We’re Throwing Away Child-Care Money

Dave and Laura have two children and a household income of $90,000 a year. While they work, their children attend a state-licensed preschool and child-care center at a total annual cost of about $12,000.

Marie is a single parent who has no job. Her two children attend a federally funded Head Start program at no cost to her.

Ed and Susan also have two children. But with a combined income of $40,000 a year, they cannot afford a licensed child-care center and don’t qualify for Head Start. They opt to pay a neighbor $5,000 a year to baby-sit their two children along with four others she already watches in her home.

All of these people are fictitious, but their situations exist all across the United States. And they illustrate a sad fact for today’s working families: If you’re looking for child care in America, it’s better to be affluent or really poor.

The United States is evolving a two-tier system: good care for upper-income and poor families, and lower-quality care for middle- and lower-income working families.

Too “affluent” to qualify for Head Start and too poor to afford a licensed child-care center, the so-called “working poor” are forced into finding unregulated, unsupervised care and hoping for the best.

Many people will question whether the mother should work at all. The fact is, most mothers today must work to keep their families out of poverty. Two-thirds are either single mothers or are married to husbands who earn less than $25,000 a year.

We can ensure the availability of quality child care to those families who need it if our leaders will do two things: fund child-care vouchers for working families and establish more reasonable regulations and standards for child care.

In the United States, parents directly pay for more than 90 percent of child-care costs. By contrast, working parents in Europe only pay about 20 percent of the costs, with government subsidies making up the difference.

By no means am I suggesting we establish a system of socialized child care. But the irony is that the federal government already is pouring $3.5 billion a year into Head Start - a program that serves only a fraction of the families that need child-care assistance.

Public support for child care should make quality services available to all children of working families. But government-provided services are the least cost-effective means of providing this care. Compare Head Start expenditures with those of a typical child-care center with excellent early education programs.

Head Start spends about $5,000 per child per year - for only three to four hours a day and only nine months a year. For the same amount of money, the government could be buying high-quality education programs in full-day, full-year programs at KinderCare or other major centers.

It makes no sense to fund a government bureaucracy to do what the private sector can do better and more efficiently. That’s not to mention the fact that it is nearly impossible for parents to hold a full-time job and get off the welfare rolls if their children are only getting part-time care.

What’s more, only 35 percent of low-income children are enrolled in a preschool program - Head Start or otherwise. Despite the massive Head Start subsidy, the majority of children from low-income and “working poor” families are missing out on quality care.

Not only could the Head Start money buy more services in the current child-care system, but we could stretch the dollars even further if the states would apply more uniform, reasonable standards for regulation.

In several research studies, my colleagues and I have found that most regulations imposed on child-care centers, aside from safety and health considerations, have little direct effect on the quality of care. But these regulations do have a major impact on the cost of care, resulting in fewer quality centers and more expensive tuition rates.

The more stringent the child-care regulations, the less licensed child care will be available and the more families will be forced to use unlicensed, unregulated care for their children. The number of children needing care does not shrink, but the number of good options for their care does.

We must strive for a balance between regulation and affordability. Parents must feel confident that their children are in a safe, caring environment that promotes learning. “Safe” can be regulated; “caring” cannot.

Using Head Start funds more efficiently and reducing costly regulations on child-care providers will help achieve the goal of ensuring that all children, regardless of their socioeconomic status, get a good start on life.

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