Graduates of Human Development and Family Studies programs (CIP 19.07) earn about $27,500 in year one regardless of whether they finished a short certificate, an associate's, or a bachelor's. Five years in, the bachelor's premium is still under $1,000. The ladder is flat.
Built from Census Bureau PSEO earnings at 4-digit CIP 19.07 (each institution × degree row pools a 5-year graduation cohort window to clear privacy suppression) paired with BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2024. Both reflect wage and salary employment reported to state unemployment insurance and the OEWS establishment survey. Self-employment, in-home childcare, and undocumented work are not captured.
Child development, human development, family studies, and child care certificates are all grouped together under a single 4-digit federal CIP code: 19.07, Human Development, Family Studies, and Related Services. This is the academic home of the childcare workforce in American higher ed. It includes Child Development Associate prep, Early Childhood and Family Studies bachelor's programs, and the certificates that childcare center lead teachers often hold.
If you are advising a student toward this field, or you are a state agency thinking about credential requirements, the core question is the same: does more schooling here lead to higher pay? The PSEO earnings record says almost no, until you cross a very specific credential boundary that CIP 19.07 does not include.
Restricted to the three credential tracks this page covers (sub-associate certificate, associate's, bachelor's), CIP 19.07 ranks — of — four-digit program families in Census PSEO by the number of institution-degree programs offered, — by the number of unique institutions offering it, and — by pooled IPEDS graduate count. That pooled graduate count is roughly —, summed across every institution × degree-level row in PSEO-E at agg_level 42. Each row represents a 5-year pooled cohort window at one institution (Census pools 5 graduation cohort years to clear privacy suppression). Whatever its earnings profile, this is a mainstream program family at American colleges.
Each dot is one institution's PSEO-reported median earnings for graduates one year after exit, pooled across cohorts. The three credential tracks within CIP 19.07 overlap almost completely. Reference lines show the BLS OEWS median wage for the occupations these graduates enter.
The implication. A sub-associate certificate in Child Development pays the same as a bachelor's in Human Development. The only credential in this space that clears the childcare-worker wage floor meaningfully is one that CIP 19.07 does not contain: a teaching license that admits you to the K-12 payroll. That sits under CIP 13 (Education), and it requires state licensure on top of the degree.
National medians of institutional medians for CIP 19.07 graduates, tracked at years one, five, and ten after exit. Shaded bands span the 25th to 75th percentile of institution medians at each point.
Four BLS occupations sit directly downstream of this CIP. The jump from preschool teacher to kindergarten teacher is the single largest wage discontinuity in this career family, and it reflects crossing onto a public-school payroll, not a change in the underlying work.
Each row shows a state's year-1 median earnings (solid bar, Census PSEO-E, 5-year pooled cohort window per institution) extended to its single-adult living wage (red diamond, MIT Living Wage Calculator, Feb 2026). The shaded red extension is the shortfall: what a graduate would need on top of year-1 earnings to clear the 1-adult, no-children living wage in that state. States are sorted by largest shortfall first. Only states that have opted into the PSEO data-sharing agreement and have enough institutional volume to clear Census suppression rules appear. Major absences include California, Florida, Washington, Michigan, New Jersey, and Georgia.
| State | Cert n | Cert y1 median | AS n | AS y1 median | BA n | BA y1 median | BA y5 median |
|---|
Census Bureau Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO-E), all-institutions release. We pull rows at aggregation level 42 (institution × 4-digit CIP × degree level, pooled cohorts) for cipcode = 19.07, restricted to the industry-all rollup (ind_level = A) and to credential levels 01 (sub-associate certificate), 02 (associate's), and 03 (bachelor's). Institutional earnings percentiles are as published; cells suppressed by Census privacy rules are dropped.
CIP 19.07 covers 6-digit programs including Human Development and Family Studies (19.0701), Child Development (19.0706), Family and Community Services (19.0707), Child Care and Support Services Management (19.0708), Child Care Provider/Assistant (19.0709), Early Childhood and Family Studies (19.0711), and Parent Education Services (19.0712). PSEO publishes at 4-digit resolution, so these programs roll up together.
BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2024 state file (oesm24st.zip, published April 2025). Rows restricted to AREA_TYPE = 2 (state) and I_GROUP = cross-industry. Four SOC occupations shown: 39-9011 Childcare Workers, 25-2011 Preschool Teachers (except Special Ed), 25-2012 Kindergarten Teachers, and 25-2021 Elementary School Teachers. National medians are computed as employment-weighted averages of state medians to align with PSEO's national scope.
This is not a causal claim about the return to a bachelor's degree. Graduates who self-select into CIP 19.07 at any credential level likely differ from the general postsecondary population in ways PSEO does not observe. What we can say is the descriptive fact: conditional on completing a credential in this CIP, the earnings distribution barely moves across credential levels in the first five years. That is unusual. In most 4-digit CIPs the earnings ladder slopes meaningfully upward.
The page also does not capture in-home childcare, family childcare, or informal work. OEWS wages reflect establishments only; PSEO reflects jobs reported to state UI systems. A credentialed Child Development Associate who runs a home-based daycare as a sole proprietor is invisible to both.