Why Invest in Child Care
Child care is more than a place where children go during their parents’ working hours; it is a healthy and nurturing space where children can grow, a support for women and families, and a crucial contributor to the nation’s overall economic growth and security. The past two years have highlighted how essential child care is for our nation’s well-being — without access to high-quality affordable child care, women, families, and our economy suffers. Yet our child care system was under pressure long before the COVID-19 pandemic, which intensified existing stressors. Prior to 2020, underfunding for child care infrastructure resulted in poverty-level wages for child care providers — a majority of whom are women and women of color — and difficulty accessing affordable high-quality child care for families.
Whether parents are at work, attending school, searching for a job, or undertaking other responsibilities, they rely on child care to make it possible for them to participate in these activities while ensuring their children are safe and well-cared for. Yet, according to findings from Care.com’s 2022 Cost of Care Survey, child care is not affordable for most families. Slightly over half (51%) of families surveyed are spending 20%or more of their household income on child care. Additionally, over half of families surveyed—58%—plan to spend more than $10,000 on child care this year, which is more than the average annual cost of in-state college tuition. These high costs can stretch families’ budgets until some parents take on another job or extra hours, others reduce their work hours, and some parents — often a woman — choose to leave the workforce.
Even though child care costs are rising, wages for the child care workforce remain low, making it difficult for child care professionals to make ends meet. The average wage for a full-time center-based child care worker is $13.31 an hour, or $27,680 a year. These low wages are one reason the child care workforce has been declining since 2011, driving a workforce decline that has, in turn, contributed to the shortage of child care.
The American Rescue Plan Act provided significant relief funding to help stabilize the child care sector, support the child care workforce, help make child care more affordable for families, and raise payment rates for child care providers serving families receiving child care assistance. Yet this funding was only temporary, and the gaps that existed prior to COVID will only widen without sustained federal investment.
The call for investment in child care is not new, but the stakes are higher than ever before. Families are dealing with financial hardships due to the high costs of child care and other essentials, women are leaving the workforce due to the difficulty finding and affording child care, and child care professionals are leaving the sector due to stagnant wages. Past challenges driven by underfunding have caught up with and are being compounded by present-day crises. If these are not addressed by a substantial investment that can provide a lasting transformation, the slowly crumbling infrastructure could reach its breaking point.
Kyra Miller (she/her)
Kyra Miller is the Senior State Policy & Outreach Manager, National Women’s Law Center
