[Senate Hearing 117-372]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




                                                        S. Hrg. 117-372


       THE ROLE OF CHILDCARE IN AN EQUITABLE POSTPANDEMIC ECONOMY

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               before the

                            SUBCOMMITTEE ON
                            ECONOMIC POLICY

                                 of the

                              COMMITTEE ON
                   BANKING,HOUSING,AND URBAN AFFAIRS
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                                   ON

  EXAMINING CHILDCARE AS A CRITICAL PART OF HOW OUR ECONOMIC RECOVERY 
      PLAYS OUT AND WHAT OUR ECONOMY WILL LOOK LIKE GOING FORWARD

                               __________

                             JUNE 23, 2021

                               __________

  Printed for the use of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban 
                                Affairs



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                Available at: https: //www.govinfo.gov /




                                 ______
                                 

                 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

48-667 PDF                WASHINGTON : 2022











            COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRS

                     SHERROD BROWN, Ohio, Chairman

JACK REED, Rhode Island              PATRICK J. TOOMEY, Pennsylvania
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey          RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama
JON TESTER, Montana                  MIKE CRAPO, Idaho
MARK R. WARNER, Virginia             TIM SCOTT, South Carolina
ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts      MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland           THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada       JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana
TINA SMITH, Minnesota                BILL HAGERTY, Tennessee
KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona              CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  JERRY MORAN, Kansas
RAPHAEL WARNOCK, Georgia             KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota
                                     STEVE DAINES, Montana

                     Laura Swanson, Staff Director

                 Brad Grantz, Republican Staff Director

                      Cameron Ricker, Chief Clerk

                      Shelvin Simmons, IT Director

                    Charles J. Moffat, Hearing Clerk

                                 ______

                    Subcommittee on Economic Policy

                 ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts, Chair

           JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana, Ranking Republican Member

JACK REED, Rhode Island              TIM SCOTT, South Carolina
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland           THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
TINA SMITH, Minnesota                KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  STEVE DAINES, Montana

              Gabrielle Elul, Subcommittee Staff Director

         Natalia Riggin, Republican Subcommittee Staff Director

                                  (ii)











                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                        THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 2021

                                                                   Page

Opening statement of Chair Warren................................     1


                               WITNESSES

Fatima Goss Graves, President and CEO, National Women's Law 
  Center.........................................................     3
    Prepared statement...........................................    27
Betsey Stevenson, Professor of Public Policy and Economics, 
  Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.........................     4
    Prepared statement...........................................    34
Bernadette Ngoh, Founder, Trusted Care Family Day Care Home......     6
    Prepared statement...........................................    37
Rachel Greszler, Research Fellow in Economics, Budget and 
  Entitlements, The Heritage Foundation..........................     7
    Prepared statement...........................................    40
    Responses to written questions of:
        Senator Kennedy..........................................    62
Abby M. McCloskey, Founder and Principal, McCloskey Policy, LLC..     9
    Prepared statement...........................................    55
    Responses to written questions of:
        Senator Kennedy..........................................    66

                                 (iii)





 
       THE ROLE OF CHILDCARE IN AN EQUITABLE POSTPANDEMIC ECONOMY

                              ----------                              


                        THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 2021

                                       U.S. Senate,
         Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, 
                           Subcommittee on Economic Policy,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met at 2:32 p.m., via Webex and in room SD-
538, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Elizabeth Warren, 
Chair of the Subcommittee, presiding.

          OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIR ELIZABETH WARREN

    Chair Warren. Good afternoon, everyone.
    I want to welcome my colleagues and all of our witnesses to 
this hearing of the Banking Committee's Economic Policy 
Subcommittee.
    I want to thank Senator Kennedy for working with me and my 
staff to make this a successful hearing.
    I believe that this may be the first hearing about 
childcare in the history of the Banking Committee. But really, 
this should not be surprising. We are here to talk about our 
economy and economic recovery, and childcare is a critical part 
of how our economic recovery plays out and what our economy 
will look like going forward.
    As we look ahead to our postpandemic economy, childcare is 
essential for helping parents get back to work. A national 
survey found that nearly 20 percent of working parents left the 
workforce or reduced their hours solely due to a lack of 
childcare. And 26 percent of women who became unemployed during 
the pandemic attributed this to a lack of childcare.
    In order for parents to return to work, they need safe, 
reliable and affordable childcare. Without it, many parents 
will find that they are struggling to interview for jobs, let 
alone to hold down a job or advance their careers. A strong 
economic recovery depends on solving this problem.
    High-quality childcare and early learning is about parents' 
jobs. But it is also about early learning for children. A 
mountain of evidence shows that high-quality early learning 
supports important brain development, helps children get ready 
for school, and leads to higher earnings and better outcomes 
throughout a child's life. For every dollar we invest in high-
quality early childhood programs study after study shows that 
we get a return of somewhere between $4 and $9 back on down the 
line.
    New research has found that spending on programs that 
support children's health and well-being reduce medical costs, 
improve college attendance, and lead to higher earnings and 
higher tax payments. In other words, these programs pay for 
themselves by the time the children become adults. This is not 
just a nice thing to do. It is a smart investment that will 
yield returns for our country's future.
    And finally, we need to address the fact that childcare 
providers are seriously underpaid. Today, childcare workers 
earn an average of just $12 an hour. Childcare providers are 
some of our Nation's most important early teachers but our 
Nation has undervalued the work they do for far too long.
    Ninety-five percent of childcare providers are women and 
they are disproportionately women of color. Ensuring that 
childcare jobs are good jobs, with fair pay and benefits, and 
that jobs that will support families while doing this essential 
work, will permit childcare workers to stay in the field, to 
buildup expertise, and to improve the care they offer to our 
children.
    For generations, we have told parents that when it comes to 
finding quality, affordable childcare they are on their own. 
That is bad for parents, bad for babies, and bad for childcare 
workers. There is a reason that childcare was front and center 
in President Biden's American Families Plan. This is critical 
infrastructure that makes all other work possible.
    I am very concerned about the bipartisan framework released 
last week that did not include a word, not one word, about 
childcare. An infrastructure plan that does not include 
childcare does not address the challenges facing families in 
Massachusetts or anywhere else around the country.
    Now is not the time to abandon what President Biden has 
proposed. Now is the time to expand it.
    I am fighting for a $700 billion Federal investment to make 
sure that every single family who needs it can find safe, 
affordable childcare. That is good for parents, it is good for 
children, it is good for providers, and it is good for our 
whole economy.
    So that is why we are here today, to understand the problem 
and to figure out how to address the challenges facing families 
and build a stronger economy that works for all of us.
    Our first witness, Fatima Goss Graves, is the President and 
CEO of the National Women's Law Center, where she has spent her 
career fighting to advance opportunities for women and girls.
    Next, we will hear from Dr. Betsey Stevenson, a Professor 
of Public Policy and Economics at the University of Michigan. 
Dr. Stevenson has served on the Council of Economic Advisors as 
an advisor on social policy and labor market issues and as 
Chief Economist at the Department of Labor.
    We are lucky to be joined today by Bernadette Ngoh, a 
founder of Trusted Care, a family childcare program in West 
Haven, Connecticut. As a family childcare provider, Ms. Ngoh 
operates her program 24 hours a day--think about that--and is 
committed to quality, equity, accessability, and community 
support.
    After Ms. Ngoh, we will hear from Abby McCloskey, the 
Founder and Principal of McCloskey Policy, LLC, a research and 
consulting firm serving businesses and political leaders across 
the country.
    And finally, we are joined by Rachel Greszler, a Research 
Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, whose work focuses on 
retirement and labor policies as well as workplace and family 
issues.
    The pandemic has exposed the challenges that have faced 
working families and childcare providers for decades. We have 
an historic opportunity right now to make sure that every 
family that needs it can find and afford childcare, and that 
every childcare provider earns a living wage with good 
benefits.
    So I want to thank all of our witnesses for joining us 
today. I look forward to hearing your testimony.
    There is going to be a vote at three o'clock. I am going to 
step out during that vote and Senator Smith is going to take 
over the gavel and run the hearing while I vote.
    And with that, I would like to start with Ms. Goss Graves 
and recognize you for 5 minutes for your testimony, please.

