Editorial Policy
Last updated: June 2026
This page explains who is behind ChildcareCost, how our pages are produced, and the standards every page on childcarecost.org is held to. We publish it so readers, journalists, and search engines can judge our work by a clear, stated process rather than guesswork.
Who runs ChildcareCost
ChildcareCost is an independent publication built and maintained by the ChildcareCost Team. We are not funded, owned, or directed by any of the agencies, companies, or organizations that appear in our data. We do not accept paid placements, sponsored rankings, or fees to add, alter, or remove an entry. Our editorial judgment is not for sale.
How our content is produced
ChildcareCost covers U.S. childcare prices by county and age group. Our pages are assembled programmatically from the DOL National Database of Childcare Prices: we fetch the primary records, process them with documented, repeatable methods, and render them as pages a non-specialist can read. We use the DOL National Database of Childcare Prices to surface county-level weekly prices for infant, toddler, preschool, and school-age care, broken out by center-based and family-based providers. Prices are shown both nominally and as a share of median household income in the same county.
We are transparent that this is a data-publishing operation, not a wire service of on-the-ground reporters. Where we add narrative, that narrative describes and interprets the underlying public data — it never invents facts the data does not contain. Automated assembly is reviewed against the source, and the methodology behind any score or ranking is documented and linkable.
Editorial standards
- Primary source only. Every figure traces back to the DOL National Database of Childcare Prices, cited and linkable on the page where it appears.
- No invented numbers. If a value is not in the underlying public data, it does not appear on childcarecost.org. We never generate synthetic statistics to fill gaps.
- Documented methodology. Rankings, grades, and composite scores are editorial calculations derived from public data using stated, repeatable formulas — not certifications or endorsements.
- Dated and refreshed. Refreshed once per year when DOL publishes a new NDCP vintage, typically in the fall.
- Corrections welcome. When a reader or the source identifies an error, we fix it — see our Corrections Policy.
Verification and fact-checking
Because our numbers come straight from the DOL National Database of Childcare Prices, our verification work is about faithful processing rather than re-reporting. The detail of how we check figures before publication is described in our Fact-Checking Policy.
Ownership and funding transparency
ChildcareCost is part of a small portfolio of independent public-data sites. The site is free to read and carries no display advertising. We do not sell personal data. Where an outbound link is an affiliate link, it is disclosed and never changes our editorial judgment.
Contact
Questions about how a page was produced, or about these standards? hello@childcarecost.org. See also our About page and our Corrections Policy.