For too long, the United States has refused to support children and families, significantly underinvesting in child care and early education, hamstringing our economy, and making it harder for parents to work. Even before the pandemic altered the way many Americans work, the United States lost $57 billion annually in earnings, productivity, and revenue due to the child care crisis. The pandemic is revealing the extent to which businesses rely on employees having access to reliable, quality, affordable child care. Without it, hundreds of thousands of working parents have had to leave the workforce. It’s why economists and  Americans of every political stripe agree that our economic recovery depends on boosting federal investment in child care. Put simply: Child care is a matter of racial, economic, and gender equity and is crucial to the productivity and competitiveness of this country.

This year marks 50 years since President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which would have greatly subsidized child care in the United States and recognized that working families deserve the support that high-quality child care provides. Today, many families struggle to afford high-quality child care. And families who need the most help affording child care are not receiving it. Only 1 in 7 children who are eligible for federal child care subsidies receive them. It is clear that our current system is exacerbating, not curbing, inequality. Low-income families spend more than a third of their income on child care; middle-income families spend 14%; and the wealthiest families spend 7% of their income on child care, the same percentage the federal government has deemed the acceptable threshold of affordability for all families.

A half-century since Nixon’s veto, a lack of robust and sustained federal investments keeps the child care industry on the edge of viability. Underinvestment has been the norm for an industry that is a critical part of the nation’s infrastructure. Early educators (also referred to as child care workers) make a median wage of  just $12.24 per hour. In the child care field, which is majority female and disproportionately women of color, Black women make even lower wages than their early educator counterparts.

The child care crisis also exacerbates racial inequality and disproportionately affects families of color. Pre-pandemic data show that Black and multiracial parents experienced job disruptions –

such as quitting a job, not taking a job, or greatly changing a job – due to child care issues at twice the rate of white parents. Data also paint a grim picture of access, in which more than 50% of Latinx, American Indian, and Alaska Native (AIAN) families live in a child care desert – an area with an inadequate supply of licensed child care.  Black families also spend more of their income on child care than any other racial group. For example, a median income Black family with two children could spend 56% of household income on center-based child care.

Our flawed system also strains maternal workforce participation, fueling gender inequality. A recent report found that “expanding access to affordable, high-quality child care to everyone who needs it would increase the number of women with young children working full-time/full-year by about 17%, and by about 31% for women without any college degree.” To ensure an equitable recovery, policymakers should immediately tackle the child care crisis. The longer women are out of the workforce, the more their wages will lag, undermining families’ economic security and exacerbating the gender wage gap.

There have been some promising developments in the effort to create a child care system that works for all families. The Child Care for Working Families Act proposes capping child care payments at 7% of household income for families making 150% or less of their state’s median income. Research from a previous iteration of the Child Care for Working Families Act shows it would create 2.3 million jobs if enacted, which includes new jobs in the child care and early education sector and an increase in employed parents. It would also increase pay for early educators by at least 26%. 

President Biden also understands the positive effects that significant investment in child care can have for families and our economy, which is why he incorporated major provisions of federal child care legislation into his campaign platform – promising to address affordability, access, and compensation for the early educator workforce. His administration also worked with Congress to pass the American Rescue Plan, a historic investment in child care to address issues caused by the coronavirus crisis, such as child care providers closing down and going into significant debt to stay open. This relief funding was a desperately needed stopgap, but sustained, robust federal investment is the only way to repair the cracked foundation of child care in this country. President Biden’s American Families Plan presents an opportunity for Congress to advance child care priorities, including main provisions of the Child Care for Working Families Act.

Fifty years after a president refused to substantially fund an essential support for working families, will we miss our moment now? Will we have learned nothing from the struggles families have faced for so many years, particularly this last one? The moment is now for the United States to build a child care system that supports high-quality child care for all families – including care for children with disabilities and care for children whose parents work non-traditional hours. We must not go back to the patchwork, exploitative child care system we had before, which relied on the underpaid labor of women, disproportionately women of color.

A child care system supported by a robust, sustained federal investment will give parents choices to decide what works best for their families. They won’t have to give up jobs they enjoy because they can’t afford quality care for their children. It means parents could rest well in the knowledge that their children are safe and receiving enriching learning experiences during the most crucial period of brain development in their lives. It means the people, mostly women, who educate our young children will earn wages which value the essential nature of the work they do. And it means the United States can rebuild stronger and more equitably, strengthening our ability to compete around the globe.