Federal Independent Agencies
News releases, reports, statements and associated documents from federal independent agencies.
Featured Stories
USCIRF Troubled by Escalating Persecution of Ahmadi Muslims in Algeria
WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 -- The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued the following news release:
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is troubled by reports of escalating repression targeting the Ahmadiyya community in Algeria in recent weeks.
"New convictions and harsh sentences against Ahmadi Muslims in Algeria demonstrate systematic and ongoing persecution on religious grounds," said USCIRF Vice Chair Anurima Bhargava. "The U.S. government should urge the Algerian government to act swiftly to reverse this disturbing trend."
Over the past
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WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 -- The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued the following news release:
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is troubled by reports of escalating repression targeting the Ahmadiyya community in Algeria in recent weeks.
"New convictions and harsh sentences against Ahmadi Muslims in Algeria demonstrate systematic and ongoing persecution on religious grounds," said USCIRF Vice Chair Anurima Bhargava. "The U.S. government should urge the Algerian government to act swiftly to reverse this disturbing trend."
Over the pastseveral weeks, Algerian courts have tried dozens of members of the Ahmadiyya community for crimes related to the expression of their faith. Charges have included offending the Prophet Mohammad, degrading Islamic principles, and conducting activities without registration even though the government has not granted the Ahmadiyya community official status. Judges in these cases have questioned Ahmadi Muslims about their beliefs, and several Ahmadi Muslims have publicly recanted their faith as a result of the charges. Sentences have included heavy fines and prison sentences of up to three years.
"These unwarranted arrests and detentions are the latest in a long history of Ahmadi persecution in Algeria," said USCIRF Commissioner Johnnie Moore. "The U.S. government should demonstrate its strong support for the Ahmadi community in Algeria by denouncing these violations."
In its 2020 Annual Report, USCIRF recommended that the State Department designate Algeria as a "Special Watch List" for engaging in or tolerating severe violations of religious freedom pursuant to the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). In November, USCIRF also hosted a conversation with Commissioners and experts on Religious Freedom in Algeria.
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REPORT: https://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/USCIRF%202020%20Annual%20Report_Final_42920.pdf
New York Fed: Household Survey Shows Sustained Rebound in Year-Ahead Spending Growth Expectations
NEW YORK, Jan. 26 -- The Federal Reserve Bank of New York issued the following news release:
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Center for Microeconomic Data released the December 2020 Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) Household Spending Survey, which provides information on individuals' experiences and expectations regarding household spending. The survey shows a continuation of relatively modest monthly household spending growth compared to pre-pandemic levels. While the share of respondents who reported making a large purchase during the past four months has increased for most spending
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NEW YORK, Jan. 26 -- The Federal Reserve Bank of New York issued the following news release:
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Center for Microeconomic Data released the December 2020 Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) Household Spending Survey, which provides information on individuals' experiences and expectations regarding household spending. The survey shows a continuation of relatively modest monthly household spending growth compared to pre-pandemic levels. While the share of respondents who reported making a large purchase during the past four months has increased for most spendingcategories since April 2020, the share reporting spending on vacations dropped further to a new series' low. Year-ahead total household spending growth expectations instead rose sharply, continuing its rebound from the steep decline in spending expectations measured in April. Similarly, median year-ahead expected growth in non-essential and essential household spending both rose to new series highs. Expected spending responses to an unexpected 10% increase in income shows an average 36.3% would be used to pay down debt, 44.5% would be saved or invested, and 19.3% would be spent or donated.
Experiences
* The median increase in monthly household spending compared to a year ago was 1.6%, retreating from 1.9% in August while remaining well below its December 2019 reading of 2.5%. The decline from its August reading was driven by respondents aged 40 to 60 and by lower income (below $50,000) respondents.
* Some 54.6% of households in December 2020 reported making at least one large purchase in the last four months, slightly above the 54.0% reading in August and the second consecutive increase since the series reached its low in April 2020 of 50.7%. Despite the gradual increase, the proportion remains well below its December 2019 level of 62.5%, and does so for all age, education, and income groups.
* The proportion of households who made a large purchase in the past four months of electronics and vehicles increased in December 2020, approaching December 2019 levels. The share reporting purchases of home appliances, retreated slightly from its series high of 14.5% in August 2020, while the proportion reporting spending on vacations dropped to 8.4%, a new series low.
