Early Learning and Child Care: Federal Funds Support Multiple Programs with Similar Goals

Millions of children under the age of 5 participate each year in federally funded preschool and other early learning programs or receive federally supported child care in a range of settings. Federal programs that funded early learning and child care as an explicit purpose received at least $14.2 billion in federal funding in fiscal year 2012. This testimony discusses existing federally funded programs that provide or support early learning or child care services for children and the extent to which these programs are administered by multiple federal agencies, have similar goals, or provide the same services. It is based on work done for GAO’s 2012 annual report on opportunities to reduce duplication, overlap, and fragmentation in federal government programs (see GAO-12-342SP ), which updated earlier work in this area.

The report finds that the federal investment in early learning and child care is administered through 45 programs that provide or may support related services to children from birth through age 5, as well as five tax provisions that subsidize private expenditures in this area. Among the 45 programs, 12 have an explicit program purpose of providing early learning or child care services. These programs differ in size, target population, and structure. For example, most of them obligated less than $500 million each in fiscal year 2012, while the largest program, Head Start, obligated approximately $8 billion in that year. The remaining 33 programs identified in GAO’s 2012 report permit the use of funds for delivering or supporting early learning or child care services, but this is not their explicit purpose. These programs include multipurpose block grants, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, for which early learning or child care is not a primary purpose but which may nevertheless provide significant funding for child care. They also include programs that may allow funds to be used for early learning or child care, but these are not among their primary goals and do not typically account for a significant portion of available program funds. Finally, five federal tax provisions support early learning and child care by forgoing tax revenue to subsidize the private purchase of child care services. These five tax expenditures accounted for at least $3.1 billion of forgone tax revenue for the U.S. Treasury in fiscal year 2012.