Full Citation

Title: The True Cost of Child Care : Erie County NY

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2022

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Abstract: The true cost of child care in the title of this study refers to the actual monetary costs of providing the services of quality child care, as contrasted to the price that is paid for child care (the market rate), and contrasted to the subsidy, the public assistance that means-tested families receive for child care. Public subsidies, the primary form of public support for child care in the U.S., are determined as a percentile of market rates. More fundamentally, however, the true costs of the existing child care system in Erie County, in New York and around the country, are much larger. They are the social and economic costs of persistent racial, gender and economic inequality; lack of access to child care services for many families; an entire sector of low-wage work; forfeiture of workforce participation among parents; and loss of the human potential that derives from quality early childhood development and education. These costs may be harder to measure—some are immeasurable—but they inform the growing consensus that America’s child care system is not working for the families, workers, and providers directly involved, nor is it working for society and the economy as a whole. This Phase Two of a collaborative action research report illuminates both kinds of costs: current operational monetary costs per child at the enterprise or institutional level, and indicators of broader social costs of the existing child care system itself in Erie County and New York State. Undertaken by Cornell ILR Buffalo Co-Lab and Erie County’s Live Well Erie Emergency Child Care Task Force, the year-long project has provided vital empirical information for advocates, care providers, child care service organizations, and local government agencies, as well as to New York State elected officials through the 2022 budget debates and decisions. The immediate goals of this project were: • to determine the actual true cost of quality child care by modality in Erie County, • to compare those actual costs with New York State Office of Child and Family Services (OCSF) market rate price of care, • to compare with the NYS/Erie County Department of Social Services (DSS) subsidy rates, • further, to compare what the actual true costs would be if all child care workers earned a living wage, • and finally, to provide the data and analysis to County and State officials for consideration in public policy and budgets negotiations in 2022. In both purpose and methodology, collaboration was central to this action research project. The widely representative and agile Live Well Erie Emergency Child Care Task Force and applied researchers of Cornell University ILR Buffalo Co-Lab worked as a team to compile reliable and valid information and to share the findings with public officials and stakeholders in a timely manner.

Url: https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/sites/default/files-d8/2022-09/The True Cost of Child Care Phase Two.Layout_ForDigital.pdf

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Authors: Creighton, Catherine; Fleron, Lou Jean; Weaver, Russell; Yasamin, With; Associates, Miller

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Health, Poverty and Welfare, Work, Family, and Time

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