Child Care

It’s no secret that the United States is facing a child care affordability crisis. Center-based infant care costs more than a year of college tuition and fees at a four-year public university in 28 states and the District of Columbia. Nationally, the cost of full-time center-based care is 85 percent of the monthly U.S. median cost of rent. A recent survey found that the high cost of child care was the top reason why some young adults are deciding to have fewer children than they would prefer.

Despite the cost of child care being so high, the child care workforce, overwhelmingly made up of women, is actually paid very little. The average pay for a child care worker (the term used in data collected by the Department of Labor) in all settings is only $10.72/hour compared to $32.98/hour for elementary school teachers. These wages are so low that between 2014 and 2016 over half of child care workers enrolled in at least one public assistance program. And, despite the fact that licensed infant and toddler care is often the most difficult for families to find, workers who care for the youngest children actually make less than their peers who work with children ages three to five. Women of color tend to earn even less than their counterparts since they are underrepresented in leadership roles in the field.

The presidential candidates have put forward a variety of plans in an effort to both reduce the overall cost of child care for families and increase the compensation of a workforce that often earns poverty-level wages.

We believe it’s important that child care plans address quality, access, and affordability. In order to ensure access to early care and education (ECE) for all families that need it, ECE should be free for families living in poverty with all other families paying on a sliding scale based on income. Families should be free to choose the child care setting that best meets their needs, whether that be in a center, family child care home, or with a family, friend, or neighbor. All publicly funded settings should be staffed by educators who earn at least a living wage and benefits and have a pathway to higher wages on par with K-12 educators with similar qualifications and experience. All child care settings should have access to the necessary resources to provide high-quality care for all children in a safe, nurturing environment with an emphasis on ensuring responsive interactions between children and educators. Plans should also emphasize the promotion of whole child, comprehensive approaches and dual generation strategies to better meet the needs of all families. Child care plans should also include additional investment to support construction and renovation of facilities.

Several presidential candidates have named the Child Care for Working Families Act as a model for the type of child care reform they would like to see become reality. The bill significantly increases the amount of funds in the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) to allow states to help more people afford child care. No family earning less than 150 percent of their state’s median income would pay more than seven percent of their income on child care. Child care would cost nothing for families earning less than 75 percent of their state’s median income. The bill would also ensure that child care workers are paid at least a living wage and guarantee pay parity with elementary school teachers for workers with similar credentials and experience. It is estimated that under this plan the median family’s child care payment would drop to about $45 per week and the number of children eligible for child care assistance would more than double.

The Senate version of the bill is co-sponsored by the following presidential candidates: Senator Cory Booker (no longer in the race), Senator Kamala Harris (no longer in the race), Senator Amy Klobuchar (no longer in the race), Senator Bernie Sanders, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (no longer in the race), who has also introduced a separate bill, the Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act (see below). Booker unveiled legislation that would establish competitive grants for community colleges and Minority-Serving Institutions to enable them to provide free infant and toddler care to student parents and make investments in infant-toddler educator preparation. For her part, Klobuchar specifically highlighted her efforts to address the challenges of rural child care through increased funding for the Child Care and Development block grant and raising subsidy rates to allow rural providers to meet their operating expenses and raise program quality. And, earlier this year, Klobuchar introduced the Child Care Workforce and Facilities Act in the Senate which would provide competitive grants to states to fund further training for the child care workforce or expansion of child care facilities.

The Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act introduced by Elizabeth Warren in the Senate and highlighted on her campaign website is one of the more detailed and comprehensive of the child care plans put forward by the candidates. Warren’s plan calls for the federal government to partner with local providers to create a network of child care and early learning options for children from birth to school age that includes centers and in-home care. The plan calls for providers to be held to “high national standards”, such as the Head Start Performance Standards. Significantly, the Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act calls for pay parity between early educators and “similarly-credentialed local public school teachers.”

