US an outlier in child care
Democrats’ spending bill looks to bring country closer to what other rich nations do
Typical 2-year-olds in Denmark attend child care during the day, where they are guaranteed a spot, and their parents pay no more than 25% of the cost. That guaranteed spot will remain until the children are in after-school care at age 10. If their parents choose to stay home or hire a nanny, the government helps pay for that, too.
Two-year-olds in the United States are less likely to attend formal child care. If they do, their parents pay full price — an average $1,100 a month — and compete to find a spot. If their parents stay home or find another arrangement, they are also on their own to finance it until kindergarten.
In the developed world, the United States is an outlier in its low levels of financial support for young children’s care — something Democrats, with their safety-net spending bill, are trying to change. The U.S. spends 0.2% of its GDP on child care for children 2 and younger — which amounts to about $200 a year for most families, in the form of a once-a-year tax credit for parents who pay for care.
The other wealthy countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development spend an average of 0.7% of GDP on toddlers, mainly through heavily subsidized child care. Denmark, for example, spends $23,140 annually per child on care for children 2 and younger.
“We as a society, with public funding, spend so much less on children before kindergarten than once they reach kindergarten,” said Elizabeth Davis, an economist studying child care at the University of Minnesota. “And yet the science of child development shows how very important investment in the youngest ages are.”
Congress is negotiating the details of the spending bill, and many elements are likely to be cut to decrease the cost. The current draft of the child care plan would make attendance at licensed child care centers free for the lowest-earning families, and it would cost no more than 7% of family income for those earning up to double the state’s median income. It would provide universal public preschool for children ages 3 and 4. And it would increase the pay of child care workers and preschool teachers to be equivalent to elementary teachers (currently, the median hourly wage for a preschool teacher of 4-year-olds is $14.67, and for a kindergarten teacher of 5-yearolds $32.80.)
Overall, federal, state and local governments spend about $1,000 a year on care for low-income children ages 2 and younger, and $200 on other toddlers, according to a paper for the Hamilton Project at Brookings, by Davis and Aaron Sojourner, also an economist at the University of Minnesota.
Some states and cities offer public preschool, starting at age 3 or 4. But just seven states (and D.C.) serve more than half of 4-year-olds, and 14 states have no public preschool or serve less than 10% of children, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research.
For children under 3, only the poorest working families qualify for subsidies, through Early Head Start or the child care block grant, but fewer than 1 in 6 eligible children receive the help. For most families, the only direct government support for early care and education comes from the child and dependent care tax credit. It benefits higher earners most: The average credit is $586, and $124 for the lowest earners.