Supporting Affordable Child Care for All
Adopted at the 91st Annual Meeting in 2023
WHEREAS, high-quality child care gives young children a strong start in life; and
WHEREAS, high-quality, affordable child care for children from birth through school-age is a vital resource to support families in achieving their children's potential; and
WHEREAS, neuroscience confirms that early experiences affect all aspects of children's development and that children need child care settings that are safe and enriching; and
WHEREAS, access to high-quality, affordable child care allows parents and caregivers the opportunity to pursue employment and further their education in ways that build stability and financial security; and
WHEREAS, accessible, affordable child care contributes to prosperous communities by promoting economic growth, racial and economic equity, and child well-being; and
WHEREAS, the child care market continues to fail to deliver enough high-quality care because of a persistent gap between the costs of providing this care and the prices that families can afford to pay; and
WHEREAS, high-quality child care is labor intensive and requires skilled workers; and
WHEREAS, child care providers have limited ability to reduce costs; and
WHEREAS, in June 2022, over half of child care providers reported difficulty paying for food and utilities; and
WHEREAS, the United States lags behind most other industrialized nations in terms of investments in child care; and
WHEREAS, two-thirds of American children from birth through age 12 have all available parents in the workforce; and
WHEREAS, child care is a necessity for most American families because nearly 16 million young children regularly spend time in the care of someone other than their parent or primary caregiver; and
WHEREAS, a significant number of American families with very young children cannot access the affordable, high-quality care that they need; and
WHEREAS, economic insecurity is worsened by the steep costs of raising young children, including child care costs, that parents face when they are early in their careers when their wages are lowest so they have no way to accumulate savings; and
WHEREAS, child care expenditures represent a significant and growing share of families' budgets, with child care prices increasing by nearly 220 percent over the last three decades; and
WHEREAS, the annual increase in child care costs have outpaced inflation since 2019; and
WHEREAS, in 2021, the cost of infant care in a child care centers exceeded annual in-state tuition at public universities in 34 states plus the District of Columbia; and
WHEREAS, in 2021, child care prices for two children exceed average housing payments in nearly every state and the District of Columbia; and
WHEREAS, high-quality, affordable child care helps families find and keep a job and increases their take-home pay while also supporting the cognitive and socio-emotional development of young children; and
WHEREAS, even when high-quality child care programs are available, they are inaccessible to the many American families who cannot afford their cost; and
WHEREAS, when families cannot access affordable, quality child care, they often forgo care altogether and seek lower-quality care options, juggle unconventional shifts at work, reduce their own paid work hours, drop out of the labor force, or make other arrangements that may threaten their financial security and/or the safety of their children; and
WHEREAS, the U.S. economy currently loses an estimated $57 billion per year in revenue, wages and productivity as a result of child care challenges; and
WHEREAS, it is impossible to quantify the cost to families who forgo job and educational opportunities and face the daily stress that comes with making child care payments on time; finding child care in many places across the country where few options exist or outside of the traditional work day when most providers are closed; or when child care arrangements fall through; and
WHEREAS, investments in child care bolsters short- and long-term economic growth; and
WHEREAS, economic analysis shows that high-quality child care from birth to five yields a return on public investments of 13 percent annually, and that for every $1 invested in early childhood education provides a return of $4 to $9 to society over the course of a child's life; and
WHEREAS, American businesses lose nearly $13 billion each year due to workers' child care challenges;
WHEREAS, child care, or the lack thereof, is a gender equity issue because women primarily take on the majority of caregiving responsibilities within families and in the paid child care sector; and
WHEREAS, the lack of access to child care limits women's ability to enter, stay or participate more fully in the labor market; and
WHEREAS, high turnover in the child care workforce exacerbates issues caused by inadequate supply of quality child care programs; and
WHEREAS, child care workers, who are disproportionately women of color, are among the lowest-paid workers in the United States and often rely on public benefits despite working complex, demanding, and time-intensive jobs; and
WHEREAS, nearly 20 percent of the child care workforce has turned over annually in recent years; and
WHEREAS, investments in the child care workforce are foundational to retaining care workers and improving outcomes for children in the programs staffed by these workers; and
WHEREAS, 80 percent of respondents to a July 2021 survey of child care centers reported that they were experiencing staffing shortages; and
WHEREAS, 52 percent of providers with staffing shortages were forced to serve fewer children while 37 percent had a longer waiting list; and
WHEREAS, the care workforce as a whole remains measurably smaller than before the COVID19 pandemic; and
WHEREAS, in 2022, more than 75 percent of American families seeking child care reported difficulty finding programs with capacity for their children; and
WHEREAS, American military families point to the inaccessibility of high-quality child care as a barrier to military spouse employment and family economic security; and
WHEREAS, increased investments in child care would significantly expand choices and opportunities for American women and their families; and
WHEREAS, increased investments in child care will expedite American economic recovery from COVID-19; and
WHEREAS, current U.S. policy does not reflect the reality that high-quality child care is a necessity for working families across income levels and that the first five years of life are most crucial to a child's development; and
WHEREAS, accessible, affordable child care affects all Americans who would benefit from increased economic growth and a strong future workforce; and
WHEREAS, many states have provided short-term solutions to the national child care crisis by investing CARES Act and American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act funds into immediate stabilization of the sector and then into expanded eligibility for child care subsidy, state-funded early care and education programs, and care worker compensation; and
WHEREAS, the Biden administration invested $39 billion from the ARP to help child care providers keep their doors open and improve compensation for workers; and
WHEREAS, these investments have helped over 220,000 child care programs, which employ over one million workers and have the capacity to serve nearly 10 million children; and
WHEREAS, one in three child care programs that received stabilization support provided by the ARP reports that they would have been forced to close permanently if they had not received these funds; and
WHEREAS, ARP dollars are imminently expiring; and
WHEREAS, President Biden's Build Back Better plan would have addressed chronic foundational flaws in the American child care market caused by decades of underinvestment; and
WHEREAS, Build Back Better would have created an early care and education entitlement program for children under 6 who had not begun kindergarten by raising the income eligibility cap for child care subsidy, providing funding to states to build child care supply and raising wages for workers through the implementation of reliable cost model for child care payment rates; and
WHEREAS, after Build Back Better failed to pass, Congress left American children and families behind by eliminating funding for child care from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that The United States Conference of Mayors urges Congress to support American families by approving the early care and education investments included in President Biden's proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2024. The FY 2024 President's budget will:
- Invest over $600 billion over 10 years to expand access to high-quality, affordable child care and free, high-quality preschool;
- Enable States to increase child care options for more than 16 million young children;
- Lower costs so that caregivers can afford to send their children to high-quality care; and
- Compensate workers with wages reflective of the value that they provide to families, communities, and the American economy.
- Requirements that federal grant applicants expand access to care for their workers;
- Opportunities to reduce or eliminate co-payments for child care for families benefitting from the Child Care & Development Block Grant program;
- Opportunities for the federal government to become a model employer by supporting its own workforce with child care subsidies and other ways to expand access to child care;
- Increasing affordability of child care on military installations;
- Streamlining the process by which tribal grantees of federal child care assistance and Head Start apply for and construct or improve early child care and education facilities; and
- Engagement of affected communities and key stakeholders by the Treasury and the Departments of Defense, Agriculture, Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Veterans Affairs.