Factors predicting early childhood education and care use by immigrant families

Using 2005 National Household Education Survey data, this paper compares the effects of child and family characteristics on early childhood education and care use for children of foreign born mothers versus children of native-born mothers. Maternal nativity serves as a proxy for maternal immigration status in an effort to determine if child and family characteristics differentially predict enrollment. We consider relative, non-relative, and center-based care arrangements in two age groups: 0–2 and 3–5 years old. Multivariate analyses reveal that once demographic differences are controlled, patterns of use are mostly similar irrespective of maternal nativity.