* The reported degree of month-to-month variability in household income was relatively unchanged in December 2020 compared to its August reading, remaining elevated compared to December 2019. The proportion of households who reported their household incomes (before taxes) vary by less than 5% was 80.8% compared to 82.7% in a year ago. The share who reported that their incomes vary by more than 15% from month to month was 4.0% compared to 2.8% a year ago. The latter increase was greatest among younger (under 40) and lower income (below $50K) respondents.
Expectations
* Median expected growth in household spending over the next year increased sharply to 3.0% in December 2020 from 2.2% in August 2020 and 2.4% in December 2019. The increase was broad based across education and income groups.
* Relative to December 2019 readings, and to some extent reflecting lower spending levels since the start of the pandemic, median year-ahead expected spending growth in clothing, food, utilities, recreation and transportation rose in December 2020, while those for education, housing, and medical care declined.
* Differentiating spending on essential and non-essential items, the median year-ahead expected change in household spending on essential items, such as daily living expenses, over the next year increased to 4.1% in December 2020 from 3.5% in August and 3.0% in December 2019. The median expected change in spending on non-essential items, such as hobbies, leisure, or vacation, over the next year also increased to 1.6%, from 1.0% in August and 1.4% in December 2019. Both December 2020 readings are new series highs.
* The average likelihood of making a large purchase in the next four months increased for furniture, home repairs, a house or apartment, vacations, and vehicles compared to August. Relative to December 2019 readings, the average likelihood of making a large furniture, home repair, or home purchase remained elevated, while that of vacations remained considerably depressed, recording at 13.0% in December 2020 compared to 25.5% in December 2019.
* Reported expected spending responses to an unexpected 10% increase in income shows an average 36.3% would be used by households to pay down debt (down from 36.5% in December 2019), 44.5% would be saved or invested (46.4% in prior year), and 19.3% would be spent or donated (17.1% in prior year).
Detailed results are available here: https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/sce/household-spending#/
National Transportation Safety Board: Failed Brake System Caused Fatal Wyoming Train Collision
WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 -- The National Transportation Safety Board issued the following news release:
The National Transportation Safety Board determined Monday that an airbrake failure caused the fatal, Oct. 4, 2018, collision between two Union Pacific trains in Granite Canyon, Wyoming.
The collision occurred when the air brakes on an eastbound UP freight train failed while descending a hill. The NTSB determined an air flow restriction in the brake pipe caused the air brake system to fail, and the end-of-train device failed to respond to an emergency brake command. The striking train collided with
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WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 -- The National Transportation Safety Board issued the following news release:
The National Transportation Safety Board determined Monday that an airbrake failure caused the fatal, Oct. 4, 2018, collision between two Union Pacific trains in Granite Canyon, Wyoming.
The collision occurred when the air brakes on an eastbound UP freight train failed while descending a hill. The NTSB determined an air flow restriction in the brake pipe caused the air brake system to fail, and the end-of-train device failed to respond to an emergency brake command. The striking train collided withthe rear of a standing UP freight train at about 55 mph, causing the lead locomotives of the striking train and railcars of both trains to derail. The locomotive engineer and conductor of the striking train were killed.
The NTSB investigation revealed the locomotive engineer applied the emergency brake as the train descended, however, the train's speed continued to increase. After the emergency brake application, the crew received a "front-to-rear no communication" message indicating the emergency brake request was not received at the end-of-train device, which would have initiated an emergency brake application from the rear of the train.
In its report issued Monday, the NTSB noted UP's failure to maintain its railcars, including regularly performing single railcar air brake tests as required by federal regulations, contributed to the collision.
"Had Union Pacific followed the rules and conducted air brake tests, any defects would likely have been identified and this accident could have been prevented," said Robert Hall, NTSB Director of the Office of Railroad, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Investigations. "This accident is an example of the industry not complying with federal regulations that are already in place to ensure transportation safety."
Regulatory communication protocols in place at the time of the collision, allowed for an extended lapse in communication between the head-of-train device and the end-of-train device without warning the train crew of the loss communication. The NTSB determined these protocols also contributed to the collision.
The NTSB issued a total of four safety recommendations to the Federal Railroad Administration, Association of American Railroads and the American Short Line an dRegional Railroad Association, based on the findings of its investigation. These safety recommendations address safety issues including railcar maintenance, inspection, and testing, limitations of emergency brake command to end-of-train device, head-of-train and end-of-train communication loss duration and grade locations on railroad lines with communication loss.
The final report, which includes the findings, probable cause, and all safety recommendations, is available at https://go.usa.gov/xAAS7.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Warming Seas Are Accelerating Greenland's Glacier Retreat
PASADENA, California, Jan. 26 -- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory issued the following news:
Scientists with NASA's Oceans Melting Greenland mission are probing deep below the island's warming coastal waters to help us better predict the rising seas of the future.
