Access to child care in Oregon has slowly expanded, according to a new study from Oregon State University, but it remains far from adequate to serve even half the state’s children.
A child care spot was available for 33% of Oregon children ages 5 or younger in 2024, the researchers found. That’s up from 28% in 2022 and 21% in 2018, when researchers first started tracking how many Oregon counties qualified as child care “deserts,” meaning there was a severe lack of slots for kids under 5.
The report is one demonstration that “things are changing and there is improvement,” said lead researcher Megan Pratt.
“It’s nice to be able to tell that story,” Pratt said. “It doesn’t always happen in this world that we get to tell a story of growth.”
State and federal funding plays a “crucial role” in increasing supply, particularly for preschoolers, the study said. Roughly 30% of Oregon preschool spots are paid for with public dollars, researchers found.
Nearly all counties bolstered their supply of child care by at least a few percentage points since 2018, the study found. Of the 27 counties then considered child care “deserts” for preschool-age children, only nine counties still held that distinction in 2024.
“I think these results really show the choices we’ve made, the investments we’ve made, have worked,” said Alyssa Chatterjee, director of the state’s Department of Early Learning and Care. “This is in part a demonstration of not just sustaining the investments that have been made in the past but us being able to improve our ability to really provide responsive services.”
Still, access to child care remains uneven depending on age and geography. Of Oregon’s 36 counties, 34 are child care deserts for children age 2 or younger, meaning it’s far easier for a parent to find care for a preschooler than for an infant or toddler.
Providing infant care is more expensive due to low child-staffer ratios, Chatterjee said, and state leaders have focused on pumping money into Preschool Promise, which serves 3- and 4-year-olds.
The study measured the estimated number of children in each county compared to the number of seats that child care providers want to offer. Researchers didn’t track specific enrollment at child care providers.
Low enrollment has been a problem in the past – a state audit found that the Preschool Promise program wasted nearly $700,000 on payments to providers with low enrollment between 2021 and 2024, money that could have paid for 100 children but instead paid for only 13.
Current Preschool Promise data from the Department of Early Learning and Care shows that 95% of its publicly funded preschool seats are filled.
The number of child care slots available to Oregon children is just returning to the levels seen in the late 1990s, according to the Oregon State University data.
However, Oregon also has slightly fewer preschool aged children now than it did back then. According to the Census Bureau, in 2000, Oregon had about 224,000 children under age 5, a figure that grew to about 238,000 in 2010 but which has since shrunk to 219,000.
A decline in the number of home based child care providers who serve fewer than 10 children drove a long-term drop, even as more slots opened in child care centers and in home-based facilities that serve more than 10 kids. Available child care seats hit a low point in 2014 but have rebounded to about 78,000 as of 2024. Still, that was still more than 500 spots below 1999 levels, Oregon State researchers found.
The 2024 data, however, shows some growth of small, home-based child care facilities.
The latest report documented 988 new slots in those homes compared to 2022.
Officials are not certain what has led to the uptick, Chatterjee said, but the state has been offering business coaching and regional resource programs for child care providers and recently adjusted licensing rules for home-based settings to remove barriers for potential providers.
“(There’s) no way to know that any of these things were part of the secret sauce for sure, but those are some of the strategies over the last couple of years that we’ve really been focusing on,” Chatterjee said.
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