1 in 4 Child Care Workers Has No Health Insurance, Few Child Care Workers Get Coverage Through Their Job, Keystone Research Center Shows

Lack of Health Insurance Drives Up Workforce Turnover, Drives Down Quality, Puts Children at Risk; State Should Step in to Fill the Gap

Harrisburg, April 11 -- It has long been suspected that few child care workers get health benefits through their job and that this fuels high turnover that undermines the quality of early childhood education.

A new report by the Keystone Research Center presents the first definitive evidence on this issue for Pennsylvania and the United States and underscores the pressing need for state action to expand health insurance for child care workers.

Released today at a 10 a.m. Capital Rotunda press conference addressed by child care providers, workers, and advocates, "Pennsylvania Child Care Workers Face Health Insurance Crisis" is based on responses to a battery of questions about health care asked each March as part of the national random sample Current Population Survey. This data is routinely mined for information on health insurance in different states but has not previously been used to hone in on the insurance picture in child care or other human service industries. The report's main findings:

Sixty percent of Pennsylvania workers obtain health insurance through their employer, compared to only 25 percent of Pennsylvania workers in the child care industry.
A paltry one in 16 Pennsylvania child care industry workers obtains family health insurance through their job compared with one in three of all workers in the state.
Twenty-five percent of Pennsylvania child care industry workers have no health insurance at all, compared with 11 percent of all Pennsylvania workers.
Overall, a smaller share of Pennsylvania than U.S. workers lacks health insurance; but a higher share of Pennsylvania than U.S. child care workers have no health insurance.
Although the overall Pennsylvania health insurance picture has improved since 1993-95, the share of Pennsylvania child care workers lacking insurance has jumped from 21 to 25 percent.

"The lack of basic health insurance is the untold story of child care", said Gail Nourse, Director of Focus on Our Future, a project of the United Way of York. "We have learned that 35 percent of York child care programs don't offer health benefits or don't contribute to the cost. Lack of insurance fundamentally affects our ability to provide quality, stable care for our children."

"We offer a quality child care program, but are unable to offer basic health insurance to our employees, ad as a result lose qualified staff," said Ruby Martin, Director of Kiddie Academy in York. "We face a terrible dilemma, increasing costs to struggling parents or denying health insurance to our staff. We need help."

Health insurance is especially critical to child care workers because of the risk of disease and injury inherent in caring for children and because teachers' health problems put children at risk. The Keystone report recommends that state lawmakers:

1. Use tobacco settlement dollars to create and generously fund an adult health insurance program that covers workers up to 200 percent of the poverty line. This would provide coverage to many child care teachers and other caregivers who now have no access to health insurance or cannot afford premiums.

2. Establish a state purchasing pool that helps child care programs lower costs through group purchasing power and that folds in a public subsidy for child care workers' health insurance.

"The uninsured don't live in some far away town. They are in your grocery store, on the Little League field and chances are they are in your child care center," said Sharon Ward, child care policy director for Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth and the Philadelphia-based Child Care Matters partnership. "Quality care for our children is improved when teachers have health security. We call on state lawmakers to support adult insurance and help us improve health insurance coverage for the child care workforce." The Kestone report also finds that:

Even when child care workers obtain employer-provided health insurance, the level of employer contributions is only a little over half of the average employer contribution for all employed Pennsylvania workers- $1,681 versus $3,129. The number of uninsured child care workers would be even higher except for the fact that 42 percent of Pennsylvania workers in child care obtain health insurance as a dependent on someone else's plan (e.g., a spouse).

The Keystone Research Center, a non-partisan think tank, conducts research on the Pennsylvania and civic institutions. This research documents current conditions and seeks to develop innovative policy proposals to expand economic opportunity and ensure that all state residents share in economic growth.

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