Greenland's melting glaciers, which plunge into Arctic waters via steep-sided inlets, or fjords, are among the main contributors to global sea level rise in response to climate change. Gaining a better understanding of how warming ocean water affects these glaciers will help improve predictions of their fate. Such predictions could
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PASADENA, California, Jan. 26 -- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory issued the following news:
Scientists with NASA's Oceans Melting Greenland mission are probing deep below the island's warming coastal waters to help us better predict the rising seas of the future.
Greenland's melting glaciers, which plunge into Arctic waters via steep-sided inlets, or fjords, are among the main contributors to global sea level rise in response to climate change. Gaining a better understanding of how warming ocean water affects these glaciers will help improve predictions of their fate. Such predictions couldin turn be used by communities around the world to better prepare for flooding and mitigate coastal ecosystem damage.
But researchers have long lacked measurements of the depths of the fjords along Greenland's craggy coast. Without this information, it's extremely difficult to arrive at a precise assessment of how much ocean water is being allowed into the fjords and how that affects glacier melt. By measuring their fjords one by one, a new study published in Science Advances has quantified, for the first time, how the warming coastal waters are impacting Greenland's glaciers.
For the past five years, scientists with the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission have been studying these marine-terminating glaciers from the air and by ship. They found that of the 226 glaciers surveyed, 74 in deep fjords accounted for nearly half of the total ice loss (as previously monitored by satellites) from Greenland between 1992 and 2017. These glaciers exhibited the most undercutting, which is when a layer of warm, salty water at the bottom of a fjord melts the base of a glacier, causing the ice above to break apart. In contrast, the 51 glaciers that extend into shallow fjords or onto shallow ridges experienced the least undercutting and contributed only 15% of the total ice loss.
"I was surprised by how lopsided these findings were. The biggest and deepest glaciers are undercut much faster than the smaller glaciers in shallow water," said lead author Michael Wood, a post-doctoral researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, who began this research as a doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine. "In other words, the biggest glaciers are the most sensitive to the warming waters, and those are the ones really driving Greenland's ice loss."
In the case of Greenland's glaciers, the bigger they are, the faster they melt. And the culprit is the depth of the fjord they occupy: Deeper fjords allow in more warm ocean water than shallow fjords, hastening the undercutting process.
Undercutting and Calving
Greenland is home to one of Earth's only two ice sheets.The ice there is over 2 miles (3 kilometers) thick in places. At the edges of Greenland, the vast glaciers extending from the ice sheet travel slowly down valleys like icy conveyor belts, which pour into the fjords and then melt or break off (or calve) as icebergs. The ice is replenished by snowfall that is compressed over time into the ice pack.
If the ice sheet were in balance, the amount of snow accumulating on the top would roughly equal the ice lost from melt, evaporation, and calving. But previous observations have shown that the ice sheet has been out of balance since the 1990's: Melt has accelerated and calving has increased. In other words, the rate of ice being lost to the ocean is exceeding the supply from the ice sheet. This is causing the ice sheet to shrink and the glaciers to retreat toward land.
The main cause of such glacier retreat is the process of undercutting, which is driven by two factors: the amount of meltwater flowing from the glacier and the warm layer of salty water at the base of the fjord. During the summer months, increasing air temperatures heat the glacier's surface, creating pools of meltwater. These pools leak through the ice and flow from the glacier in rivers below the surface. As the meltwater flows into the sea, it encounters the warmer salty water at the bottom of the fjord.
Glacial meltwater doesn't contain salt, so it is less dense than saltwater and thus rises as a plume. The plume drags the warmer ocean water into contact with the glacier's base. The amount of undercutting depends on the depth of the fjord, the warmth of the ocean water, and the amount of meltwater flowing out from beneath the glacier. As the climate warms, the amount of meltwater will increase and the ocean temperature will rise, two factors that boost the undercutting process.
These findings suggest that climate models may underestimate glacial ice loss by at least a factor of two if they don't account for undercutting by a warm ocean.
The study also lends insight into why many of Greenland's glaciers never recovered after an abrupt warming of ocean water between 1998 and 2007, in which ocean temperature increased by nearly 2 degrees Celsius. Although ocean warming paused between 2008 and 2017, the glaciers had already experienced such extreme undercutting in the previous decade that they continued to retreat at an accelerated rate.
