Subsidizing child care, a key part of President Biden’s pandemic recovery legislation that has so far failed to pass into law, would increase the number of mothers in the workforce and boost wages for industry workers, among other social and economic benefits, according to a new study.
For households making up to 250% of the national median income — which is $90,657 for a family of four — a federal program that would cover child-care costs exceeding 7% of that family’s income would boost mothers’ employment by 6 percentage points, and 10 percentage points for those working full time, economists led by Jonathan Borowsky, a postdoctoral associate at the University of Minnesota, said in a paper.
“The model estimates suggest that expansion of child-care subsidies would mitigate family income gaps in access to licensed care facilities, moving families from unlicensed care to center-based care in particular,” according to the paper circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
“These shifts also facilitate meaningful increases in maternal employment and imply improvements in the quality of care experienced by children.”
The U.S. is an outlier among wealthy nations in not guaranteeing child-care assistance for working parents — a problem exacerbated by the pandemic in driving up already-high facilities costs, impacting children’s preparedness for school and forcing more women out of the labor force than men. Lawmakers have proposed various ideas to help bolster the...
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