 STATEMENT OF FATIMA GOSS GRAVES, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATIONAL 
                       WOMEN'S LAW CENTER

    Ms. Goss Graves. Well good afternoon, Chair Warren and 
Ranking Member Kennedy and all of the distinguished members of 
the Subcommittee.
    My name is Fatima Goss Graves, and I am President and CEO 
at the National Women's Law Center. For both Chair Warren and 
Senator Smith, we are so grateful for your leadership on 
childcare. And we are grateful to Congress for the American 
Rescue Plan and the 2020 COVID relief packages which together 
provided a $50 billion amount in relief funding that saved the 
childcare sector from collapse. But we can make no mistake, the 
investment in childcare cannot end there.
    For the childcare and early learning sector, the pandemic 
has really laid bare and really exacerbated deep inequities in 
our childcare system that have long been baked-in, that 
families are required to pay sums that are unaffordable, that 
early educators are being paid poverty-level wages, and too 
many communities across the country are faced with situations 
where there are not enough childcare workers and there are 
insufficient facilities to support the demand.
    Since the start of the pandemic, the decline in mother's 
labor force participation have been nearly double that of 
fathers. Research shows that COVID has led mothers of young 
children in particular to reduce their work hours by as many as 
four to five times more than fathers.
    And while these numbers are cause for alarm, what is 
actually more surprising, I think, is we are not seeing an even 
larger reduction in labor force participation yet. And that is 
because throughout history mothers have found workarounds. 
Workarounds by accepting jobs that pay lower wages. Workarounds 
by putting off educational opportunities, opportunities to grow 
in their careers and to provide for their family, foregoing 
other necessities for their families and for themselves because 
the cost of childcare eats up a third or more of their income, 
all while working themselves to the bone to care for their 
families.
    And as parents are desperately seeking childcare in this 
moment, we risk not only undermining employment, undermining 
economic growth in this country, but also undermining 
children's long-term development.
    When we invest in children starting at birth it yields 
long-term positive outcomes for their health, for their 
education options, for their employment options. And from birth 
to age three, we know that children's brains are making more 
than 1 million neural connections per second. And that is 
influenced greatly by caregivers.
    So what we need is universal and reliable and affordable 
high-quality childcare so that all parents, but also the mostly 
women and women in color in particular who have been barely 
hanging on in this pandemic can get and can keep jobs, and that 
the workers, the mostly women workforce, the mostly women of 
color workforce, can do the critical work of care that we all 
value so much for pay that actually matches that work.
    We are seeking and think we need a $700 billion investment 
in directly spending to ensure that we can meet this moment. 
Meet a moment that no family would pay more than 7 percent of 
their income, so that childcare providers can be paid on parity 
with kindergarten teachers, and that there can be more 
childcare slots available for families in this country, and 
that we can get 2.3 million good paying jobs nearly all of 
which would be held likely by women.
    And this investment will also enable parents, and 
especially mothers, to participate in the labor force and have 
greater financial security.
    We have a new study out with Columbia University that shows 
that increasing the number of women with young children working 
full time, increasing this investment would increase the number 
of women with young children working full time by 17 percent. 
And for women without a college degree, it is 31 percent.
    So I will just conclude with just a couple of final 
thoughts, and that is pre-COVID our status quo was 
unsustainable. We knew that. It was unsustainable. It left 
families behind. It left women workers in a bind. We can do the 
work that demonstrates that childcare is infrastructure in this 
country.
    Thank you so much for having me and I look forward to any 
questions.
    Senator Warren. Thank you very much, Ms. Goss Graves. That 
is very helpful.
    Dr. Stevenson is joining us by Webex. You are recognized 
for 5 minutes.
    [Pause.]
    Chair Warren. There is that long pause. Dr. Stevenson, are 
you there?

 STATEMENT OF BETSEY STEVENSON, PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC POLICY AND 
 ECONOMICS, GERALD R. FORD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY, UNIVERSITY 
                          OF MICHIGAN

    Ms. Stevenson. I am. Thank you, very much.
    Thank you for the invitation to speak today about 
childcare. I an economist who has spent much of the past three 
decades trying to better understand women's employment, 
American families, and the porous boundaries between our 
personal lives and our work lives. These porous boundaries were 
completely shredded during the pandemic as tens of millions of 
people began to work from home for the first time along with 
their children who lost access to in-person school and 
childcare.
    My research has shown that policy choices shape the 
constraints that people face and therefore their employment and 
family decisions. The choices you make now about childcare will 
shape the U.S. macroeconomy for decades to come by influencing 
who returns to work, what types of jobs parents take, and what 
kinds of promotion paths parents are able to access.
    It is not just women, men's employment choices are also 
shaped by access to childcare. In 2014, a survey found that 49 
percent of parents said that at some point they had passed up a 
job because it conflicted with family obligations.
    In a recent survey that I have been running just over the 
past month in conjunction with RIWI, we found that childcare 
responsibilities during the COVID-19 crisis impacted the 
employment of 59 percent of parents. Only 41 percent of parents 
said childcare had not affected their job.
    Many cut their work hours, turned down promotions, changed 
jobs for more flexibility, paused training or education, or 
quit jobs entirely. These impacts were reported by men and 
women almost in equal number, a fact that reflects the shift 
toward greater, although not complete, equality in the home.
    Let me emphasize that the pandemic did highlight that women 
continue to bear disproportionate responsibility for care 
giving within families and the COVID crisis impacted women more 
than men in many ways.
    The first factor was the nature of the recession itself. 
This was our very first ever service sector driven recession. 
Between February 2020 and May 2020, women lost 13 million jobs 
compared to 9 million jobs lost by men. However, over the last 
several months of recovery the gap has been reversing as jobs 
for women have been expanded faster than those by men. This is 
important because it points to the role that women are playing 
in the economy and how essential they are.
    The second factor was, of course, the closing of schools 
and childcare. More than two-thirds of children live in 
households in which all parents work. The pandemic made salient 
the many roles that schools play. K-12 education is typically 
thought of as a source of education for children and an 
investment in the next generation. It is. It is also a source 
of childcare for many families who are able to work for pay 
during the roughly 6 hours that their children are being taught 
and cared for by professional educators provided for through 
their tax dollars.
    Childcare for younger children serves a very similar dual 
purpose. Early childhood educators can improve outcomes for 
children by engaging in developmentally appropriate curriculum-
based activities. They also provide crucial care for children 
in households in which all parents work.
    The third factor is related to changes in family life. And 
I really want to highlight this because it is often overlooked. 
Mothers of young children were more likely to be in the labor 
force at the time of the pandemic than in any time in the past. 
In 2019, mothers of children 6 years old and younger had the 
highest labor force participation from any period in history.
    These challenges that women faced highlight our failure to 
adapt childcare, workplace flexibility, and workplace parental 
leave policies as women have entered the workforce and gained 
experience, training, and education that has made them an 
essential part of the economy. Women are no longer the 
secondary earners as economists used to refer to them, able to 
step back from work whenever the household demanded it. Today, 
more than 40 percent of mothers are the primary earner for 
their family, earning at least half of total household income.
    I want to highlight in my last few minutes just really the 
important role that childcare plays. Childcare and education 
has more in common to the banking system then you may suspect. 
It is the backbone of our future economy because it invests in 
and develops our human capital. While women have done this 
labor for no or little pay, do not underestimate its value. 
Human talent to these investments and its ultimately human 
ingenuity that fuels our economic growth.
    Early childhood education does three things: it provides 
childcare that allows parents to work, thereby raising 
household income. It develops skills in children that lead to 
higher lifetime earnings. And it supports the equal investments 
in children necessary for a competitive market economy to reach 
its potential.
    Thank you.
    Chair Warren. Thank very much, Dr. Stevenson. I appreciate 
your being here.
    And now, Ms. Ngoh, you are recognized for 5 minutes for 
your testimony.