"We have known for well over a decade that the warmer ocean plays a major role in the evolution of Greenland glaciers," said OMG Deputy Principal Investigator Eric Rignot of UCI and JPL, which manages the mission. "But for the first time, we have been able to quantify the undercutting effect and demonstrate its dominant impact on the glacier retreat over the past 20 years."
Into the Icy Depths
Now in its sixth year, the OMG mission has carried out the mammoth task of measuring ocean temperature and salinity around the entire coast of Greenland. Each summer since 2016, the team has spent several weeks dropping between 250 and 300 probes from an aircraft to measure how water temperature and salinity change with depth while mapping the depth of otherwise-inacessible fjords.
This data complements other surveys of the region - including OMG measurements via boat (which began in 2015) and observational data collected from the Landsat satellites from NASA and the U.S. Geologic Survey - and builds on a growing body of glacier research on ice-ocean interactions. During this time, the OMG team has been able to gain a detailed view of how quickly the 226 glaciers studied are melting and which are retreating the fastest.
OMG is planning its campaign for the summer of 2021. The team hopes that the ongoing measurements of ocean conditions will be invaluable for refining predictions of ice loss, ultimately helping the world prepare for a future of rising oceans.
"When the ocean speaks, the Greenland Ice Sheet listens," said OMG Principal Investigator Josh Willis, also of JPL. "This gang of 74 glaciers in deep fjords is really feeling the influence of the ocean; it's discoveries like these that will eventually help us predict how fast the ice will shrink. And that's a critical tool for both this generation and the next."
GSA Names Key Senior Advisors to Focus on COVID-19 Relief and Executive Actions
WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 -- The General Services Administration issued the following news release on Jan. 25:
The U.S. General Services Administration's (GSA) Acting Administrator Katy Kale named Zoe Garmendia as the Senior Advisor to the Administrator on COVID and Josh Sawislak as the Senior Advisor to the Administrator focusing on implementing executive actions.
"We are thrilled to have Zoe Garmendia and Josh Sawislak on board to support GSA's coordinated response to President Biden's critical executive actions, particularly to fight the pandemic," said Acting Administrator Katy Kale.
Garmendia
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WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 -- The General Services Administration issued the following news release on Jan. 25:
The U.S. General Services Administration's (GSA) Acting Administrator Katy Kale named Zoe Garmendia as the Senior Advisor to the Administrator on COVID and Josh Sawislak as the Senior Advisor to the Administrator focusing on implementing executive actions.
"We are thrilled to have Zoe Garmendia and Josh Sawislak on board to support GSA's coordinated response to President Biden's critical executive actions, particularly to fight the pandemic," said Acting Administrator Katy Kale.
Garmendiabrings more than 20 years of executive level experience in strategic management of people, resources and operations. This includes work at the White House, the Pennsylvania Convention Center and the Wisconsin Center District. With deep experience in pandemic prevention and relief, Garmendia has been an advisor to several non-profits, as well as supporting the 2020 Democratic National Convention and the Biden-Harris Transition.
Sawislak has more than 30 years of bipartisan experience working in industry, academia, and for the Bush, Obama and Biden Administrations focusing on environmental, infrastructure, planning and procurement policy. Sawislak previously served as a Senior Advisor to the Administrator at GSA, led the infrastructure team on the President's Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, served as a Senior Advisor to the Secretary for Infrastructure Resilience at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and as Associate Director for Climate Preparedness and Resilience in the Obama White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis: Scanning the Early Childhood Development Landscape in South Dakota
MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota, Jan. 26 -- The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis issued the following article by Ben Horowitz, senior project manager for community development and engagement and Kayla Williams, intern for community development and engagement:
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Most of South Dakota's infants, toddlers, and preschoolers live in homes where all the adults are in the workforce./1 Tens of thousands of households across the state thus face a simple question nearly every day: Who will care for children while the grown-ups are at work?
Their answers are determined in part by the state's early childhood
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MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota, Jan. 26 -- The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis issued the following article by Ben Horowitz, senior project manager for community development and engagement and Kayla Williams, intern for community development and engagement:
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Most of South Dakota's infants, toddlers, and preschoolers live in homes where all the adults are in the workforce./1 Tens of thousands of households across the state thus face a simple question nearly every day: Who will care for children while the grown-ups are at work?
Their answers are determined in part by the state's early childhooddevelopment landscape, which includes child care providers and assorted programs supporting the health and well-being of children and their parents.
Children's futures are profoundly impacted by the care options their parents choose. Supportive, enriching environments facilitate brain development during childhood and are linked to positive outcomes later in life.
