From Pilot to Policy: Lessons Learned from Five Tri-Share Models

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Across the country, families, businesses, and state governments are struggling with the same challenge: child care. While demand for child care has surged, driven in part by the dramatic increase in mothers’ workforce participation, the financing system that underpins child care has not evolved. As a result, millions of working families earn too much to qualify for public subsidies but far too little to afford market-rate care. Employers feel the impact in the form of turnover, absenteeism, and workforce shortages; state economies lose billions in potential productivity.

Tri-Share programs have emerged as an innovative state-level attempt to address this gap. Rooted in the idea of shared responsibility, the Tri-Share model divides the cost of child care among three parties: typically businesses or employers, the employee, and a public or philanthropic partner.

This report examines the original Michigan Tri-Share program and four additional models implemented in Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, and Rapid City, South Dakota. Together, these programs offer a real-time understanding of what works, what doesn’t, and what policymakers should consider when designing shared-cost child care strategies. 

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