Implement Kentucky Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP)

[hua7450]

Summary

Implements Kentucky's Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) — the state's subsidy that helps low-income working families, families involved with child protective services, and families in approved workforce-training pay for child care. The implementation covers eligibility, the 85% State Median Income (SMI) income test, county-region provider rates from the DCC-300 chart, the per-day family copay schedule, and the net subsidy that flows into the federal child_care_subsidies total.

Closes #8619

Regulatory Authority

• 922 KAR 2:160 — Child Care Assistance Program — the governing regulation (17 pages, effective 2019-05-31). Section 8 (income eligibility, p.7), Section 9 (income limits, p.10), Section 10 (payment rates, p.10), Section 11 (family copayment table, pp.11-12).
• DCC-300 — Kentucky Child Care Maximum Payment Rate Chart — provider daily maximum payment rates by county (revision R.10/22, 4 pages).
• DCC-113 — Facts About the CCAP — fact sheet (revision R.11/23) confirming the 85% SMI income test (effective 2023-10-01) and the SMI dollar table by family size (p.2).

Administering agency: Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) → Department for Community Based Services (DCBS) → Division of Child Care (DCC). Repo agency directory is dcbs, matching the existing gov/states/ky/dcbs/ssp/.

Eligibility Tests

A household qualifies when its child passes the technical-eligibility tests and the family satisfies at least one activity/need pathway and (unless exempt) the income test.

Test	Source	How modeled
Kentucky residency	§3(1)(a)1	defined_for = StateCode.KY chained through ky_ccap_eligible
U.S. citizen or qualified alien	§3(1)(a)2, §1(25)	reuses federal is_ccdf_immigration_eligible_child
Age under 13 (under 19 if special need)	§3(1)(b)	ky_ccap_eligible_child: age < child_age_limit (13), or < special_needs_child_age_limit (19) when the child is_disabled / has_developmental_delay
Working-family activity hours	§4(1), §1(10)	ky_ccap_activity_eligible: single parent ≥20 hrs/wk, or two adults combined ≥40 hrs/wk with the lesser worker ≥5 hrs/wk, using weekly_hours_worked_before_lsr
Kentucky Works / K-TAP pathway	§6	is_tanf_enrolled bypass (also breaks the CCAP↔TANF circular dependency)
Protection & Permanency (no income test)	§5, §8(3)	ky_ccap_income_eligible exempts the family from the income test when a child in the unit is_in_foster_care

The activity test reads weekly_hours_worked_before_lsr (not weekly_hours_worked) to avoid a labor-supply-response circular dependency. There is no asset/resource test in 922 KAR 2:160, so none is applied.

Income Eligibility

The operative income test is gross monthly income ≤ 85% of Kentucky SMI, by family size (§9(5), citing 42 U.S.C. 9858c(c)(2)(N); confirmed by DCC-113 effective 2023-10-01). The dollar table is transcribed directly from DCC-113:

Family size	85% SMI (monthly)
2	$4,217
3	$5,210
4	$6,202
5	$7,194
6	$8,186
7	$8,372
8	$8,559
Each additional person over 8	+ $186

We transcribed Kentucky's own table rather than computing hhs_smi × 0.85 because PolicyEngine's federal hhs_smi for Kentucky is stale (its last entry is FFY2020), whereas DCC-113 uses a newer SMI publication; the federal-derived figure is off by roughly $250–$470/month. The boundary is inclusive (income at or below 85% SMI qualifies). Protection & Permanency families are exempt from this test (§8(3)).

Income Deductions & Exemptions

Countable income is the gross income of the applicant and responsible adult (§8(2)), assembled as a positive sources list in income/countable_income/sources.yaml (employment, self-employment, farm, Social Security, unemployment and workers' compensation, pensions, alimony, child support received, dividends, interest, rent, veterans' benefits, military retirement). The two §8(5) deductions — legally-obligated child support paid out, and self-employment operating costs — are already netted by the underlying PolicyEngine income variables (self_employment_income is net of expenses; child support paid is captured in PE's support variables), so no separate subtraction list is needed.