This brief explores data on young children in South Dakota. Where can children go when their primary caregivers are at work? What programs and policies are in place to support children and their working family members? And, most important, why does it all matter? We first examine the science on early childhood development and then present data on South Dakota's families, child care market, and child-care-related public policy. We conclude with potential actions for consideration by the state's policy, business, and community leaders.
Why early childhood development matters
Research in the fields of neuroscience and developmental psychology strongly suggests that the course of a child's life is significantly influenced by their earliest experiences. Stable, nurturing environments can prepare children for academic success and support their socioemotional growth. This research dovetails with economic studies showing that there is a substantial public return on investment when societies invest in high-quality learning and development services for young children from families with low incomes.
The developing brain and economic gains
Neuroscientists and developmental psychologists have studied the early experiences that help children thrive. They find that stable and nurturing caregiver-child relationships, language-rich environments, and encouragement to explore through movement and senses are connected to beneficial brain development.
On the other hand, failing to foster a positive environment can pose significant barriers to healthy brain development. Research connects adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress to later behavioral and emotional problems in childhood. Adversity early in life is also closely associated with mental and physical health difficulties in adulthood./2
The stakes are high. Differences in early experiences show up in academic performance measures for children before they enter the kindergarten classroom. For example, in one research study, children from high-income backgrounds showed nearly twice the vocabulary of children from lower-income backgrounds by the age of three./3 These gaps linger: data show that the academic gaps older children display are similar in size to those displayed among kindergarteners.
Returns on investment
Studies of high-quality early childhood development interventions repeatedly demonstrate returns for participating children and their families, including better economic and physical well-being. Some studies in places ranging from small cities and towns in Michigan and North Carolina to urban environments like Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Chicago go further, demonstrating measurable economic returns to the public on such interventions.
Depending on the program, economists estimate the public investments in targeted high-quality early childhood development programs can outpace gains in the stock market. Among other things, these returns derive from savings to the criminal justice and education systems, reduced spending on the social safety net, and increased tax receipts from program participants' higher earnings.
For example, children participating in any of several high-quality early learning opportunities were less likely to be convicted of a crime as an adult. An individual committing a crime imposes costs on victims and on the criminal justice system. Thus, if an early learning intervention reduces criminal behavior, the resultant savings can offset the cost of that intervention.
What about fadeout? The importance of program design and quality
Some studies suggest a "fadeout" effect--that is, the benefits of enriched early learning diminish over time. However, data on high-quality interventions strongly contradict that assertion. A large, rich body of evidence points to long-term resilience in the gains children make, as measured by high school graduation, healthy behaviors, and long-term economic outcomes like household income./4
Importantly, not all early childhood interventions are created equal. A growing number of studies identify the key components of successful investments in young children. For example, early childhood education efforts that also engage a child's primary caregivers have a track record of success. Researchers are exploring ways schools can facilitate a successful transition from high-quality early childhood environments to K-12 classrooms.
In a return-on-investment framework, successful early childhood interventions also focus on offering access for children who would not otherwise receive the same services. For example, if a child's parent is already paying for them to attend a high-quality learning program, subsidizing that child's tuition or enrolling them in universal pre-kindergarten is unlikely to yield the same economic gains for the public.
Child care and the economy
In the long term, high-quality early education supports many of the skills most appealing to employers, including mathematical and verbal abilities, critical thinking, impulse control, and teamwork. In the shorter term, child care is also crucial for working caregivers.
Almost three of every four South Dakota children under the age of six had all parents or caregivers in their family participating in the labor force in 2019. The rate for this statistic in South Dakota is 6 percentage points higher than the national rate.
Depending on where they live and the types of child care they have access to, the families of these 51,000 children will face a market rate for full-time child care for each toddler or infant that ranges from $5,200 to $8,700 per year. For many South Dakota households with young children, that's a huge expense relative to income: about 44 percent of South Dakota children under the age of six live in a household with an income below 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines./5 For a single parent with one child, that threshold translates to about $34,500.
The cost of tuition is high but still leaves many child care providers operating on very thin margins. Child care staff often earn low wages with few benefits as a result. In 2019, the median wage for a child care worker in South Dakota was $10 per hour.
The state of the child care market impacts family incomes and employers' bottom lines. Adequate access to care and programming gives parents the opportunity to enter the workforce and retain jobs. On the other hand, a lack of child care options can increase employee turnover and absenteeism, thus depressing productivity. These two issues alone cost businesses across the country $13 billion annually.
