Explore the findings from RAPID's first and second surveys in Kent County, Michigan, where we partnered with First Steps Kent to hear directly from families with young children about their experiences, needed supports, and what’s going well.

While progress has been considerable, the pressing problem of child poverty has not been resolved.

We invited parents to tell us: What is helping you and your family the most right now? Clear patterns emerged in their answers, though the factors that families found helpful varied considerably across income levels.

During 2022 we have seen nationwide increases in the costs of basic essentials. For families with young children, steep increases in the cost of baby items have been especially challenging.

In responses to our survey since April of 2020, challenges with well-being and emotional distress were described more consistently than any other topic.

Explore the most commonly occurring themes around pandemic challenges that have emerged from our past fact sheets and examine how these themes vary in different demographic groups.

School shootings like the one at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX have left the country concerned for the safety of children, teachers, and providers at schools and child care centers.

The pandemic continues to cause disproportionate numbers of women to leave the workforce. Here's what women in our survey are currently saying about work and how their situations have changed over the past year.

Families of children with special needs have continued to experience more material hardship, hunger, and emotional distress compared to those who do not have children with special needs. In December 2020, we published a blog post that summarized the challenges that families of children with special needs have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. This factsheet reveals the disparities and unique challenges since then.

The topics and trends that RAPID has followed for the past two years provide a living record of the pandemic. However, these issues didn’t begin in 2020 and the challenges will remain in the lives of our survey families well after the pandemic has faded into history.

Economic hardship within the early childhood workforce is compounded by low wages and significant debt, including student debt.

From July to December 2021, millions of American families received monthly payments through an expanded Child Tax Credit. We look back at these stories to explore families’ experiences.

In late 2021, we reported on the significant number of households with young children that were experiencing hunger. In this fact sheet we update those findings and add to them data about hunger among child care providers.

In this fact sheet, we explore what types of material hardship families with young children are reporting and how experiences differ by income level.

In this fact sheet, we look at the most recent trends in child care challenges and disruptions from both parents' and child care providers' perspectives.

Since the start of the advance Child Tax Credit payments in July 2021, 76% of parents in our national survey report having received the payments. How are the payments affecting families’ financial situations and emotional well‐being?

In this fact sheet, we look at child care staffing issues from both parents’ and child care providers’ perspectives.

In this fact sheet, we revisit the topic of food insecurity with updated information and look at whether and how families’ experiences with hunger have changed since December 2020.

Parents in our survey reported decreasing levels of emotional distress during spring 2021, but this trend has since reversed. In this fact sheet, we explore the reasons for their increasing levels of emotional distress.

In this fact sheet, we look at COVID-19 vaccination rates and attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccine among parents of young children in the US.