Summary

Implements Mississippi's Child Care Payment Program (CCPP) — the state's CCDF-funded child care subsidy, administered by the Mississippi Department of Human Services (MDHS) through the Division of Early Childhood Care and Development (DECCD). The program reimburses providers for the cost of care for eligible low-income working families, net of a sliding-scale family co-payment.

Closes #8647

Regulatory Authority

• CCPP Policy Manual (current) — operative rules (file-page anchors): Chapter 3 Priority Service Populations (p.18), Rule 5.1 eligibility (p.25), Rule 5.3 self-employment documentation (p.26), Rule 5.4 income (countable p.28 / non-countable p.29), Rule 5.5 activity requirement (p.30), Rule 5.9 special-needs work-requirement waiver (p.32), Rule 6.2 co-payment (who pays / $0 exemptions p.40; minimum-fee categories p.41), Rule 7.1 provider types (p.43), Rule 8.1 reimbursement rates (p.57)
• 2024 Mississippi Child Care Market Rate Survey — Table 1 (licensed center, p.9) and Table 2 (registered family-home, p.10) carry the operative "Current CCPP Rates" schedule (effective 2023-07-01)
• Family Co-Payment Fee Scale (effective 2021-11-01) — sliding-fee scale and SMI income limits
• CCDF State Plan FFY 2025–2027 — co-payment affordability (§3.1, p.39) and adopted full-time base rates (§4.3.2, pp.59-60)
• OMB Bulletin No. 13-01 — February 2013 Metropolitan Statistical Area delineation (basis for the metro-county list)

Program Overview

• Administration: State-administered (MDHS / DECCD), federally funded through the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), 45 CFR Part 98
• Subsidy type: Provider-reimbursement voucher — pays the lesser of the provider's charge and a maximum weekly rate, net of the family co-payment
• Legal authority: Miss. Code Ann. § 43-1-2(4), § 43-1-4; Mississippi Administrative Code Title 18, Part 17

Eligibility

Income

Gross-income tested with no deductions (Manual Rule 5.4). ms_ccpp_countable_income (SPMUnit, MONTH) = countable earned income (summed across members) + countable unearned income.

• Earned (ms_ccpp_countable_earned_income, Person): employment_income plus the self-employment sum (self_employment_income, sstb_self_employment_income, farm_operations_income, listed in income/countable_income/self_employment_sources.yaml). Two manual rules shape it:
  • Self-employment is gross income (Rule 5.3 "Total Sales and Receipts") — the self-employment sum is floored at $0 so a net business loss cannot offset other income. PolicyEngine's self-employment income is net, so this may still understate gross receipts.
  • Earned income of students under 18 is non-countable (Rule 5.4) — a person who is in K-12 school and under income/student_earner_age_limit.yaml (18) contributes $0 earned income; their unearned income still counts.
• Unearned (income/countable_income/unearned_sources.yaml): social_security (parent and child), ssi (parent and child — listed separately from the social_security umbrella), unemployment_compensation, workers_compensation, alimony_income, veterans_benefits, pension_income, rental_income, dividend_income, capital_gains.
• Non-countable (omitted): child support received, EITC, interest income, Pell/student aid, foster-care board payments, and the manual's other exclusions. social_security_disability is omitted because the social_security umbrella already adds it. Unemployment compensation is counted only at redetermination in the manual; modeled as always-countable, with the simplification documented in the parameter.

Co-payment (sliding fee)

ms_ccpp_copay (SPMUnit, MONTH) composes three sub-variables: where(ms_ccpp_copay_waived, 0, where(ms_ccpp_minimum_fee_category, min(income_based, $10), income_based)).

• ms_ccpp_income_based_copay — gross income (floored at $0) × a percentage that depends on family size and the SMI band (Copay Fee Scale, effective 2021-11-01), params copay/rate/very_low_income.yaml and copay/rate/low_income.yaml:

  SMI band	Fam 2	Fam 3	Fam 4	Fam 5	Fam 6+
  ≤ 50% SMI	5.5%	5%	4.5%	4%	3.5%
  50–85% SMI	6.5%	6%	5.5%	5%	4.5%

  The band split is at 50% SMI (income/very_low_income_smi_rate.yaml = 0.50); family size caps at the "6 or more" row (copay/max_family_size.yaml = 6).