Some studies show the state-level impacts. For example, an analysis based on a recent survey of parents in Montana found that families could expect to lose an average of about $5,700 annually due to complications with child care. Overall, an analysis of the survey found that parents lost $145 million, businesses lost $55 million, and state and local governments lost $32 million because of child care-related issues in 2019.
Data on South Dakota's children and child care providers
This section will explore data on children and child care providers in South Dakota. This information is all intended for consideration in the context of the earlier-presented evidence on the importance of early childhood development for children, families, and the economy. Further details are provided in Appendix A.
Economic status and race of children in South Dakota
About 62,000 children under the age of five live in South Dakota. Though the state's population is currently 82 percent White, demographic data forecast a more racially and ethnically diverse future. Nearly a third of the state's children under the age of five are Black, Latino/a, American Indian, Asian, or another non-White, non-Latino/a race or ethnicity. That means the state's youngest children are about half as likely to be White compared to the state's adults./6 About 8 percent of the state's children live with a parent who is an immigrant to the U.S., while about 5 percent of the state's population older than age 18 were born outside of the U.S./7
Although 76 percent of the children under the age of six in South Dakota live in a household where all the adults are engaged in the labor force, 44 percent of children under age six still live in families with economic resources that place them below 200 percent of the federal poverty line. That's 1.5 times the rate of adults older than age 25 living below the same poverty threshold./8 Children in the state are also 1.6 times as likely to experience food insecurity, by one estimate.
The federal poverty line is just one measure of the resources families need to make ends meet. Economists have developed estimates of a "living wage" that reflects the typical costs of living, adjusted for geographic variations in the price of basic necessities. In one widely used model, the living wage in South Dakota is about $46,000 for a single parent with a child--substantially higher than the $34,500 figure for a comparable household at 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines.
Child care providers in South Dakota
As in the rest of the nation, South Dakota's child care providers derive most of their operating revenue from parents' private tuition payments. The child care sector is thus populated by providers who must find a viable business model to sustain operations long-term under challenging conditions. For example, successful child care businesses must operate allowing for the fact that parents have relatively low incomes when compared to the cost of providing care. Innovations in providing care are limited by the simple fact that one adult staff member can only care for so many children at once.
By one estimate, about 2,700 child care providers served children in South Dakota in 2018. Only about 750 of these were licensed or registered with the state. Registration is voluntary for providers serving 12 or fewer children; registered providers may receive public funds and must meet certain state standards and requirements. The 750 licensed or registered providers represented about half of the total estimated child care capacity in the state.
Licensed providers are not evenly distributed throughout the state of South Dakota. The map below estimates the number of children under age six per registered or licensed care slot by county, based on data acquired from the state's licensing portal in August 2020. In most counties, there are more than two children for every licensed child care slot. In some counties, there are no registered or licensed providers at all. The numbers include the licensed child care slots that are reserved for school-age children; in other words, this map understates the scarcity of slots available for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.
Impact of COVID-19 on child care in South Dakota
As of this brief's release, South Dakota had not imposed strict health-related limitations on child care facilities related to COVID-19. It only recommended that these facilities follow Centers for Disease Control guidance. While there was not a formal mandate that child care operators adopt the health and safety changes, many child care programs did anyway. For many providers, the pandemic meant significant operational changes and decreased revenue. Interviewees from the field said many centers were voluntarily limiting class sizes, and that in other cases, parents were keeping their children at home.
Certain aspects of child care business models compound pandemic-related revenue declines. For example, reducing group sizes for toddlers and preschoolers limits child care centers' ability to offset the high cost of providing care for infants./9 In addition to capacity reductions, child care centers face significant logistical barriers when moving to distance learning, especially those serving students with developmental and physical difficulties.
South Dakota's licensing regime may have limited its ability to reach out directly to providers during the pandemic. Because the state only licenses or registers about 750 of the estimated 2,700 providers operating in the state, it would not be able to contact the remaining providers to inform them about opportunities to apply for pandemic relief, nor could it track the match between child care providers that are open and essential workers who need to find child care.
Other data on South Dakota's children
Appendix A to this document contains more details on South Dakota's children, drawn from a number of sources.
Supports for families with young children
Some families in South Dakota are able to access programs that reduce the cost of child care, or provide free early childhood education. This section focuses on two of the largest programs--the Child Care Assistance Program and Head Start. Appendix B details some other state and local supports for families with young children.
Subsidized child care: South Dakota's Child Care Assistance Program
Every state receives an allocation to subsidize child care for families with low incomes via the federal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF). In South Dakota, the CCDF money primarily funds the state's Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP). In the state's fiscal year 2020, about two-thirds of CCAP's roughly $22 million budget was funded by federal dollars. The rest was funded by the state's general fund and other resources.
