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America’s Child Care Crisis Demands Urgent Investment and Action
The nation continues to face a severe child care crisis, with parents across the country struggling to access and afford high-quality care that promotes their children’s healthy development, while providers struggle to recruit and retain a highly qualified workforce. The expiration of emergency relief funding threatens the stability of an already fragile system, leaving many children and families at risk of losing access to child care absent federal and state action.
Additional investments in early childhood education are critical to support families, educators and providers across the country.
The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) serves as the foundation for child care and early learning systems across the country, reaching nearly 1.5 million children from low-income households each year. CCDBG, a historically bipartisan program, ensures working families have access to high-quality care in a setting of their choice, giving these families access to better economic opportunities. Despite the growing importance of the program, CCDBG is chronically underfunded, serving only 13% of qualifying families.
We must urge Congress and the administration to prioritize CCDBG in the federal appropriations process in order to help families find and afford high-quality child care programs of their choice, and ensure working families of all backgrounds have access to the learning and care they need.
While CCDBG is a vital resource for families, the program reaches only a small percentage of families who require care, and it is intended to serve only the lowest-income children. For all other families, the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) is the only credit that is targeted to help offset the cost of care. Additionally, employers may use Dependent Care Assistance Plans (DCAP) and the employer-provided child care tax credit (Sec. 45F) to help employees afford the cost of care. However, until last year, none of these benefits had been updated in decades, while child care costs have continued to rise. These three tax incentives, in conjunction with CCDBG, are part of a holistic solution to address the child care crisis that affects not only families with young children, but also businesses that are losing or unable to hire and retain workers due to a lack of affordable, accessible, and reliable child care.