Worth, Harrison Counties Identified as Child Care Deserts

The organization Child Care Aware of Missouri uses zip codes and counties to identify areas that are child care deserts. A child care desert is designed as a county with greater than 50 children under the age of 5 that contain no child care providers or so few options that there are more than three times as many children as licensed child care slots.

According to the US Census Bureau, one third of children under age 5 are regularly in nonrelative care.

Common measures include:

–Distance based measures, which look at the proximity of child care providers to families in need of childcare.

–Capacity based measures, which look at the number of child care slots available relative to the number of children in need of care.

–Affordability. These measures consider the cost relative to family income.

–Quality. These measures consider the quality of child care providers in an area. 

Under Child Care Aware of Missouri’s standards, Worth and Harrison counties were identified as child care deserts. Nodaway and Gentry were not.