The 38 excluded income categories in §8(4)(a)–(ll) — including SNAP, housing subsidies, LIHEAP, EITC, foster-care payments, K-TAP child-only payments, educational grants/scholarships, and a child's SSI (§8(4)(ll)) — are handled by omission: they simply are not in the positive sources list. tanf is deliberately omitted as well, both because it is excluded under §8(4) and to keep the CCAP↔TANF cycle broken (categorical eligibility comes from is_tanf_enrolled).

Benefit Calculation

The subsidy is computed per child, per day, then converted to a monthly amount by the child's days in care.

• Provider daily rate (DCC-300, §10(1)) — ky_ccap_daily_rate looks up the maximum daily rate keyed by rate region × provider type × age group × day length. Kentucky's 120 counties collapse to 10 distinct rate regions (the DCC-300 chart shows only 10 unique 24-value rate vectors); ky_ccap_rate_region maps county_str to a region via np.isin. There are four provider types (Licensed Type I, Licensed Type II, Certified, Registered), three age groups (Infant/Toddler under 3, Preschool 3–<6, School-age ≥6, derived from age via age_group/months.yaml), and two day lengths (full day ≥5 hrs, part day <5 hrs, derived via rates/full_day_min_hours.yaml).
• Special-care add-on (§10(3)) — +$1/day for a child with a special need, added in ky_ccap_daily_benefit.
• Charge cap (§10(4)) — reimbursement is capped at the amount the provider charges the general public: min(provider charge, DCC-300 max + add-ons), where the per-day charge derives from pre_subsidy_childcare_expenses.
• Family copay (§11(3)) — ky_ccap_copay is a per-day fee looked up by monthly countable income band × family size (2 / 3 / 4 / 5+) × number of children needing care (1 vs 2-or-more), implemented as bracket scales. Families with monthly income ≤ $899 pay $0. The per-day copay is capped at $25/day for families with more than five members (§11(3)(b), copay/max_daily.yaml).
• Net subsidy (§10 + §11) — per child: max(min(charge, rate + add-ons) − copay, 0), summed across children in care and multiplied by each child's days of care per month. ky_ccap (SPMUnit, MONTH) is the household total; ky_child_care_subsidies (YEAR) aggregates it and feeds the federal child_care_subsidies.

Requirements Coverage

All 19 in-scope requirements are implemented; the remaining items are documented as not-modeled (see below).