STATEMENT OF BERNADETTE NGOH, FOUNDER, TRUSTED CARE FAMILY DAY 
                           CARE HOME

    Ms. Ngoh. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you 
today.
    I am Bernadette Akum Ngoh. I own a childcare program in 
Connecticut. My program runs 24 hours to take care of the 
varied needs of workers, parents.
    I was raised in Cameroon by a single mom who had little 
education but wanted me to go to school, wanted me to learn. 
And that helped me along the line to acquire education.
    I did go to school, just like we are looking forward to our 
kids to go to school. I earned a degree in law, I earned a 
degree and postgraduate diploma in women's law. I earned a 
degree in counseling and an MBA.
    What does this tell me? That early childhood education is 
very important today, tomorrow, and forever. If we have to 
change our economy, we have to invest in early childhood 
education.
    Before 2010, I used to be an Adjunct Professor at the 
University of Bridgeport here in Connecticut. I had the 
opportunity to teach older kids. But when I had my own kids, I 
had to switch lanes and decided to teach young kids. I saw 
something that needs to be done.
    If we do not invest, if we do not bank in our kids, then we 
are creating a problem down the line. Entrusting our kids with 
what they need for the future is like doing something we call 
prevention is better than cure. Everything that the kids need 
at this age is very helpful because it will take down the costs 
of every other thing that when we grow older we will need.
    So investing in early childhood, to me, is very, very 
crucial.
    I want to emphasize one thing, that early childhood 
education, daycare in particular, helps everybody. The 
multiplier effect of me keeping that child and the mom going 
out there to work will have a longer lasting benefit to the 
economy as a whole. It is very important for us to realize 
that.
    The impact of early childhood does not only end with the 
kid that we are taking care of, the parents, but it also 
affects the general economy. If I do not take care of the kids, 
you will not be there working.
    The Senators would not be doing their job. The doctors 
would not be doing their job. So the effect of that has a 
multiplier effect everywhere within our economy now and in the 
future.
    Before the pandemic hit, it was tough being a daycare 
provider. The pandemic hit us so hard. Unfortunately, we were 
quarantined twice. How did that affect our program? We had to 
close down. How did that affect other workers? They were unable 
to go out and work for several--for about 2 weeks, if not more, 
because of what was going on.
    I am submitting that daycare is very, very important. Our 
country has a childcare problem that needs to be resolved. If 
we do not pay attention to the crisis that childcare is facing, 
that problem is going to multiply down the line. If we are 
growing the next generations of presidents, CEOs, engineers, 
and doctors, we need to give them what they need at this age 
because this age is the time that we build the foundation.
    If we fail to build the foundation properly, then what we 
are leaving out there will be disastrous. It is easier to 
repair the structure up there and it is very difficult and 
costly to repair the foundation. Childcare, education, we build 
the foundation. We build the brains of the kids that we care 
for and we need to be reward as such.
    We do not only build the brains of the kids that we take 
care of, we do much more than that. We listen to their parents 
when they share their challenges back at home, when they share 
their challenges back at work. We have all of this going on 
within our daycare program and the remunerations we get are far 
less than what we put out there in terms of services, in terms 
of the quality, and our skills.
    So I am proposing that we pass this bill to be able to fund 
childcare programs.
    Thank you.
    Senator Warren. Thank you, Ms. Ngoh. I very much appreciate 
your being here.
    Ms. Greszler, you are now recognized by Webex for 5 
minutes.

  STATEMENT OF RACHEL GRESZLER, RESEARCH FELLOW IN ECONOMICS, 
        BUDGET AND ENTITLEMENTS, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION

    Ms. Greszler. Good afternoon, and thank you for the 
opportunity to be here today.
    As a wife and a mom of six young kids ranging in age from 3 
to 12, I have spent the last 13 years navigating the same thing 
that millions of parents have done and facing the decisions to 
determine what work and childcare is best for them.
    If there is one thing that I have learned, it is that there 
is no single work-family balance nor childcare setting that is 
best for everyone. These decisions are not easy and I know I 
continually question whether we are doing the right thing. Only 
through the ability to carve my own pathway and achieve a 
flexible balance have I become more comfortable and confident 
in the choices that we have made.
    Families need to be free to pursue what is best for them 
and not what politicians, Government programs, or societal 
norms tell them to do. I am actually optimistic that the 
changes brought on by the pandemic could benefit families 
through more flexible and accommodating work options.
    Women have already overcome what were initially 
disproportionate employment impacts and a recent study actually 
found that childcare struggles is no longer weighing on 
employment declines. That means that heavily subsidized 
childcare and universal pre-K will not solve the current 
employment problems. But they would push more parents into the 
workforce. And that is one of their goals, to prevent parents 
from having to give up income in order to stay home with kids.
    Allegedly, Government programs are great for kids, 
producing seven for one returns. But are politicians really 
telling me that my children's future value to society will be 
multitudes higher if other people pay for my children to attend 
full-time Government directed childcare and if I or my husband 
give up some income to stay home with them, or if we choose any 
other combination of non-Government childcare?
    It is wrong to discount the enormous value of parents 
investing time in their children. And moreover, there is 
actually zero evidence that large scale Government programs 
could mimic the high returns of tiny boutique programs that 
serve disadvantaged children a half century ago.
    Present day programs like Head Start and Tennessee's 
voluntary pre-K program have provided little or no lasting 
gains and they have had some consequences. Moreover, only 18 
percent of families prefer to have both parents working and 
their kids attending paid childcare. And those families are 
disproportionately wealthy and affluent.
    Nudging families away from their preferences could 
backfire, as Quebec $5 per day subsidized childcare program 
showed. It did increase work among young moms and it shifted a 
lot of kids from family care to Government care. But 
researchers found striking evidence that children's health and 
behaviors were worse off. They had higher crime rates as 
teenagers, and families experienced more hostility and less 
consistent parenting.
    There is also the reality that Government childcare will 
drive up costs and limit choices. Requirements like extremely 
low child-to-teacher ratios and college degrees for childcare 
providers are a big reason behind D.C. $43,000 price tag for 
two kids attending childcare.
    Small family and religious providers are usually less 
expensive and more flexible but Government subsidies and 
directives could actually crowd them out. Already, onerous 
Government regulations contributed to a 52 percent decline in 
the number of small family providers since 2005.
    And while childcare is inherently expensive, there are ways 
that policymakers can help families obtain the care they need 
at a cost they can afford. My written testimony provides more 
details but some helpful actions include letting families keep 
more of their own money. Reducing regulations that do not 
contribute to improved quality and safety. Giving parents more 
choices with the public childcare programs that are out there. 
Eliminating barriers to employer-provided childcare. Letting 
workers choose to be independent workers. And enabling more 
flexible childcare settings.
    For example, Head Start costs as much as full-time 
childcare but often only provides half as many hours. Families 
should be able to take that money to a provider that works 
better for them.
    If I watch my friend's kids one afternoon per week, I 
should not have to convert my home into a licensed childcare 
facility. If a couple of moms want to form a co-op, they should 
not have to become employees and employers of one another.
    And daycare should not have to throw out expensive 
materials when a simple duct tape fix would do the trick. But 
apparently duct tape harbors germs so it is not allowed.
    Caring for children is something that humans have done 
since the dawn of time. And childcare is not unique to COVID-19 
or even to 21st century America. But as more Americans desire 
increasingly flexible work, easing childcare restrictions could 
help more families meet their desires.
    The solution to a more equitable economy is to empower 
parents instead of politicians to make the choices that are 
best for them.
    Thank you.
    Senator Smith [presiding]. Thank you very much, and we will 
now hear from Ms. Abby McCloskey, who will be joining us via 
Webex.

