USA, — The cost of childcare has been a hot button topic for a while. The National Database of Childcare Prices released a new study saying the cost of one child per year can reach up to $19,000.
"Childcare is so expensive because it's heavily dependent on labor," said American University School of Public Affairs Professor Dr. Taryn Morrissey. "At a college—for example, you don’t have 100 infants in a lecture hall with one adult—you need few infants per adult. And so, because of that, you have high labor expenses, and it’s difficult to reduce them without really affecting quality."
The cost of caring for a child has always had a high price tag, but with more mothers entering the workforce, demand has also increased.
"So, the use of childcare is increased, and I think more people are understanding how expensive it is," Dr. Morrissey said. "It’s a relatively brief period of time when families have these childcare expenses when their children are young. After care or summer care expenses can be pretty high but are still much less than early care and education expenses."
A decrease in the cost of childcare could actually increase the amount of parents working full time. Dr. Morrissey explained that anything around a 10% decrease in the cost of childcare would increase the labor work force participation rate by 0.25% to 2.5%.
Moreover, there is still more that can be done as a country.
"We, in this country, children become public goods at age five, and we pool our resources in terms of taxes to guarantee all children from ages five to about 18 a public education," Dr. Morrissey added. "But before age five, they’re considered a private responsibility. And I would argue it’s backwards because children’s development is so rapid in the first five years of life, especially the first three years of life. And we know that childcare is most expensive at that time, and yet we’re investing the least when it matters the most."