• ms_ccpp_copay_waived → $0 for families at or below the federal poverty line (copay/fpg_exempt_rate.yaml = 1), TANF recipients, and homeless families with no countable income (Rule 6.2, p.40). A genuine $0, not a sentinel floor row. The waiver takes precedence over the minimum-fee cap.

• ms_ccpp_minimum_fee_category → caps the fee at $10 (copay/minimum_fee_categories_cap.yaml) when income is above the FPL (Rule 6.2, p.41). Of the manual's six minimum-fee populations, the three PolicyEngine can track fire: protective-services children (receives_or_needs_protective_services), parents with a disability who are receiving SSI (is_ssi_disabled head/spouse with ssi > 0), and special-needs children (a disabled tax-unit dependent under 19, per Definition 25). Transitional Child Care and teen-parent categories are not tracked at the moment.

Provider rates (two effective-dated eras)

This is the most nuanced part of the implementation, so the provenance is spelled out explicitly. Rates are weekly, by provider type (center / family-home) × 4 age bands × full-time/part-time × metro/non-metro, plus a flat Special Needs (all ages) rate per provider type. All values vision-verified against the source PDFs.

The full-time base rates carry two consecutive effective-dated eras (sequential, not conflicting — a 2024 calculation uses the first, a late-2024-onward calculation uses the second):

• 2023-07-01 — "Current CCPP Rates" from the 2024 Market Rate Survey Table 1 (licensed center, p.9) and Table 2 (registered family-home, p.10) — the operative paid rates of that era (not the survey's 75th-percentile recommendation tables).
• 2024-10-01 — FY2025-2027 CCDF State Plan adopted full-time base rates (§4.3.2, pp.59-60). The State Plan reports rates by "most populous region" (→ metro slot, = the statewide 75th-percentile) and "lowest region" (→ non-metro slot).

The FY2025-2027 State Plan publishes full-time base rates only, so part-time and special-needs retain the era-1 values for the 2024-10 era (the adopted part-time/special-needs dollars are not public — only the copay fee scale is).

Licensed center (rates/center.yaml) — weekly, metro / non-metro:

Registered family-home (rates/family_home.yaml) — weekly, metro / non-metro:

The center and family-home special-needs rate sets live in rates/special_needs_center.yaml and rates/special_needs_home.yaml.

• Age bands (ms_ccpp_age_group): 4 bands from the manual definitions — Infant (<1 yr, Add "personal_income" as a layer to parameters/tax/ #49), Toddler (12–35 months, Add ItemDed #87), Preschool (3 yr to kindergarten, Integrate data package #66), School-age (≥5 yr, Shelter deduction SNAP parameter #74). The survey's separate 2-year-old band collapses into the manual's single Toddler band.
• Full-time vs part-time (ms_ccpp_time_category): part-time = care for fewer than 6 hours of a 24-hour day; full-time = ≥6 hr/day (manual def. OpenFisca conventions #44/Developer meeting agenda 2021-08-28 #65). Under the operative schedule PT < FT in every cell, so no part-time cap is needed.
• In-home care: special-needs only. No distinct in-home rate table exists, so in-home children are paid the home-based special-needs rate.
• Metro / non-metro (ms_ccpp_facility_location): the schedule varies by facility location, which PolicyEngine does not track, so the household's county is used as a proxy. The 17 metro counties (geography/metro_counties.yaml) are exactly the Mississippi counties in an OMB February-2013 MSA (Jackson, Gulfport-Biloxi-Pascagoula, Hattiesburg, and the Mississippi portion of Memphis).