Under Warren’s plan, child care and early learning would be free for families earning below 200 percent of the federal poverty line and Head Start would be scaled up to enroll children who are not from low-income families. Families with higher incomes would pay a subsidized fee on a sliding scale, but no family would spend more than seven percent of their income on ECE, the affordability standard set by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Warren’s campaign released a child care calculator to allow parents to estimate their potential savings if her plan becomes a reality. Warren planned to pay for her plan through an Ultra-Millionaire Tax on Americans with a net worth of over $50 million which she projects will result in an additional $2.75 trillion in new revenue over ten years, though there is disagreement about just how much revenue the tax would produce. This is the same tax she planned to use to fund her K-12 plan as well as her plans to cancel most college debt and offer free tuition at public colleges. A Moody’s analysis found that the Warren plan would cost about $70 billion per year. The analysis predicted that 8.8 million children in families below 200 percent of the federal poverty line would receive free child care under the plan and the typical American family would see their annual child care costs reduced by 17 percent.

The child care plan released by Bernie Sanders promises to provide at least 10 hours of child care each day for children up to age three. Unlike Warren’s plan in which child care would be free for families earning below 200 percent of the federal poverty line, Sanders’ plan provides free child care for all, regardless of family income. Child care would be funded by the federal government and administered by state agencies and tribal governments. The federal government would set quality standards, including requiring states to pay a living wage for early educators and mandating low adult-child ratios. Any educators working directly with young children would be required to have at least a Child Development Associate (CDA) credential and all assistant teachers would need at least an associate’s degree in ECE or child development. The plan states that lead teachers will earn the same level of compensation as similarly qualified kindergarten teachers. Sanders also promises to improve child care infrastructure by constructing new facilities and renovating existing ones. Additionally, Sanders vows to make it easier for child care workers to unionize. Sanders estimates his child care and pre-K plan will cost a total of $1.5 trillion over ten years and will be paid for by taxing the wealth of people with a net worth of more than $32 million, though the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget argues that such a tax would raise as much revenue as intended due to high levels of tax avoidance.

The child care plan released by Mayor Pete Buttigieg sounded a lot like the Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act in its vow to build on Head Start, invest in professional development and increase compensation for the ECE workforce, and make early childhood education free for lower-income families and more affordable for all families. Specifically, Buttigieg vowed to invest $700 billion to finance a new universal subsidy program that will provide affordable, universal full-day child care and pre-K for all children from birth to age five. His plan also called for spending $2 billion a year for training, certification, and wage increases for early childhood professionals while defending the right of early educators to form strong unions. Additionally, Buttigieg vowed to eliminate eligibility "cliffs" that can force families to choose between taking better-paying jobs or losing child care benefits.

There are a few key differences between the Child Care and Working Families Act and the Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act. The Child Care and Working Families Act builds on the existing CCDBG program and significantly expands it to help low- and middle-income families afford child care. The Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act, on the other hand, establishes a new network of federally administered, locally-run early learning centers. And while both bills aim to reduce the financial burden on parents paying for child care, there are differences in who exactly would benefit. The Child Care and Working Families Act would ensure no family earning less than 150 percent of their state’s median income (SMI) pays over seven percent of their income on child care and provides free child care for families earning less than 75 percent of SMI, while the Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act caps child care costs for all families, regardless of income, at seven percent of income and provides free child care for families earning less than 200 percent of the federal poverty line.

Michael Bloomberg did not endorse a specific piece of child care legislation, but did introduce his own child care plan, which called for making child care more affordable by doubling annual federal spending. Bloomberg promised to triple the 163,000 infants and toddlers currently being served by Early Head Start (which currently only serves 11 percent of eligible children) and direct more funds to Early Head Start—Child Care Partnerships. He also called for an expansion of Head Start which currently serves about 652,000 three- and four-year-olds at a cost of $10.6 billion. Additionally, Bloomberg’s plan proposed increasing funding to the Child Care and Development Block Grant program (currently funded at $5.8 billion) and new federal investments to upgrade the infrastructure of child care centers and family-based settings.

Several of the other presidential candidates, including former Vice President Joe Biden, Representative Tulsi Gabbard, and President Donald Trump have yet to release detailed child care plans or explicitly express their support for the Child Care for Working Families Act or the Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act. However, as Vice President, Biden expressed support for tripling the child tax credit and paying for it by limiting certain tax deductions, and Andrew Yang’s (no longer in the race) campaign website highlighted tax breaks for child care in an effort to provide support for single parents. In his budget requests, President Trump has generally pushed for maintaining current funding for CCDBG, though his FY2020 request included a one-time $1 billion investment to increase the child care supply. And, in early 2018, as part of a sweeping bipartisan budget bill, Congress passed and President Trump signed a budget deal that included a historic $2.9 billion funding increase for CCDBG.