Seven day care centers in the Denver-Boulder (Colorado) metropolitan an effort to identify the kinds of subsidies they received and to estimate the importance of these subsidies for the cost of services. The sites included a Head Start program, three nonprofit centers, two family day care providers, and an infant care center. Labor accounted for a majority of the centers' costs, with facility costs a significant but less important factor. Food and program costs were minor. Subsidies included: (1) staff wages, which were artificially low in comparison to pay for comparable jobs and the market value of providers; (2) nonmonetary contributions, such as reduced rents and donations for food and supplies; (3) cash contributions; (4) grants from government or philanthropic organizations, including both supply and demand subsidies; and (5) distributional subsidies based on sliding fee scales related to parents' income. Because of the low wage subsidy, parents' child care costs were nowhere near the full costs of the programs. The amount of subsidies varied greatly among programs, from 99 percent of total cost for the Head Start program to 50 percent for the infant care program. (BC)