Childcare Landscape Study - Flipbook - Page 1
Davidson County Child Care Landscape Study Results
1
Davidson County
Child Care
Landscape Study
Executive Summary
DAVIDSON COUNTY CHILD CARE LANDSCAPE STUDY RESULTS | EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Introduction to the Davidson County Child Care Landscape Study
High-quality child care is an essential resource for families and young children. Reliable
child care enables parental workforce participation, simultaneously providing children with
a safe, nurturing, and structured environment that promotes healthy development.1 Quality
child care also strengthens families' economic stability, improving child developmental
outcomes and promoting broader economic growth.2
Despite the essential need for child care, families across the United States face challenges
accessing and affording it. Additionally, child care programs face challenges maintaining
financially sustainable businesses, and early childhood educators are often not paid enough to
cover basic household necessities.3 Though these access and workforce challenges are
widespread across the country, developing effective solutions requires an understanding of
the unique conditions shaping local child care systems.
To inform strategies to improve the local child care system in greater Davidson County, United
Way of Greater Nashville engaged the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center at Vanderbilt
University (Policy Impact Center) to conduct the Davidson County Child Care Landscape Study.
This study, using novel data collected from the Davidson County Child Care Provider
Experience Survey (Child Care Provider Survey), examines local child care supply,
population metrics that inform demand, the local ECE workforce, operating conditions of
local child care programs, and the estimated cost of providing high-quality child care in
greater Davidson County. Nearly half (47%) of all reachable licensed child care programs
(N=275) in greater Davidson County participated in the Child Care Provider Survey during
the Summer of 2025. The study includes responses from 116 center-based and 14 homebased programs, for a total of 130 child care programs.
Results show that the greater Davidson County child care system faces interconnected
challenges related to child care supply, workforce stability, and high-quality child care
affordability. This brief provides an executive summary of the key findings presented across
the Davidson County Child Care Landscape Study five-part brief series.
Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center 2025
www.pn3policy.org