    STATEMENT OF ABBY M. MCCLOSKEY, FOUNDER AND PRINCIPAL, 
                      MCCLOSKEY POLICY LLC

    Ms. McCloskey. Thank you, Senator.
    Chair Warren, Ranking Member Kennedy, and members of the 
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
    The nature of work and family has changed significantly in 
recent decades. The majority of parents of young children are 
now in the labor force, and mothers are the primary breadwinner 
in 40 percent of families. This has created tensions around 
work and care that both the Government and markets have failed 
to adequately address.
    Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed just how 
intertwined care is with the economy, providing a unique 
opportunity to rethink the childcare landscape. As policymakers 
weigh new reforms, I would like to put forward five principles 
to target our childcare investment.
    Number one, the benefits of early childhood programs are 
most pronounced for disadvantaged families. We should focus our 
efforts here. Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman has 
found a 7 to 13 percent annual return on early childhood 
development programs for disadvantaged children. Moreover, the 
children of those who attended such programs also have 
exhibited improved economic outcomes. This suggests that 
targeted investment in early childhood care could improve 
intergenerational upward mobility for at-risk communities.
    In contrast, research on broader programs such as universal 
childcare and universal pre-K is mixed, with some studies 
showing positive effects and other showing fading or negative 
ones. More research is needed before justifying universal 
programs.
    Number two, we should increase parents' choices for care 
providers. Childcare needs and values vary widely. As such, 
policymakers should seek to create more options for care, 
rather than one-size-fits-all public programs. This could be 
done through the existing Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit 
which, in essence, is a school choice program for early 
childhood care. Parents can use the credit to send their 
children to center-based care, in-home care, a church program, 
preschool, a language program, all of which could be full-time, 
part-time, or something in between.
    This would allow for proliferation of different kinds of 
care providers in response to what parents want instead of in 
response to what Washington wants. Making the credit refundable 
would benefit low-income households for whom childcare is a 
barrier to work and high-quality care options are most out of 
reach.
    Number three, we need to account for existing programs and 
make sure that new spending is paid for. The Federal debt is at 
historic levels and that is before any infrastructure package. 
We must be judicious with our spending priorities and pay-fors. 
We are not starting from scratch in the childcare space. New 
programs should seek to rationalize existing landscape of 
Government programs and subsidies to reduce waste and overlap.
    Additionally, new programs should be accompanied by a 
review of existing spending instead of relying wholly on higher 
taxes. This spending review should be comprehensive and not 
limited to existing childcare programs. This is because in the 
next decade, Federal spending on adults over the age of 65 will 
grow to more than half of all spending, while the share of 
spending on children will shrink to 7 percent.
    Number four, we should make it easier for parents to spend 
time with infants. While much of the discussion on childcare 
focuses on care outside the home, care inside the home from 
parents if vitally important. Yet, the status quo makes it very 
difficult for parents to spend this critical time with their 
children even in the early weeks of life. One study has found 
that one in four women return to work within 2 weeks of giving 
birth.
    A Federal paid parental leave policy would change this and 
is associated with reduced rates of neonatal fatalities, 
increased involvement from fathers, and higher wages and 
reduced reliance on welfare for mothers. Unlike broader paid 
leave packages, its cost is modest and contained. Boosting 
wages for parents through economic growth and Earned Income Tax 
Credit also would provide more flexibility to be at home if 
that is what they chose to do.
    Number five, we should seek to bring down the costs of 
care. One contributor to high childcare costs is the decline in 
the supply of providers and, in particular, in-home providers. 
This is, in part, due to burdensome regulation. A care package 
should include Federal incentives for States to review and 
streamline their childcare regulations wherever possible. We 
should seek to increase the number of care providers and 
opportunities for their career advancement in a way that is 
sustainable.
    For example, multiple States have begun to implement 
apprenticeship programs for early childhood educators, 
providing them for opportunities for increased skills and 
higher pay. These efforts have been supported by the Trump 
White House, by the Center for American Program, and by the 
Bipartisan Policy Center. We should seek to expand these 
efforts.
    Having worked with leaders across the political spectrum in 
my career, I am convinced that there are targeted reforms that 
would deliver significant benefits for American families and to 
the economy.
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify and I look forward 
to our discussion.
    Senator Smith. Thank you, very much.
    I want to thank all of our panelists for your testimony and 
I am going to now recognize myself for 5 minutes of questioning 
while Senator Warren is voting.
    So I start from the place that childcare is a family and an 
economic imperative. And I think that today's hearing is so 
important, and I thank my great colleague Chair Warren for 
holding it. Because I do not think our economy will work, nor 
will it return to normal, if we do not have safe, high-quality 
childcare and early education options. And I think that we know 
that high-quality early education closes opportunity gaps for 
children. This is what we know.
    This is, of course, as several of you have pointed out, 
this is about equity for children and families.
    I have learned from speaking with childcare providers and 
early education providers across the gamut in Minnesota that 
the whole business model for childcare and early learning in 
our country is just not working. It is not working for 
families, for businesses, for providers themselves who often 
describe this work as a labor of love and certainly not the 
place where they are making a lot of money. And it is not 
working for the vast majority of the providers themselves who, 
as has been pointed out, are most often women and women of 
color.
    So let me just ask a couple of questions on this topic. I 
am going to start with Ms. Goss Graves, if I may. You 
mentioned, in your testimony, that childcare is infrastructure. 
And this, of course, the word infrastructure has been thrown 
around a lot over the last couple of months here in Washington. 
I have joined Chair Warren and several of my colleagues in 
urging big investments in childcare because I agree that 
childcare is the work that makes all other work possible.
    But could you just say a little bit more, Ms. Goss Graves, 
about what does it mean to you when you say that childcare is 
infrastructure? And what do you say to those who say that 
infrastructure is really just about roads and bridges and 
broadband? Not that that is not important, too.
    Ms. Goss Graves. I actually think when you think about 
roads infrastructure, broadband, you understand why childcare 
is infrastructure. Childcare is the care and the work that 
makes all other work possible. It is something that connects 
families with jobs. And it is the work that ensures that entire 
sectors can actually work.
    And one of the reasons it was so fragile going into the 
pandemic and we watched it basically collapse is because we 
have been treating it too much like an individual problem. But 
if we actually invest over the long term like it is 
infrastructure, like it is a public good foundational for our 
economy and our families, then we have an opportunity for 
something very difficult going forward.
    Senator Smith. I think the infrastructure word sometimes 
sounds kind of hard and impersonal but it gets, in my mind, 
exactly at what you are talking about which is the fundamental 
pieces that we need in place for families to work, for 
businesses to work, for our economy to work.
    And I will tell you, this is what I hear also from business 
owners in Minnesota, especially in many rural parts of my 
State, where there is such a shortage of childcare and 
therefore a real challenge with fathers and mothers being able 
to work. And to be clear, they work because they have to work, 
because that is how they pay the bills.
    Let me ask a question, if I could, of Professor Stevenson. 
In February of 2021, the Minneapolis Fed reported that labor 
force participation among moms of young children had dropped 11 
percent due to the pandemic. And what the Fed found was that 
early on moms and dads left the workforce to care for their 
kids at home at roughly equal levels. But while nearly all dads 
went back to work, too often moms were not able to.
    So Dr. Stevenson, could I ask you what does it mean for our 
economy and for our society in general when women are pushed 
out of the labor force because of a lack of access to 
childcare?
    Ms. Stevenson. Yes, thank you for that question.
    We know that a lot of women were pushed to make a choice 
that is different than what they would have made because they 
did not have any other options.