Benefit

ms_ccpp (SPMUnit, MONTH): per child, the subsidy is min(provider charge, applicable maximum weekly rate × 52/12) − family copay, floored at $0. Per-child weekly maximum rates (ms_ccpp_maximum_weekly_rate) are summed across children, converted to monthly via WEEKS_IN_YEAR / MONTHS_IN_YEAR, capped at the provider charge (spm_unit_pre_subsidy_childcare_expenses), and reduced by the family co-payment. A child not actually in care (childcare_hours_per_week ≤ 0) draws no rate. The SPMUnit-level ms_child_care_subsidies (YEAR) aggregates ms_ccpp and feeds the federal child_care_subsidies.

Requirements coverage

Not modeled (by design)

Test plan

• 112 tests pass locally (policyengine-core test policyengine_us/tests/policy/baseline/gov/states/ms/dhs/ccpp -c policyengine_us)
• CI passes

Files

New program files under gov/states/ms/dhs/ccpp/ (20 parameters, 18 variables, 16 test files) plus 2 registry edits:

policyengine_us/parameters/gov/states/ms/dhs/ccpp/
  age_group/age.yaml
  copay/fpg_exempt_rate.yaml
  copay/max_family_size.yaml
  copay/minimum_fee_categories_cap.yaml
  copay/rate/low_income.yaml
  copay/rate/very_low_income.yaml
  eligibility/activity_hours.yaml
  eligibility/child_age_limit.yaml
  eligibility/special_needs_child_age_limit.yaml
  geography/metro_counties.yaml
  income/countable_income/self_employment_sources.yaml
  income/countable_income/unearned_sources.yaml
  income/smi_rate.yaml
  income/student_earner_age_limit.yaml
  income/very_low_income_smi_rate.yaml
  rates/center.yaml
  rates/family_home.yaml
  rates/special_needs_center.yaml
  rates/special_needs_home.yaml
  time_category/hours.yaml

policyengine_us/variables/gov/states/ms/dhs/ccpp/
  ms_child_care_subsidies.py
  ms_ccpp.py
  ms_ccpp_age_group.py
  ms_ccpp_countable_earned_income.py
  ms_ccpp_countable_income.py
  ms_ccpp_facility_location.py
  ms_ccpp_maximum_weekly_rate.py
  ms_ccpp_provider_type.py
  ms_ccpp_time_category.py
  copay/ms_ccpp_copay.py
  copay/ms_ccpp_income_based_copay.py
  copay/ms_ccpp_minimum_fee_category.py
  copay/ms_ccpp_copay_waived.py
  eligibility/ms_ccpp_eligible.py
  eligibility/ms_ccpp_eligible_child.py
  eligibility/ms_ccpp_income_eligible.py
  eligibility/ms_ccpp_activity_eligible.py
  eligibility/ms_ccpp_categorically_eligible.py

policyengine_us/tests/policy/baseline/gov/states/ms/dhs/ccpp/
  integration.yaml
  ms_ccpp.yaml
  ms_ccpp_age_group.yaml
  ms_ccpp_countable_income.yaml
  ms_ccpp_facility_location.yaml
  ms_ccpp_maximum_weekly_rate.yaml
  ms_ccpp_time_category.yaml
  copay/ms_ccpp_copay.yaml
  copay/ms_ccpp_income_based_copay.yaml
  copay/ms_ccpp_minimum_fee_category.yaml
  copay/ms_ccpp_copay_waived.yaml
  eligibility/ms_ccpp_eligible.yaml
  eligibility/ms_ccpp_eligible_child.yaml
  eligibility/ms_ccpp_income_eligible.yaml
  eligibility/ms_ccpp_activity_eligible.yaml
  eligibility/ms_ccpp_categorically_eligible.yaml

Registry edits:

• policyengine_us/parameters/gov/hhs/ccdf/child_care_subsidy_programs.yaml — adds ms_child_care_subsidies to the 2021-01-01 list
• policyengine_us/programs.yaml — adds the MS CCDF state_implementations entry and MS to the CCDF coverage line

Changelog: changelog.d/ms-ccap.added.md