Survey on Early Learning and Child Care Arrangements

2019 - 2023

Subjects

Child care Children and youth

Overview

Summary

Statistics Canada is gathering information from families who use child care as well as those who do not. The survey, which addresses child care in Canada for children younger than 6 years old, asks about the different types of early learning and child care arrangements that families use, difficulties some families may face when looking for care, as well as reasons for not using child care.

The Survey on Early Learning and Child Care Arrangements (SELCCA) has been linked to various administrative data sources:

2017 T1 Family File (T1FF)
2018 Canadian Child Benefit (CCB)
2016 Census of Population – Short-Form
Longitudinal Immigration Database – 1980 to 2017 (IMDB)
Index of remoteness and accessibility

The sampling unit is the person knowledgeable about the child care arrangements for a child who lives in their household and is less than 6 years of age. SELCCA can produce provincial level estimates, as well as estimates for the territories. The objective of this linkage is to examine the characteristics of children and parents using (or not using) child care. The SELCCA is augmented with income, demographic and family structure variables from T1FF file and CCB files respectively and language variables from the 2016 short form Census. The date of immigration and immigrant flag for the children, CCB recipients and their spouses who linked to the IMDB will also be added to the SELCCA.

Available Cycles

Years	Name
2019,2020,2022,2023	Survey on Early Learning and Child Care Arrangements

Documentation

StatsCan

Publication Note

All publications (e.g. scientific articles, reports, dissertations, theses) and presentations based on a dataset available in the RDCs should include an acknowledgement of the support provided by granting councils (SSHRC, CIHR, CFI), Statistics Canada and host university. See a sample