    Women have been getting more education than men and have 
closed experience gaps with men. What this means is that they 
are fundamental to our economy. They are some of our most 
experienced, talented workers. And when they stay home, we lose 
that. They lose the opportunity to have their career continue 
to develop.
    One of my biggest concerns is that even as their children 
grow, we will have a hard time reintegrating women back into 
the labor force.
    If you look since the last recession, the 2008 recession, 
two-thirds of the job growth went to women. So women have been 
driving--if you think back to that, what we called sort of the 
miracle 10 years of growth where month-after-month employers 
tired to hire more people, and we though ultimately they are 
going to run out of people, right? That is why the Fed started 
to pull back to early. But women responded to the call and they 
entered the labor force at higher rates.
    The Kansas City Fed also found that women led the 
resurgence in prime age labor force that occurred between 2015 
and 2019. So if you think about where we were in 2019, if we 
had women stay back, if they had not led that growth, we would 
not have had much of the growth we had between 2015 and 2019.
    To put that in perspective, what a lot of people talk 
about, was it the tax cuts? Was it regulation? What helped us 
grow between 2010 and 2019? It was women.
    Senator Smith. Thank you very much.
    I am over my time but I am going to ask one more question 
to give Senator Warnock a chance to get settled in before I 
turn to him.
    I would like to ask a question of Ms. Ngoh, if I may.
    I really appreciate you sharing your experience. I so value 
hearing from people are doing the work on the ground, as you 
are. And I am so amazed how you can organize your effort for 24 
hours a day. That is incredible.
    I have introduced legislation called the Child Care Supply 
Improvement Act, which is specifically designed to help smaller 
childcare providers. I am very excited about this legislation 
and I am glad to have the support of Senators Warren and Wyden 
and Brown and Casey.
    What the bill would do is to permanently increase annual 
funding for the Child Care Entitlement to States to $10 billion 
and also invest $5 billion per year to help improve childcare 
supply and quality and affordability.
    So Ms. Ngoh, could you just take a minute to tell us, 
before I turn to Senator Warnock, when you were starting up 
your organization, what obstacles did you face getting started? 
And how can we help people like you, who are interested in 
doing this work, how can we help you better get started?
    Ms. Ngoh. When I was starting my business, I faced a lot of 
obstacles, not limited to what I am going to say. No trainings, 
I needed trainings to be more able to reach out to meet the 
needs of the kids. I needed equipment. I needed help with 
licensing. How can I get licensed? And how can I get support 
for that to be done? I needed some type of grants to be able to 
buy some of the basic tools and equipment and toys that I need 
for my daycare.
    I needed help with trying to make my premises helpful? For 
example, if I had lead in the house, I was told they had to 
come and check if you had lead in the house. And that is so 
much money for that to be done.
    You want to be sure that plumbing is good, lighting is 
good. You want to be sure that everything that regulation 
requires, you meet it. If you do not meet the standards stated 
by licensing, then you cannot start your daycare program. What 
we will need is funding to help us with that.
    So those obstacles were there, but I see great improvement 
with all these programs. Thank you.
    Senator Smith. Thank you so much, I so appreciate it.
    I am going to hand the gavel back to Senator Warren so I 
can go vote, and I believe Senator Warnock might be next.
    Chair Warren [presiding]. Thank you, very much.
    Thank you, Senator Smith. I appreciate your taking over the 
duties of the presiding officer.
    Senator Warnock, you are recognized to ask your questions.
    Senator Warnock. Thank you so much, Chair Warren, for 
organizing this conversation about childcare and equitable 
postpandemic economies.
    Even both the coronavirus pandemic, the childcare industry 
faced unique challenges. Childcare was not affordable for many 
families. At the same time, childcare workers were underpaid.
    In 2020, childcare work ranked among the bottom 2 percent 
by salary before the pandemic, with educators with all of their 
training making just over $12 an hour. In Georgia, workers in 
unsubsidized centers earned an average of $10.14 an hour. 
People who were taking care of our children and educating them.
    These challenges disproportionately affect women, 
particularly Black and Brown women, who make up the bulk of the 
childcare workforce. During the pandemic, childcare providers 
faced record low enrollment, forcing providers to reduce costs 
by paying even lower wages or laying off the staff.
    Ms. Graves, can you talk about the importance of paying 
early educators, who are educating our children during that 
critical time of brain development, a livable wage and the 
impact that this will have on our ability to fill these 
critical jobs with well-qualified people?
    Ms. Goss Graves. So thank you, Senator Warnock, for that 
question.
    I think it is one of our Nation's travesties, the wages 
that childcare workers are paid. And what it means is that we 
are fixing the problem of childcare by basically making a 
largely Black and Brown women workforce bear the brunt and the 
cost of it.
    The solution really is to pay them parity to what we 
already pay elementary kindergarten teachers. So we already 
know and have an understanding of what it looks like to pay 
them fairly. And we are all hurting from it. It is not just the 
workers and their families. We are all hurting from it because 
it means that that workforce is less stable. And as there is a 
surge of people trying to return to work and needing more 
childcare, they are struggling to have enough workers who are 
willing to work there for poverty wages when there may be an 
opportunity to work for a few dollars an hour more somewhere 
else.
    Senator Warnock. Right.
    And Ms. Ngoh, in your experience as an unsubsidized 
childcare provider, what would Federal investments in childcare 
do for your center? How would that improve the service you 
offer to children? The kind of talent you are able to attract? 
And the support you can provide for these families?
    Ms. Ngoh. Thank you so much.
    Childcare is very important in our community. What I am 
looking at is what is childcare? And maybe, if we understand 
the job we do, the job I do as a childcare provider, we will be 
able to look at the remuneration and see and ask and solve the 
question is that remuneration up to what we do, what we offer?
    As a family childcare provider, I am building, I am 
constructing the brains of kids just like infrastructure. We 
build. So every single day, what are we doing? We are building 
the brains of early kids, trying to make sure that by the time 
they become of age they are ready.
    What do we do? We support them as they grow. We support 
their physical development. We support the creative 
development, we support their cognitive development, we support 
their social and emotional development.
    We are building the foundation for the kids that will be 
here tomorrow to run our Nation. We are building the foundation 
for our Nation.
    If we fail to build this foundation correctly, what are we 
going to produce? We are going to produce leaders that are not 
capable of doing the job tomorrow.
    So like I indicated earlier, if we have funding, we will be 
able to do our job properly. What are we going to do? We will 
be able to provide them with quality education. We will be able 
to help them understand the things that they need to do at this 
age.
    I watch kids that are between the ages of 6 weeks up to the 
ages of 10. At this time, I have a child that is 18 months old. 
This falls within the critical period of building the child's 
brain. If I fail to do what I need to do, sometimes because of 
lack of resources or because the parents cannot bring the kids 
to my daycare consistently because this week they cannot afford 
to pay their out-of-pocket family fees, what happens? That 
child gets services that are not sustainable. It does help the 
child. It does not help me. It does not help our economy.
    If the Government subsidizes the family childcare program, 
if they remunerate us for our skills, they remunerate us for 
our time, they remunerate us for all of the things that we do, 
we do not only watch the kids. We also listen to their parents, 
what they struggle with.
    If the Government can subsidize our programs, we will be 
able to continuously provide quality education for these young 
brains.
    Thank you.
    Senator Warnock. Thank you, Ms. Ngoh. I do not mean to 
interrupt, but I am 1 minute old and I am going to beg the 
Chair for 1 more minute.
    You mentioned the economy, and I would like to ask Dr. 
Stevenson, because I hail from the State of Georgia where the 
average family pays 60 percent of their income to cover the 
cost of childcare for two children. I have two children, two 
small preschool children so I can think about the impact that 
must have on families, 60 percent of their income to cover the 
costs of two children.
    Dr. Stevenson, if Congress invested what it should in high-
quality childcare, how could this actually benefit the broader 
economy even for folks who do not have children? I think when 
people hear subsidies, they think that this is some kind of 
Government giveaway. But is there an argument to be made for 