REQ	Description	Parameter	Variable	Test
REQ-001	KY residency	—	ky_ccap_eligible	eligibility/ky_ccap_eligible.yaml
REQ-002	U.S. citizen / qualified alien	—	ky_ccap_eligible_child	eligibility/ky_ccap_eligible_child.yaml
REQ-003	Age <13 / <19 special need	eligibility/child_age_limit, special_needs_child_age_limit	ky_ccap_eligible_child	eligibility/ky_ccap_eligible_child.yaml
REQ-006	Working-family hours	eligibility/single_parent_activity_hours, couple_activity_hours, min_secondary_worker_hours	ky_ccap_activity_eligible	eligibility/ky_ccap_activity_eligible.yaml
REQ-007	Protection & Permanency (no income test)	—	ky_ccap_income_eligible	eligibility/ky_ccap_income_eligible.yaml
REQ-008	Kentucky Works / K-TAP	—	ky_ccap_activity_eligible	eligibility/ky_ccap_activity_eligible.yaml
REQ-009	85% SMI income test	income/smi_limit/main, additional	ky_ccap_income_eligible	eligibility/ky_ccap_income_eligible.yaml
REQ-010	Countable income	income/countable_income/sources	ky_ccap_countable_income	ky_ccap_countable_income.yaml
REQ-011	Excluded income (38 categories)	— (handled by omission)	ky_ccap_countable_income	ky_ccap_countable_income.yaml
REQ-012	Deductions (child support paid, SE costs)	— (underlying PE income vars)	ky_ccap_countable_income	ky_ccap_countable_income.yaml
REQ-014	Copay table	copay/size_2, size_3_one_child, size_3_two_or_more, size_4_one_child, size_4_two_or_more, size_5_plus_one_child, size_5_plus_two_or_more	ky_ccap_copay	ky_ccap_copay.yaml
REQ-015	$25/day copay cap (>5 members)	copay/max_daily	ky_ccap_copay	ky_ccap_copay.yaml
REQ-018	DCC-300 daily rate	rates/licensed_type_i, licensed_type_ii, certified, registered, full_day_min_hours, regions/region_1–region_10, age_group/months	ky_ccap_daily_rate, ky_ccap_rate_region, ky_ccap_child_age_category, ky_ccap_day_length, ky_ccap_provider_type	ky_ccap_daily_rate.yaml, ky_ccap_rate_region.yaml, ky_ccap_child_age_category.yaml, ky_ccap_day_length.yaml
REQ-019	Special-care add-on (+$1)	supplements/special_care	ky_ccap_daily_benefit	ky_ccap_daily_benefit.yaml
REQ-020	Cap at charge to general public	—	ky_ccap_daily_benefit	ky_ccap_daily_benefit.yaml
REQ-022	Net subsidy	—	ky_ccap	ky_ccap.yaml, integration.yaml
REQ-023	State aggregator	—	ky_child_care_subsidies	ky_child_care_subsidies.yaml
REQ-025	Federal CCDF registry	gov/hhs/ccdf/child_care_subsidy_programs.yaml	—	—
REQ-026	programs.yaml entry	programs.yaml (CCDF state_implementations)	—	—

Not Modeled

These provisions are excluded by design and documented in the relevant variable docstrings using "we don't track X at the moment" framing.

What	Source	Why excluded
Immunization certificate	§3(1)(c)	No immunization status input available
Provider restrictions (parent/guardian/same-residence/unlicensed)	§3(3)	No provider-relationship input
Education / job-training pathway + 60-month lifetime cap	§7	No student-enrollment input; cumulative lifetime benefit months are not tracked (framework limitation)
Job-search / homeless / medical-leave transitional pathway (up to 3 months)	§4(2)	No "month N of transitional status" state
Best-estimate income computation method	§8(6)	Administrative averaging procedure; PE uses annual→monthly conversion
P&P discretionary copay waiver / court-ordered substitution	§5(3), §11(2)	No input for the waiver decision (the P&P income-test exemption itself is modeled)
Copay frozen during 12-month eligibility period	§11(3)(c)	No per-household enrollment-cohort state; copay is recomputed each period from current income
Accreditation (+$2) and non-traditional-hours (+$1) rate add-ons	§10(2)	No provider-accreditation or non-traditional-hours input
Registered-provider per-day child caps (3 / 6)	§10(5)	Provider-side billing constraint, not a household-benefit calculation

Microsimulation Note

On the CPS-based dataset the statewide ky_ccap total is $0, and this is a dataset characteristic rather than an implementation defect. All 542 Kentucky households in the CPS carry a single county value (ADAIR_COUNTY_KY, which ky_ccap_rate_region correctly maps to Region 2), and the 40 Kentucky households that have child care expenses fail an eligibility gate (income above 85% SMI, no qualifying activity, or child age ≥13) on this synthetic data. The variable computes cleanly over the full population with no NaN or crash. The positive-benefit pipeline is exercised end to end by the unit and integration tests (rate lookup, copay, and net subsidy), e.g. a Jefferson County (Region 4) test household produces a non-zero ky_ccap_daily_benefit.

