The rising cost of child care in the US may now exceed the amount families pay for housing or college.
That's according to recently released data that underscores the enormous financial burden on the nearly 14 million American parents who rely on paid caregivers to care for their children. Families spent up to $15,600 per year on full-day care per child in 2022 (the latest year for which data is available), though those who have children may face costs as high as $31,544 annually. To recently updated database Compiled by Labor Department.
That's higher than the U.S. average rent of $15,216 the same year, the agency said, while some families are spending nearly 30% of their annual earnings on child care. Overall, the cost of child care is increased by more than 50% In the last decade.
“Having a young child in this country is a cause of poverty. It has nothing to do with it, it's a cause of poverty,” says Elliot Haspel, author of the nonfiction book “Crawling Behind, America's Childcare Crisis and How to Fix It.” . , told Harvard Graduate School of Education in October.
Haspel said the demographic group most likely to face eviction “are Black children under the age of five. And a lot of this is a child care story. This is not a housing story.”
Families with infants typically pay more for child care, as well as families who live in more populous counties. Or the Department of Labor found that center-based care is being used instead of home-based care.
“The fact that the average cost of center-based child care exceeds the average cost of rent should be of immediate concern,” Wendy Chun-Hoon, director of the Labor Department's Women's Bureau, said in a statement. “Families are struggling and women are being disproportionately impacted.”
The counties in which the Center for Child Values seeks the highest share of median family income include:
- Stearns County, Minnesota
- Bronx County, New York
- Piute County, Utah
- Essex County, Vermont
- Grays Harbor and Wahkiakum County in Washington
- Guánica County, Puerto Rico
Child care can cost more than housing or college
Other research has found that the burden of paying for child care can exceed a typical family's annual housing costs, and even cost more than in-state tuition at public universities.
In some US states, child care costs are rising more than a quarter Bank of America found in a 2023 report that the average household spends $700 per month on the service.
In 2022, the cost of caring for two children at a center exceeded a typical annual mortgage payment in 41 states and the District of Columbia, while the cost of child care at a center exceeded in-state tuition at a public university in 32 states and D.C. Went. , According To Advocacy organization First Focus.
Despite accounting for a large portion of many families' income, child care workers are generally underpaid. By May 2023, wages averaged $15.42 an hour, or just over $32,000 a year, according to To Federal data. Overall, the country's child care workforce is among the 5% lowest paid among all occupations, Haspel said.
The Covid-19 pandemic has worsened the existing situation shortage of child care workers As thousands of people left the industry in favor of higher paying work. First Focus found that more than half of child care providers surveyed in 2024 said their programs had lower enrollments than their current capacity for reasons including staff shortages.
The Labor Department said $24 billion in federal pandemic aid to child care providers, along with another $14 billion to help states address the issues, has kept costs from rising even further.
“We know that interventions like the American Rescue Plan have helped, but more federal investment is needed to ensure that child care is accessible and affordable to all,” Chun-Hoon said. Health crisis.