how this would actually strengthen the economy?
    Ms. Stevenson. Thank you for that question.
    Absolutely, because Government subsidies for childcare will 
allow more families to afford high-quality early childhood 
education, which is exactly what you just heard, about how it 
builds brains and it makes children more productive as adults.
    Research has taken a look at why so few kids get access to 
high-quality childcare. There are a lot of different 
arrangements out there. But what drives people's choices? It is 
what they can afford.
    There is research that has found that in childcare markets, 
quality problems reflect not parents' desire but their ability 
to afford it. Parents would spend more if they could. And in 
fact, that is exactly what we see. High income parents are 
spending more. They spend a lot on early childhood education, 
on childcare and investing in their children. And that is 
creating an inequality in adulthood that then is exacerbated 
and grows and grows.
    So what we need, if we want an economy that can compete on 
a level playing field, that can get the most out of all our 
unique individual's talents, we need to invest in all of our 
children equally. And that is why subsidizing early childhood 
education will accomplish that by making sure that more 
children, the parents and the families of more children can 
afford the high-quality investments that you have been hearing 
about.
    Senator Warnock. Thank you, so much. And than you, Madame 
Chair.
    Chair Warren. Thank you. Those were important questions. 
Thank you, Senator Warnock.
    Senator Reed.
    Senator Reed. Thank you very much, Madame Chairman.
    Ms. Graves, a follow on to the question with respect to 
better pay is broader, it is collective bargaining rights. Not 
just pay but the working hours, professional training, all 
these things. Would that improve childcare in the country, in 
your view?
    Ms. Goss Graves. There is no question that the ability to 
bargain, the ability to form a union and advocate collectively 
could be transformative for care workers more broadly. One of 
the really tough things about our long history of care work is 
that they were shut out of many important parts of our labor 
laws and protections.
    And what you have seen in a few places is an opportunity 
for care workers to come together. That happened over the last 
year in California with great success, where they can bargain 
collectively for wages. So that is a thing that would also 
help.
    But the truth of the matter is we keep coming back to the 
math problem, that families really cannot afford to pay more 
and workers should not have to take less or even maintain the 
very low wages they are paid.
    Senator Reed. Thank you.
    Professor Stevenson, following on that comment by Ms. 
Graves, there is a market failure here. When you have families 
that cannot afford it, and yet the workers are significantly 
underpaid, the market is not working. So what do we have to do, 
in a couple of steps?
    Ms. Stevenson. Yes, it is absolutely a market failure. And 
it is very similar to the kinds of problems we have in K-12 
education. If we were to ask parents to out-of-pocket pay for 
100 percent of their children's education, what we would find 
is some parents simply would not be able to afford it. And that 
is--we decided long, long ago that we were going to ensure that 
children got education in primary school, that all children got 
access to education.
    What we have learned since is actually those brain 
developments start early on. And we need to be providing that 
education earlier.
    What an economist would say is what is the market failure? 
Well, it would be great if people could borrow the money they 
needed to make the investments and then pay it off over the 
course of their lifetime as they earned more as adults. That is 
exactly what taxes are. People should be getting invested in 
through tax dollars as children. And when they go to work as 
adults, they will pay it back in the taxes they pay out of 
their higher earnings from those investments.
    Senator Reed. Well, thank you.
    By the way, thank you so much for your help on work share. 
When we were developing that concept, your insights were 
incredibly useful and again, thank you.
    You may accept the encomium. I think that is the phrase.
    Ms. Stevenson. [Nodding.]
    Senator Reed. Let the record show nodding head.
    Chair Warren. I got the nodding head.
    Senator Reed. You got the nodding head. OK.
    I just want to commend Ms. Ngoh for her great work. My time 
is expiring, but thank you very much. Thank you, Madame 
Chairman. Let me thank the panel, too, and I would yield back.
    Chair Warren. Thank you, Senator Reed.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you so much, Madame Chair. Thank you 
for convening this hearing. Thank you for your leadership on 
this issue and for working families across the country.
    And thank you for our panel, for joining us today and 
sharing your expertise.
    When I was running for the U.S. Senate and when I was 
elected, it was very clear to me that Georgia families expected 
change and they expected Congress to invest in them, in working 
families in Georgia, in improving the quality of life, 
investing in prosperity for working families in Georgia.
    And as soon as we got here, I was so pleased to join 
colleagues like the Chair and Senator Reverend Warnock to get 
to work. And that is why I am proud to be able to announce to 
the people of Georgia that because of the American Rescue Plan 
Act, which we passed into law, working Georgians who as a 
couple make $150,000 per year or less or as a single parent 
make $112,500 a year or less, will soon start to see $300 
deposited directly into their bank accounts each month for 
every child they have under the age of 6 and $250 each month 
for every child aged 6 to 17 years of age. This expansion of 
the Child Tax Credit is so important.
    And Ms. Graves, I would like to ask you, what will be the 
impact of this expanded Child Tax Credit and these monthly 
payments that families will see on the ability of families to 
take care of their kids and also to get back into the 
workforce?
    Ms. Goss Graves. So, there are many parts of the American 
Rescue Plan that brought me great joy, but the Child Tax Credit 
and that investment in our lowest income families is one that 
just made me really proud of this Congress and our country.
    A big deal that 4 million families will be moved above the 
poverty line. So when we think about children in this country, 
that we did this in the midst of a pandemic, that responded 
that with that level, of course it is really exciting.
    And going forward, I think we will have learned a lesson 
about what it means to ensure that no one falls off a cliff, 
that our families can be secure, and that our children in 
particular can grow up with that sort of safety.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Graves.
    And with my remaining time, I would like to humbly invite 
each of you, beginning with you, Ms. Greszler, to offer the one 
recommendation for Congress that you think is most important 
that perhaps we have not touched upon yet in this hearing 
today.
    Ms. Greszler. I think a lot of the solution going forward, 
when we look at the economic reality of childcare, it is 
expensive but we do not want workers to be paid less. This is 
difficult. I would love for my kids' childcare providers to be 
paid $50 per hour but then I cannot afford to pay them that any 
more.
    So it is a tough issue and there are limits to how much we 
can make it affordable without just simply taking money from 
other workers and forcing them to be the ones to pay for it. 
But there are ways that we can reduce the costs that are out 
there now.
    And I see a big opportunity in being smaller providers, 
whether it is in a church center or a friend down the street 
that is at home with kids and decides to open up a childcare 
center or watch a few people. I think there is both added 
flexibility that could increase the number of providers, and 
also reduced regulations that could bring down the costs.
    We heard from Bernadette about it goes on and on and on, 
but all of the things to your physical structure that have to 
be done, the requirements about you can spray this antibiotic 
when somebody is there and you cannot do this. You have to give 
these drinks at these hours, down to the nitty-gritty.
    There do not need to be that many regulations on providers, 
because that just prevents them from coming into the market.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Greszler.
    Ms. Graves.
    Ms. Goss Graves. You know, our childcare system and our 
current law, the block grant, it builds in a lot of choice for 
families. Some families want family friend and neighbor care, 
other families want center care. That is already baked in our 
system.
    What is not baked in is the level of investment to ensure 
that there is the supply we need, the workforce availability, 
and that families can actually afford childcare that it is high 
quality.
    And so what I guess the thing that I am hoping to leave you 
all with is that we cannot miss this moment. We cannot miss 
this window, with the visibility that we have had over the last 
year of what it means to have such a fragile childcare system.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Graves.
    Thank you, Madame Chair. I yield.
    Chair Warren. Thank you, very much, Senator Warnock I am 
sorry, Senator Ossoff.
    Senator Ossoff. We look pretty similar.
    Chair Warren. It is down at that end of the dais, so it is 
good to see you.
    I am going to ask some questions now. I get a chance to do 
