The Business of Care: Strengthening Family Child Care as a Path to Wealth Building

Family Child Care (FCC) programs are a vital yet often overlooked part of Massachusetts’s early education system. These small, home-based providers play an essential role in serving many of the Commonwealth’s highest-need children and families. Yet the educators who run FCCs—mostly women of color—often earn some of the lowest wages in the early education field.

In his newest report, The Business of Care: Strengthening Family Child Care as a Path to Wealth Building, MassBudget Senior Policy Analyst Adam Jones looks at the financial challenges faced by this sector of the workforce and provides targeted policy recommendations to address them.

Commissioned by Boston Indicators as part of their Racial Wealth Equity Resource Center initiative, Jones’s research looks at what it would take to support FCCs as businesses, boost their financial resilience, and position them as platforms for building long-term wealth. Read more to learn about strategies for building a thriving family child-care workforce in Massachusetts.

Click here to read the full report.

On March 28, 2025, Senior Policy Analyst Adam Jones joined collaborators at a Coffee & Conversation event releasing the report. There, he presented insights from provider program budgets and from focus groups with home-based educators. See the presentation below.

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