In South Dakota, the cutoff for income eligibility for CCAP is, for most families, set at 209 percent of the federal poverty guidelines. There are other eligibility requirements, mostly related to parental participation in the workforce. The program serves children through age 12. Parents choose a child care provider that meets the state's criteria, which incorporate formal and informal child care situations and can include before- or after-school programs for older children.
About 41 percent, or roughly 58,000, of the children in South Dakota under age 12 live in families at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level./10 CCAP serves about 3,600 children living in about 2,000 families. In other words, CCAP serves about 6 percent of children who are potentially eligible based on their families' income.
Parents earning more than 160 percent of the federal poverty guidelines contribute a copayment to CCAP. As parents earn more, the copayment gradually increases, and for parents earning 200 percent or more of the federal poverty guideline, that copayment is 10 percent of a family's income. For example, a single parent with one child would not have a copayment if they earned $27,500, which is just below the 160 percent threshold. If that same parent earned $35,000, however, their annual copays would increase to $3,500, or about half of their pre-tax increase in earnings.
Aspects of CCAP may limit parental choice in the child care market. Child care providers are not required to accept children whose care is subsidized by CCAP, and certain complexities providers have pointed to can make CCAP unattractive to them, discouraging the providers' participation in the program and potentially limiting parents' options for child care. For example, the level of reimbursement paid by South Dakota to a child care provider on behalf of a family may not fully cover the cost of caring for that family's children. In such cases, providers can require families to pay for the difference between the full cost of care and the subsidy. Such disincentives for providers may limit the child care options available to families that earn low wages.
Subsidized child care: Head Start and Early Head Start
Head Start is a federally funded program providing early childhood development opportunities to families with children from before birth up to age five. Families can be eligible if they earn less than the federal poverty guidelines; Head Start programs can serve a limited number of families that earn more.
Head Start provides a mix of services for families, including partial-day early childhood education. The program serves about 4,000 three- and four-year-olds in South Dakota. In fall 2019, about 950 children were on a wait list for Head Start services. Because of funding limitations, enrollment is much lower for younger children. Early Head Start, which serves children younger than three, enrolled about 1,600 children in 2019.
Policy considerations
Data show that a higher share of South Dakota parents are working than in many other states. When those parents search for quality child care, they face several obstacles. South Dakota does not license or register most child care providers, as noted above, and it has no state-based system for rating the quality of care. As a result, parents must often enter a child care market with little information about providers and how they compare to one another. The data also show that many working parents would still struggle to afford high-quality child care, particularly for young children.
For their part, child care providers in South Dakota operate in a market with tuitions that often challenge parents' ability to pay. The relatively high costs for parents do not translate to high wages for child care workers or a lucrative market for child care services.
Taken together, the research on child development and the data on the state's children and child care market underscore some key considerations for the state's policymakers:
* Establishing new systems and conducting research regarding the child care industry would support efforts to increase the supply and quality of child care in South Dakota. For example, South Dakota is one of six states without a Quality Rating Improvement System (QRIS). QRISs generally rank providers' incorporation of research-backed approaches to support child development and can inform parents' choices as they seek care for their child. Child care leaders in the state could also undertake research to understand why the state's CCAP program only reaches a fraction of the income-eligible families, or better understand the costs of providing high-quality child care in South Dakota's unique child care markets.
* Creating multi-sector advisory bodies for child care policy would allow policymakers to leverage the expertise of the business, health care, and nonprofit sectors. Many states feature such advisory bodies, supported by philanthropic and public dollars. Advisory bodies can manage pilots for early childhood education initiatives, play a role in informing policymakers on approaches to boost the supply of quality child care, and raise awareness among the general public on the importance of high-quality early childhood development opportunities for the economy as a whole.
* Building on the state's existing subsidies for child care would increase access to high-quality care for low-income children. CCAP is tied to parental labor force participation; fluctuations in the job market could put a child's stable, nurturing relationship with their child care provider at risk. Alternative models, including some like the local Strong Starts initiative in Rapid City or early learning scholarships in Minnesota, may layer on top of or provide an alternative to CCAP-style programs by focusing eligibility with the sole goal of providing low-income children access to high-quality care.
* Requiring registration or licensure of more child care providers would better facilitate interventions aimed at increasing the quality of child care or otherwise supporting the sector in the state. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government and many states offered financial supports for small businesses, including some specifically for the child care sector. The State of South Dakota would likely have a hard time reaching out to more than half of the child care capacity in the state to promote these resources, because those child care providers are not registered.