this.
    Even before the pandemic, half of all Americans lived in 
childcare deserts, areas where there simply are not enough 
licensed childcare slots to meet family needs. We all know that 
COVID made this worse, forcing thousands of childcare providers 
to close their doors.
    For families, this means excruciating decisions. Do I spend 
an hour each day driving back and forth two towns over because 
that is the only place where there is an open slot? Do I depend 
on neighbors or relatives who have their own lives to worry 
about? Some parents are juggling it all themselves, hoping that 
the baby does not start crying while they are trying to do a 
job interview or do their work from home.
    Lack of affordable high-quality childcare affects every 
aspect of our economy. And while it got a lot worse during the 
pandemic, it has been holding our economy back for decades.
    So Dr. Stevenson, I was hoping maybe we could go through 
some of the data on this. What happened to women's workforce 
participation say from the 1970s to the 1990s, through the 
1990s?
    Ms. Stevenson. So, between the 1970s and the late 1990s, 
women's labor force participation grew quite rapidly, going 
from 43 percent of women participating in 1970 to a peak of 60 
percent in 1999.
    Chair Warren. OK, so let us break this apart into pieces. 
So we have this sharply upwards slope. Did that trend continue?
    Ms. Stevenson. That trend did not continue. In fact, it 
flattened out and we saw women's labor force participation 
growth completely stall out, decline slightly, and then decline 
a lot in the 2008 recession although, as I mentioned 
previously, we saw a real resurgence in that participation rate 
starting around 2015.
    But it is also important to realize that male participation 
fell much faster than female participation.
    Chair Warren. So we have women's participation goes up 
sharply in the 70s, the 80s, and the 90s. It flattens in about 
2000. Is that what happened in our peer countries, like Canada? 
Did they see that same pattern of rise and then flattening?
    Ms. Stevenson. No. In fact, the U.S. really led the world 
with the rapid rise in the 70s and 80s and the rest of the 
world started catching up. And then, the rest of the world 
added more sort of workplace supports for working families. 
They added workplace flexibility, subsidized high-quality 
childcare, paid parental leave. We saw female participation 
continue to rise in other OECD countries.
    And the result has been that the U.S. went from near the 
top of OECD countries, in terms of female labor force 
participation, to really around the bottom among 22 OECD, the 
more developed countries.
    Chair Warren. All right. So our peer countries kept growing 
female labor force participation and creating more support for 
them, more family friendly policies, more childcare support and 
so on. The United States did not and we saw a flattening of 
women's labor force participation. What did that flattening of 
women's labor force participation mean for America's GDP?
    Ms. Stevenson. Well, I think the best way to see that is 
actually look and see what did it mean in the 1970s, 1980s, and 
1990s. The U.S. prepandemic economy was roughly 15 percent 
larger than it would have been if women were employed at the 
same rate and worked the same number of hours that they did in 
1970s. So then, think about we got 15 percent more GDP because 
of the growth in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. And then it stopped.
    So there are lots of estimates over how much bigger our GDP 
would have been if in the 2000s and the 2010s women had 
continued working. Do we--you know, if you go up toward, if you 
think about us adding the kinds of policies that other OECD 
countries would have added, some estimates suggest that female 
labor force participation would have been about 6 percentage 
points higher. And if you think about something like that, that 
is certainly more economic growth than something like tax cuts 
for corporations have ever generated.
    Chair Warren. All right. And I understand that McKinsey put 
out a report in which they put a dollar estimate on what would 
have happened, how much bigger our economy would have been if 
female labor force participation had continued. Are you 
familiar with that report? Do you remember the dollar figure on 
that?
    Ms. Stevenson. Yes, I am. You know, McKinsey has taken a 
look at, first of all, the entire globe and come up with really 
an enormous estimate. But my understanding is their estimate 
for the United States is $1.5 trillion increase in GDP if we 
had had that kind of continued growth in female labor force 
participation.
    Chair Warren. And I take it, just let me ask in your expert 
opinion, if we had universal childcare, do you think that would 
have had an impact on women's labor force participation?
    Ms. Stevenson. I absolutely do. A lot of women literally 
pay to work. In other words, what they spend on childcare is 
more than what they are bringing home after taxes. The reason 
they pay to work is because they know if they lose their 
foothold in the labor force, they are going to have an even 
harder time getting it back. But many women look at the idea of 
paying to work, being away from their children, and brining 
home no financial benefits for their family as a result, and 
think this is not a sacrifice I want to make.
    Chair Warren. I really appreciate this. You know, without 
childcare, millions of mothers just cannot work. And holding 
these women out of the workforce harms them, it harms their 
families, but it also harms our whole economy.
    This is what it means to say that childcare is 
infrastructure. It is part of the basic support we need so that 
everyone gets an opportunity to work and our economy is 
productive.
    This is our moment to act. You raised this point earlier, 
Ms. Goss Graves. The President has proposed a major expansion 
of childcare and early childhood education. And when Congress 
acts on infrastructure, childcare is not going to be left 
behind.
    So let me ask you, what size Federal investment do you 
believe is needed to provide quality affordable childcare to 
every family that needs it?
    Ms. Goss Graves. So, we think we need an investment of $700 
billion. At that level, we can ensure that families do not have 
to pay more than 7 percent of their income for childcare. At 
that level, we can ensure that childcare providers are actually 
paid wages that are dignity wages, akin to kindergarten 
teachers. And at that level, we can increase the supply so that 
we do not have this challenge of the childcare deserts that are 
especially a problem in rural areas, and that there will be 
more supply in terms of facilities but actually more workforce 
supply.
    Chair Warren. Well, I could not agree more. Just yesterday, 
I sent a letter to Congressional leadership with the support of 
over 100 of my colleagues, calling for a $700 billion 
investment in childcare.
    So let me ask you, Ms. Goss Graves, some in Congress have 
argued that we should focus just on roads and bridges and then 
come back to a discussion about childcare later, if ever. What 
would be the impact on women if we leave childcare behind in 
our infrastructure package?
    Ms. Goss Graves. I just think that we do not have that 
choice. We cannot let women who have lost so many jobs in this 
economy, who have held together their families in this economy 
with work that is both invisible and barely made visible and 
certainly underpaid in this period. People are counting on 
Congress to deliver on childcare.
    And that is a short-term solution but it is a long-term 
solution, too. It goes to their long-term economic security, 
their ability to retire with dignity.
    Chair Warren. I really appreciate your testimony here. You 
know, I support investing in our roads and bridges and 
broadband internet. It is all important. But we have to invest 
in the kind of infrastructure that women need, as well.
    As a young mother, I had a terrible time finding quality 
affordable childcare and twice I nearly quit school, I nearly 
lost my job because I could not manage childcare. If we do not 
get this time, my granddaughter is going to face the same kind 
of problem I faced, and that is simply wrong. We cannot let 
that happen. The infrastructure train is leaving the station 
and we cannot leave childcare behind.
    So let me, if I can, I am going to do a second round of 
questions here.
    I want to talk about another aspect of childcare that many 
of you have raised today, and I appreciate your raising it. We 
have two very different systems in our country for teaching our 
little ones. For five and 6-year-olds, of course, and for older 
kids, we have public schools. No matter where you live, no 
matter how much money you make, no matter whether you have a 
job, you can send your public schools to learn. And you can do 
it for free.
    Now why did public schools start at the age of five or six? 
Well, mostly because back then nobody thought children could 
learn anything earlier than that. And now, of course, we know 
that is not true, that early childhood experiences affect 
whether a child is ready for first grade. But they also affect 
that child all the way throughout childhood and into adulthood.
    For example, high-quality early childhood education is 
linked to better health in adulthood and reduced odds of 
substance abuse or arrest. Many experts point out that when we 
spend a nickel on our smallest learners, we save dollars down 
the line.
    But for the littlest kids, parents are on their own. Do not 
have an extra $10,000 or $15,000 a year to send your child to a 
high-quality early childhood program? Then you get to juggle 
