Coupled with Inflation, Rising Childcare Costs Become Obstacle for Many Households, CSUN Prof Says
This story is re-posted from CSUN Newsroom. Read the story in CSUN Newsroom.
Raising a child has always been expensive but with high inflation and a surge in the price of everyday essentials, some households are drowning as childcare costs add to their laundry list of expenses.
This has left some families looking for any relief when it comes to childcare, which strains the monthly budget for millions of families, according to California State University, Northridge family and consumer sciences professor Joyce Marie Brusasco.
“It has always been very expensive to put your kid in childcare but when you factor in just about everything else going up in costs, these suddenly become financial decisions that not every household can take on,” said Brusasco, who teaches in CSUN’s College of Health and Human Development. “It really gets to the issue that some parents are really stuck right now.”
Families in the U.S. spend an average of $11,000 on childcare each year, which amounts to a nearly 250% increase since 1991, the advocacy group Child Care Aware found in 2022. In California, care for infants and toddlers costs an average of $700 per month, for a total of $8,400 a year.
However, there have been major strides in California in making childcare more affordable and accessible, Brusasco said.
This includes the rollout of the states’ universal pre-kindergarten program, which plans to extend eligibility for transitional kindergarten to all 4-year-olds by fall 2025 as part of a $2.7 billion, four-year expansion. The idea is to provide a two-year kindergarten program to prepare children earlier for the rigors of elementary school.
“Universal preschool is a huge change that has been beneficial for parents because they can now send their child to a certified preschool within a school setting where maybe they’ll go for elementary school for five years, which is huge,” Brusasco said. “Children can go to school earlier and it’s free, meaning parents they don’t have to pay for it and that’s a big win for many households.”
There is also Head Start, a federally funded program for low-income households that do not have money for childcare. While there is help for families, some households may not qualify for state or federal subsidies when it comes to childcare.
These are often households that make too much to qualify for public programs and still cannot afford childcare on their own, Brusasco said.
“You have people who don’t make enough, and they qualify for the subsidies and then you have the people who just make just enough and they don’t qualify but spending that extra $1,000 a month is quite a financial burden that many, justifiably, don’t want to take on,” Brusasco said. “I think there’s an opportunity to address the needs of the people who are in that gap.”
The topic of childcare has become such a big issue that both presidential campaigns are running on platforms that include assistance for struggling households. Both Vice President Harris and former President Trump’s vice presidental pick JD Vance have proposed expansions to the Child Tax Credit (CTC). The current CTC is $2,000 per child for single parents earning up to $200,000, or for couples making up to $400,000 a year.
Vance has proposed a $5,000 CTC per child without income restrictions while Harris has proposed a $6,000 CTC for a child’s first year of life, a period in which parents face higher costs for diapers, car seats, formula and higher childcare rates.
In addition, Harris proposed reinstating the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act changes to the CTC, including making the CTC fully refundable, which means you get the credit even if you do not earn enough to owe the full amount of the CTC.
Seeing the issue of rising childcare costs get more attention brings hope that more will be done to address shortfalls, Brusasco said.
“Childcare may be the first time that parents typically think about these costs, and their first introduction to this is during the first stage in their child’s life,” she said. “Before it was just diapers and formula, and now it is a whole new expense that many are not prepared for. There could always be more done to help families in this vital first year of their child’s life. As the discussion on childcare progresses, we hope to see more assistance provided for those making these tough financial choices.”
This story is re-posted from CSUN Newsroom. Read the story in CSUN Newsroom.
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Javier Rojas/CSUN Newsroom