Historical Notes

Parameters start at recent dates because they reflect the current published policy:

• 85% SMI income test — effective 2023-10-01 (DCC-113). The regulation's §8(1) text describes an older ≤160% FPL (initial) / ≤200% FPL (recert) test "as adjusted … through calendar year 2018," which is superseded; we implement only the operative 85% SMI test. For periods before 2023-10-01 the SMI dollar table backward-extrapolates to the 2023 values rather than reconstructing the pre-2018 FPL test, which is not modeled.
• DCC-300 provider rates — effective 2022-10-01 (chart revision R.10/22). The regulation body text references an older "12/18" chart, but the currently published chart is R.10/22; we cite the chart for the rate values and the regulation for the structure.
• Copay table and structural definitions — effective 2019-05-31, the most recent amendment of 922 KAR 2:160.

Files Added

policyengine_us/parameters/gov/states/ky/dcbs/ccap/
├── age_group/months.yaml
├── copay/
│   ├── max_daily.yaml
│   ├── size_2.yaml
│   ├── size_3_one_child.yaml
│   ├── size_3_two_or_more.yaml
│   ├── size_4_one_child.yaml
│   ├── size_4_two_or_more.yaml
│   ├── size_5_plus_one_child.yaml
│   └── size_5_plus_two_or_more.yaml
├── eligibility/
│   ├── child_age_limit.yaml
│   ├── couple_activity_hours.yaml
│   ├── min_secondary_worker_hours.yaml
│   ├── single_parent_activity_hours.yaml
│   └── special_needs_child_age_limit.yaml
├── income/
│   ├── countable_income/sources.yaml
│   └── smi_limit/{main,additional}.yaml
├── rates/
│   ├── {licensed_type_i,licensed_type_ii,certified,registered}.yaml
│   └── full_day_min_hours.yaml
├── regions/region_1.yaml … region_10.yaml
└── supplements/special_care.yaml

policyengine_us/variables/gov/states/ky/dcbs/ccap/
├── ky_ccap.py
├── ky_child_care_subsidies.py
├── ky_ccap_daily_benefit.py
├── ky_ccap_daily_rate.py
├── ky_ccap_copay.py
├── ky_ccap_countable_income.py
├── ky_ccap_rate_region.py
├── ky_ccap_child_age_category.py
├── ky_ccap_provider_type.py
├── ky_ccap_day_length.py
└── eligibility/
    ├── ky_ccap_eligible.py
    ├── ky_ccap_eligible_child.py
    ├── ky_ccap_income_eligible.py
    └── ky_ccap_activity_eligible.py

policyengine_us/tests/policy/baseline/gov/states/ky/dcbs/ccap/
├── ky_ccap.yaml, ky_child_care_subsidies.yaml, integration.yaml
├── ky_ccap_daily_benefit.yaml, ky_ccap_daily_rate.yaml, ky_ccap_copay.yaml
├── ky_ccap_countable_income.yaml, ky_ccap_rate_region.yaml
├── ky_ccap_child_age_category.yaml, ky_ccap_day_length.yaml
└── eligibility/{ky_ccap_eligible,ky_ccap_eligible_child,ky_ccap_income_eligible,ky_ccap_activity_eligible}.yaml

Modified registry files:

• policyengine_us/parameters/gov/hhs/ccdf/child_care_subsidy_programs.yaml — adds ky_child_care_subsidies to the federal CCDF adds list.
• policyengine_us/programs.yaml — adds the KY state_implementations entry under the federal CCDF program.

Test plan

• 98 YAML tests pass locally (33 parameters, 14 variables, 14 test files)
• Microsimulation smoke check on the CPS-based dataset (no NaN, no crash)
• CI passes

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 100.00%. Comparing base (bd1ae42) to head (e95555e).
⚠️ Report is 26 commits behind head on main.

Additional details and impacted files

@@             Coverage Diff              @@
##             main     #8620       +/-   ##
============================================
+ Coverage   77.77%   100.00%   +22.22%     
============================================
  Files           1        14       +13     
  Lines           9       244      +235     
============================================
+ Hits            7       244      +237     
+ Misses          2         0        -2     

Flag	Coverage Δ
unittests	100.00% <100.00%> (+22.22%)	⬆️

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