Percentage of children from birth through age 5 and not yet in kindergarten participating in weekly nonparental care and the mean number of hours per week that children spend in current primary weekly nonparental care arrangements with relative, nonrelative, or center-based provider, by child and family characteristics: 2016

¹ If children were not in a given care arrangement, they were not included in the estimate for mean length of time in that particular care arrangement (e.g., children not in relative care were not included in the denominator for estimates for relative care).

² Center-based arrangements include day care centers, Head Start programs, preschools, prekindergartens, and other early childhood programs.

NOTE: Estimates include children from birth through 5 years of age, and not yet in kindergarten with at least one regularly scheduled weekly nonparental care arrangement. Since a child may have multiple weekly arrangements within a single type of care (e.g., different arrangements with two or more relatives), parents were asked to only report on the primary arrangement for that care type. The primary care arrangement is defined as where the child spends the most time within a particular type of care as determined by the parent. A child may also have multiple weekly arrangements across the three types of care. That is, a child may have a primary care arrangement with a relative as well as a primary care arrangement at a center. As a result, a single child may be represented in multiple columns of this table. Among all children from birth through age 5 and not yet in kindergarten, 12 percent of children's parents report having more than one type of regularly scheduled weekly nonparental care arrangement. Parents were not asked to distinguish which type of care is the most primary weekly arrangement for the child.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Early Childhood Program Participation Survey of the 2016 National Household Education Surveys Program (ECPP-NHES:2016).

Characteristic	Number of children (thousands)	Percent in at least one weekly nonparental care arrangement	Mean number of hours per week spent in different types of primary nonparental care arrangements¹
Characteristic	Number of children (thousands)	Percent in at least one weekly nonparental care arrangement	Primary relative	Primary nonrelative	Primary center²
Total	21,362	60	23	27	24
Child’s age
Less than one year	4,724	47	25	30	31
1–2 years	8,552	54	23	27	28
3–5 years	8,087	73	20	26	21
Household income
$20,000 or less	3,049	48	25	26	20
$20,001–$50,000	5,706	50	24	25	22
$50,001–$75,000	3,821	56	21	26	23
$75,001–$100,000	2,882	66	23	27	24
$100,001 or more	5,904	75	21	28	26