Runaway Childcare Costs

Runaway Childcare Costs

Based on a survey conducted of several hundred child-care centers, child-care prices in 75 cities rose an average 6.4% last year (The CareerJournal.com, 2004). As I stated previously, the increases are forcing working parents to reshuffle their budgets and thus causing a major concern for childcare centers and providers all over. For poor families, the increasing rates create major budget disasters and individuals fitting into this category often face the inevitable decision of seeking childcare of low quality or other means of childcare such as family members. Rising childcare cost also leave out hundreds of thousands of children whose parents would have to shell out well over half their take-home pay. In addition, although there are subsidy programs to help families earning below the prescribed amount, this still leaves out a large number of families that may fall just above the prescribed amount. The results from my survey were to find out how many families from the area surveyed would actually qualify for government subsidies.

War workers' nursery. Mrs. Arlene Corbin (right), ...

The Wall Street Journal

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Then with that data, I would like to create extension programs that would boost the number of families that would be eligible to receive subsidies.

The key objective of this survey was to provide current information about the price and availability of childcare for low-income families. I also conducted research on how household characteristics, subsidy rules and state expenditures affect the likelihood of a family receiving a subsidy. Of course, it was found that, key household characteristics include family size and structure, and past participation in welfare. And since, subsidy recipients were about 2.5 percentage points more likely to be employed than non-recipients, and about eight percentage points more likely to be enrolled in school. (David Blau, Erdal Tekin, Chapter 10).

Child-care needs have recently attracted national attention with the U.S. Congress...