2011 and 2012, the cost of child care increased at up to eight times the rate of increases in family income. For a four-year-old child, center-based care ranges from about $4,300 in Mississippi to $12,350 in Massachusetts. Lower income families have been disproportionately affected by these increases in child care costs. Working families at or near the poverty line did not receive any or enough child care assistance to be able to stay employed and off welfare, and only 12% to 15% of eligible families were served by a Child Care Development Fund subsidy in 1998–1999. Options for accessibility Child care subsidies is an option used in many states to help parents pay for child care. These subsidies aid low-income families with children under age 13 in paying for child care so that parents can work or participate in training or education activities. Parents typically receive subsidies in the form of vouchers that they can use with a provider (e.g. relative, neighbor, child care center, or after-school program.) Additional government programs aim to make child care more affordable. Medium and low income families receive earned income tax credits to compensate for money they allocated to child care arrangements. Individuals may claim up to $3,000 of expenses paid in a year for one qualifying individual (a dependent child age 12 or younger) or $6,000 for two or more qualifying individuals on their tax return. Benefits from the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) concentrate on low-income families. In contrast, the dependent exemption and the virtually nonrefundable Child Tax Credit (CTC) benefited higher income families with benefits gradually increasing as a person's tax liability increased. Universal child care is another way to make child care more widely accessible. For example, in Sweden, public childcare is guaranteed to all parents and it operates on a whole-day basis. Parental fees are directly proportional to parents' income and inversely proportional to the number of children in a family. Finally, another viable option is to increase tax credits for low and medium income families. Currently, President Barack Obama has outlined a plan to triple the child tax care credit to $3,000 per young child. Progression The demands that urbanization, industrialization, and immigration placed on poor and working-class families in the late 19th century left many children unattended. Rural states relied on family placements to care for their own homeless or dependent children. This was a precursor