* Including leaders from Native American, immigrant, and communities of color in conversations about the best way to serve the state's children and families would ensure decisions reflect the state's racial and ethnic diversity. Regardless of the path policymakers in the state may take toward strengthening the state's early childhood development sector, any new investments or supports for families with children are much more likely to succeed if they incorporate stakeholders that reflect the state's increasingly diverse population.
* Pursuing other early childhood interventions would promote the well-being of children, families, and the state as a whole. High-quality early childhood education is not the only support for young children and their families with a proven track record. Nurse home visiting improves the health of infants and their mothers, and has also been connected with a public return on investment.
These considerations can guide efforts to bring more resources to South Dakota's children, or to make existing programs and services more effective. Improved or new resources would represent an important investment in the state's economy.
Footnotes:
1/ KIDS COUNT Data Center.
2/ See, for example, Insights into Causal Pathways for Ischemic Heart Disease: Adverse Childhood Experiences Study or The Relationship of Adverse Childhood Experiences to Adult Medical Disease, Psychiatric Disorders, and Sexual Behavior: Implications for Healthcare.
3/ Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, The Foundations of Lifelong Health Are Built in Early Childhood, July 2010.
4/ For more on this, see our February 2016 article "Sustaining early childhood education gains."
5/ Authors' calculation based on 2015-2019 American Community Survey data.
6/ KIDS COUNT Data Center, "Child Population by race and age group in South Dakota" and "Adult population by race in South Dakota."
7/ Authors' calculations based on the American Community Survey.
8/ Ibid.
9/ For an example of how pandemic limitations can impact providers' revenues, see our June 2020 article "How a COVID-19 10-person group limit affects Minnesota's child care providers."
10/ See endnote 7.
EPA Extends Public Review of Proposed Cleanup Plan to Address Soil & Groundwater Contamination
NEWARK, New Jersey, Jan. 26 -- The Environmental Protection Agency issued the following news release:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has extended the public comment period to February 19, 2021 on its proposed cleanup plan for the Riverside Industrial Park Superfund site on the bank of the Passaic River in Newark. The proposed plan includes a combination of technologies and methods to address the cleanup of contaminated soil, soil gas (gas trapped in the soil), groundwater, sewer water and waste at the site.
The Riverside Industrial Park Superfund site is located on a 7.6-acre
... Show Full Article
NEWARK, New Jersey, Jan. 26 -- The Environmental Protection Agency issued the following news release:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has extended the public comment period to February 19, 2021 on its proposed cleanup plan for the Riverside Industrial Park Superfund site on the bank of the Passaic River in Newark. The proposed plan includes a combination of technologies and methods to address the cleanup of contaminated soil, soil gas (gas trapped in the soil), groundwater, sewer water and waste at the site.
The Riverside Industrial Park Superfund site is located on a 7.6-acreactive industrial property that includes both current and former manufacturing and packaging facilities. Beginning in 1903, industrial operations started at the site that included the manufacturing of paint, varnish, linseed oil and resins. After 1971, the site was subdivided into 15 lots, some of which have ongoing business operations. The sources of soil and groundwater contamination include historic site operations, accidental spills, illegal dumping, improper handling of raw materials and/or improper waste disposal.
In 2009, at the request of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, EPA responded to an oil spill into the Passaic River that was eventually traced to two basement storage tanks in a vacant building on the site. The state and the City of Newark requested EPA's help in assessing the contamination at the site and performing emergency actions to identify and stop the source of the spill. EPA investigated and discovered that chemicals including benzene, mercury, chromium and arsenic were improperly stored at the site. EPA took immediate actions to prevent further release of these chemicals into the river in the short-term. The site was added to the Superfund National Priorities List of the country's most hazardous waste sites in 2013, and in 2014 an agreement was signed with PPG Industries, Inc., to perform the study of the site.
EPA held a virtual public meeting to explain and receive comments on the proposed plan on August 5, 2020 at 7:00 pm.
Written comments on EPA's proposed plan may be mailed or emailed until February 19, 2021 to: Josh Smeraldi, Remedial Project Manager, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 290 Broadway, 18th Floor, New York, New York 10007-1866 or smeraldi.josh@epa.gov.
To view EPA's proposed plan for the site or for more information, please visit http://www.epa.gov/superfund/riverside-industrial
Follow EPA Region 2 on Twitter at https://twitter.com/eparegion2 and visit our Facebook page, http://facebook.com/eparegion2
