OCID’s inaugural analyses examine relationships between participation in select public childhood programs and subsequent early educational outcomes for children born in Oregon. To provide a foundation for understanding these early childhood experiences, the following interactive visualizations display patterns of program participation for children born between 2008-2013. The visualizations allow exploration of the following questions:
- What proportion of children are participating in these public programs?
- At what age are children receiving these services?
- How many children participate in multiple programs?
- Which programs are serving the same children?
- How does participation vary by certain characteristics (e.g. sex/gender, race/ethnicity, geography)?
Note on Characteristics
Some characteristics represent direct experiences and others act as proxies for experiences that cannot be measured with available data. For example, participation in income-based support programs serves as a proxy for low family income absent other income data. Personal characteristics such as race and ethnicity can serve as proxies for experiences that are not easily measured through data, such as systemic racism. For more information on race and ethnicity in our dataset, please refer to the OCID Race and Ethnicity Data Overview (pdf).
For display purposes, individual programs are grouped by the types of services they provide to Oregon’s children and families, as shown in the following table.
Overview of Programs and Service Categories
| Service Category | Program | State Agency | Analysis Elibility Age * |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home visiting ** | Babies First!/Maternity Case Management (BF/MCM) | OHA | |
| Healthy Families Oregon (HFO) | ELD | ||
| Disability services | Early Intervention (EI) | ODE | |
| Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE) | ODE | ||
| Public preschool | Head Start/Oregon Pre-K (HS/OPK) | ODE | |
| Income support ** | Employment-related Day Care (ERDC) | DHS | |
| Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) | DHS | ||
| Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) | DHS | ||
| Health support | Medicaid/Children's Health Insurance Program (MCD/CHIP) | OHA |
** Participation for home visiting and income-based support programs is at the family level.
Program Participation for Children Through Age 4
The following chart provides an overview of program participation across service categories for children from birth through age 4. The graph underscores that across time health support and income support are by far the largest service categories, each serving nearly 50% of children. In comparison, the remaining programs serve smaller and more targeted populations.
Participation Across Service Categories
The figure below summarizes the number of different service categories that children and their families participated in through the age of 4. It can be filtered by various child and family characteristics including sex/gender, race and ethnicity, and geography.
As a high level takeaway, across all years approximately one-third of children had no involvement in any of the programs through the age of 4. Two-thirds of children did have some level of contact with at least one service category, and over half of children participated in at least 2 service categories at some point before turning 5 years old. Health and income supports was the most common combination of categories; one third of children participated in both at some point.
Geography
Foster care participation
Overlapping Participation Across Specific Programs
The following matrix provides additional detail on overlapping participation between individual programs through the age of 4. It shows the percentage of children who participated in the “row” program who also participated in the “column” program and can be filtered by child and family characteristics as well. For example, for the 2013 birth cohort, 83.4% of children enrolled in Medicaid/CHIP also participated in SNAP.
The programs with the largest populations, Medicaid/CHIP, SNAP, and TANF, consistently had the highest overlap in participation across all the programs examined.
Geography
Foster care participation
Variation in Participation Across Demographic Categories
The final display illustrates the distribution of children from birth through 4 in the OCID dataset among geographic, sex/gender, or race and ethnicity categories, compared with the relative service category participation for each group. Proportional comparisons can be determined by the sizes of each half-circle. In the example on the right, 18.0% of children in this Oregon birth cohort were from rural counties, whereas rural children represented 27.9% of participants in home visiting programs.
Variation in Participation Across Demographic Categories
The final display illustrates the distribution of children from birth through 4 in the OCID dataset among geographic, sex/gender, or race and ethnicity categories, compared with the relative service category participation for each group. Proportional comparisons can be determined by the sizes of each half-circle. In the example below, 18.0% of children in this Oregon birth cohort were from rural counties, whereas rural children represented 27.9% of participants in home visiting programs.
Foster care participation