Standards · How we work

Editorial & Corrections Policy

PlainChildcare turns the U.S. Department of Labor's published childcare-price estimates into county, state, and ranking pages. This page explains how those pages are produced, the standards we hold them to, and exactly how to flag a number that looks wrong.

How Pages Are Produced

PlainChildcare's county, state, and ranking pages are generated from a single documented dataset: the U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau National Database of Childcare Prices (NDCP), with median household income for affordability context drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. We download the published NDCP release, load it into a structured database, and render each geographic page from that database. The figures you see — annual prices by age group and care setting, affordability ratios, and rankings — are computed from the published source numbers, not hand-typed and not estimated by us.

This is a data-publishing model: the same template renders thousands of pages so that every priced U.S. county is covered consistently. We are transparent that these data pages are produced programmatically from the source dataset rather than written one by one. The editorial work goes into the pipeline (how data is sourced, normalized, and computed), the methodology, and the written guides — not into hand-authoring thousands of near-identical county pages, which would add no accuracy and invite inconsistency.

Sourcing Standards

  • Primary sources only. Childcare prices come from the Department of Labor's NDCP, which compiles state market-rate surveys and administrative data. Income context uses Census ACS median household income, as documented in our methodology.
  • Attribution in context. Each data page names its dataset and reference year near the figures, and links to the methodology that explains how affordability ratios and rankings are derived.
  • Derived values are labeled. Numbers we compute ourselves — affordability ratios, national percentiles, and rankings — are presented as our analysis of the NDCP and ACS data, distinct from the published source figures.
  • No invented data. Where a price is unavailable for a county or age group, the page says so rather than filling the gap with an estimate.

Update Cadence

The National Database of Childcare Prices is an annual federal release; the latest published edition covers survey data through 2022. We refresh our database when the Department of Labor publishes a new NDCP edition, adding the latest year while preserving prior years for trend comparison, and recompute year-over-year changes. Between releases the figures are stable because the source itself does not change. The reference year is shown on every data page so you can see which release a page is based on.

Corrections Process

If a figure on PlainChildcare looks wrong, please tell us. Because our pages are generated from the NDCP dataset, a genuine error almost always traces back to either the source data or our processing of it — so this is how we handle a report:

  1. Report. Email us through the contact page with the page URL and the number that looks off.
  2. Verify. We compare the figure against the Department of Labor's published NDCP record for that county and year.
  3. Fix at the source. If the value is wrong on our side, we correct it in the database and pipeline that generate the page — not just on the single page — so every affected page is fixed at once. If the figure faithfully reflects the NDCP data, we explain that and, where useful, add context.
  4. Note it. Material corrections that change a published figure are reflected the next time the page rebuilds, with the data reference year shown so you can see which release a page is based on.

We aim to acknowledge data-error reports within a few business days.

Editorial Independence

PlainChildcare is an independent publisher and is not affiliated with the Department of Labor or any government agency. Our guides and analysis are not influenced by advertisers; advertising, where present, is clearly distinguishable from editorial content and never determines which counties or rankings we show. Our rankings are computed mechanically from NDCP figures, so no provider, county, or state can pay to move up — or down — a list.

Appropriate Use

PlainChildcare is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, or childcare placement advice. NDCP prices are survey-based estimates aggregated to the county level — a useful benchmark for comparison and planning, not a quote from any specific provider, and not what a particular family will pay. For decisions about care, a budget, or a subsidy application, confirm current prices directly with providers and your state Child Care Resource & Referral agency. See our disclaimer for details.