year to year.These data files include monthly case-level data for states and territories only. Tribal data is collected on an annual aggregated basis and is neither comparable nor included here.Additional information about this data collection may be found in a series of technical bulletins available directly through the website of the Office of Child Care.These data files were produced by General Dynamics Information Technology under contract with the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration for Children, Youth and Families, Child Care Bureau.Territories apart from Puerto Rico, such as Guam, are fully included in the public use files, given their relatively small number of children and families. In contrast, the states and Puerto Rico are sampled for the public use files to limit the number of records.