U.S. · Fortune Technology
America’s child care crisis costs the economy an estimated $172 billion each year in lost earnings, productivity and tax revenue
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Yet for all the attention paid to what families spend on child care, considerably less attention has been paid to a more basic constraint: In many communities, there simply are not enough classrooms.
Key facts
- America’s child care crisis costs the economy an estimated $172 billion each year in lost earnings, productivity and tax revenue
- America’s $172 billion child care problem will not be solved by real estate alone
- In a national poll conducted for the First Five Years Fund, 59% of part-time or non-working parents said they would return to full-time work if they had access to quality child care at a reasonable
- That makes America’s child care crisis more than an affordability problem
Summary
America’s child care crisis costs the economy an estimated $172 billion each year in lost earnings, productivity and tax revenue. In a national poll conducted for the First Five Years Fund, 59% of part-time or non-working parents said they would return to full-time work if they had access to quality child care at a reasonable cost. For employers, those individual decisions add up. After years spent helping early education operators find and build the facilities they need to grow, the reporter has had a front-row seat to a strange contradiction: Operators can have families waiting for seats and still struggle to find the real estate and capital necessary to open another school.