Publications

By Sarah F. Small and Debra Lancaster. Failing childcare markets have been detrimental to the US economy in recent years.[1] We have examined the childcare crisis in New Jersey from both the supply side and the demand side [...]

By Sarah F. Small, Jocelyn Fischer, Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, and Debra Lancaster. With New Jersey facing childcare shortages, policymakers are wondering how we can improve the supply of childcare services [...]

By Sarah F. Small and Debra Lancaster. Like many parents in the United States, New Jersey parents have faced some formidable obstacles finding accessible quality childcare. This is particularly true given changes in the childcare landscape during COVID-19, as documented in our recent report [...]

Many New Jersey parents felt the sting of reduced childcare access during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the childcare landscape has not made a recovery that meets the needs of working families and their young children. Our analysis indicates that the childcare workforce remains substantially below its pre-pandemic levels. In fact, compared to […]

With so much economic precarity brought on by the pandemic, many women in New Jersey have been confronted with issues of homelessness and inaccessible healthcare. According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Point-In-Time Count data, the number of individuals experiencing homelessness in New Jersey actually declined from January 2020 to January […]

Sarah Small and Debra Lancaster. Women’s work lives have been disrupted in profound ways during COVID-19: in their roles as frontline workers confronting the virus, as caregivers taking on even more unpaid care work at home due to childcare disruptions [...]

Frontline essential workers were lauded as heroes in 2020 during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but ultimately, little was done by way of supporting such workers. This meant that frontline workers face extraordinary risk, but with little reward. In New Jersey, the majority of frontline essential workers are women, and are often women of […]

With childcare disruptions, deep unemployment, and job changes, women in New Jersey have faced turbulent economic prospects worse than men’s along several dimensions throughout the pandemic. However, New Jersey women are no stranger to economic inequities [...]

By Sarah Small and Debra Lancaster. Many New Jersey parents breathed a sigh of relief upon receiving their Child Tax Credit Payments in late 2021. Our new report at the Rutgers Center for Women and Work, in partnership with the New Jersey State Policy Lab [...]

In the US and around the world, growing evidence indicates women have borne the brunt of the economic crisis and social upheaval triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. New Jersey is no exception. In a forthcoming report from the Center for Women and Work — funded by the New Jersey State Policy Lab — we explore […]