between friends and relatives, or maybe just leave your job 
because childcare costs more than you can earn.
    Dr. Stevenson, let me ask you, do these two separate 
systems make sense, given what the evidence says about the 
benefits of high-quality early care and high-quality early 
education for our children?
    Ms. Stevenson. I believe if we were designing our education 
system today from scratch, we would absolutely be emphasizing 
early learning as a critical part of that education system. As 
you said, we did not know back when we designed our education 
system that so much learning happens in the first 5 years. We 
now know that really does form the foundation upon which people 
develop and grow.
    But I really want to tie this back to in the last century, 
our economic growth was completely driven by the fact that we 
educated workers more than any other country in the world. We 
are now not educating our citizens more than any other country 
in the world. We are behind on early childhood education. We 
are also behind on universities.
    And this failure to invest in people, it is ultimately 
going to hold our economy back.
    Chair Warren. So, I think the evidence is clear here that 
you are citing that high-quality care helps all of our children 
learn and grow. That now, in addition to Head Start, we do have 
a limited public program to help low-income parents get 
affordable care to their kids, funded primarily through the 
Child Care Development and Block Grant Program, CCDBG.
    But our public childcare system works very, very 
differently from our public school system. Ms. Goss Graves, 
does every single parent quality for help getting childcare, 
regardless of their income or work status under current law?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Oh, I wish that were so. It is really only 
the lowest income families that quality. And by a family 
qualifying, what that means is there are many, many children 
who would benefit from being in an early childhood program who 
cannot because their parents are not eligible.
    Chair Warren. OK, so not everyone qualifies.
    Let me ask you about the people who do qualify. If you are 
eligible for the program, can you just walk into a childcare 
center and sign your child up?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Unfortunately, it is also not that easy. 
There is the work that you have to do to demonstrate that you 
are eligible, which ends up serving as a barrier for a lot of 
parents. On top of that, there are waiting lists. And 
processing all of this can mean that parents and families, they 
languish on wait lists for months.
    Chair Warren. You know, we do not make parents prove that 
they are working or that their income is low enough to be able 
to send their child to first grade. We do not put those 
children on waiting lists to get into second grade. We 
understand that education is beneficial for all kinds, so we 
invest in it as a country.
    Early care and education should be the same. We need to 
make it available for all of our babies, regardless of how much 
money their parents earn or what kind of job they have. You 
know, we cannot lose sight of why this matters.
    Ms. Ngoh, tell me about the children in your program. How 
do you see them grown and learn when they are with you?
    Ms. Ngoh. I want to clarify something.
    What I want to clarify is I was misunderstood. When I talk 
about regulations, the question was what obstacles were there 
when you wanted to start your program. And I listed some 
obstacles that are there.
    Having regulations in childcare is very, very important. 
They are the basis of trust. Health and safety are very, very 
vital in daycare.
    So I should not be mistaken to say that regulations are not 
required. They are required and all we need, we need to support 
to help us regulate those regulations.
    But parents who keep their kid with us, they need to trust 
us and regulations build that trust because parents know that 
their kids are in a safe place.
    Thank you for that clarification.
    Chair Warren. Thank you. Yes, go ahead.
    Ms. Ngoh. Let me now answer your question. The kids I have 
in my daycare, I have kids in my daycare now that range from 
the ages of 18 months to 10 years. Those kids in my daycare 
have different, different personalities. They have different 
health issues. They are at different levels of development.
    I have kids that are shy. I have kids that are happy. I 
have kids that somehow struggle with their speech, we call them 
speech delayed. We have kids that are just recovering from the 
pandemic and they are in a trauma.
    I have a kid--I will share two stories. One, I have a kid 
that the mom was pregnant and lost the pregnancy. And when the 
child was born, apparently the child lived for 1 day and died. 
And that child came to daycare and all I watched the child do 
was trying to pick toys and make them look sad. A child that 
used to be a happy child, you see that child struggling with 
feeling sadness.
    I have the task, I have the job of recognizing what that 
child is going through and helping that child to recover, 
helping that child to deal with sadness.
    Today, I have a parent in my daycare who is making a little 
bit over $475 a week. She has three kids. The first child is 
14, the second is 13, and the last one is 2 years old. That 
parent does not drive. That parent has to push that child in a 
stroller to my daycare every day and then go down straight to 
the bus station to take a buss to go to work.
    And sometimes you see that parent getting home tired. I am 
obliged when, like yesterday, it was raining. That parent, 
there was no way she is going to traipse 30 minutes under the 
rain to come and pick up the child. She had to call me to find 
out if I can help pick her up from the bus stop. I had to go 
pick her up from the bus stop. I had to arrange for someone to 
take her from my daycare to drop her and the baby. Otherwise, 
they would be wet to their pants under the rain.
    That parent is just one of the so many different cases we 
go through on a day-to-day basis.
    When you ask me, as a provider, as a parent, as a business 
owner, what is the role of childcare, I am submitting that 
childcare is a public service. Childcare is a public service. 
Childcare should be prioritized. If we do not prioritize 
childcare now, we are going to get down into what we call a big 
disaster later on.
    Like I earlier on indicated, the job we do is about 
infrastructure, building the brains of these young kids. If we 
fail to build these brains correctly, it is about teaching them 
those small first--we call them magic words--thank you, no, I 
am sorry. Helping them to build their personality. Helping them 
to build character.
    If we fail to do this, what is going to happen down the 
line? These kids will be will be wayward one way or the other.
    What will it need to fix the situation? If we fail at this 
level, if we do not have the resources that we need to build 
our young kids so that by the time they become of age they have 
what it takes, character, they have the skills, they can manage 
their emotions, they can integrate, they have the opportunities 
to learn and strive and fly like every other child, down the 
line, we are going to have more problems.
    What I say is the play they do at daycare, play to me is a 
factory. It is a factory where the kids learn different things. 
And that is just what we are doing.
    I would take one more minute to say something
    Chair Warren. We are going to need to keep this short. We 
are a little over here.
    Ms. Ngoh. Just a last minute. The one thing that I want us 
to know is that those kids that I am watching, if I do not 
watch those kids, you and some of the Senators will not go to 
work. If I do not sit here, if daycare providers, whether they 
are family based, whether they are center-based, providers, if 
they do not do this job, you will not be able to do your own 
job. Other people will be affected by that.
    If any morning I get up and say oh, I am feeling sick, I 
cannot work today, five parents will not go to work. What is 
the multiplier effect of those parents not going to work?
    Chair Warren. So thank you. This is really important, and 
the work you do is enormously valuable and important.
    We now have decades of research showing how important these 
early childhood experiences are and the children in your care 
are very lucky to have you.
    So we have talked about the impact of our underinvestment 
in childcare on our economy. We have talked about the 
importance of investing in high-quality early childhood 
education on our children and long-term on our economy.
    There is just one more issue I want to talk about before we 
leave, and we have already alluded to it today but I want to go 
back to this again.
    Our Nation, for decades, has underinvested in childcare and 
childcare workers are among those that have been hit hardest by 
the pandemic. As of this April, the childcare industry had lost 
more than 150,000 jobs. That is one in every seven jobs in the 
sector. Women of color have been disproportionately hurt and 
many providers are still struggling to get by.
    As a society, we have not valued this work the way that we 
should. In 2020, the average pay for a childcare workers was 
only $12.24. That is the average. Think about how people can 
make more money doing the checkout at McDonald's.
    So here is the first question, and I can ask this one of 
you, Ms. Ngoh. Do you think that $12 an hour accurately 
reflects the value of the work you do for children and 
families? I think there is going to be a one word answer here.
    Ms. Ngoh. The answer is no. And I want to defend my no, 
because when you pay me $1, what are you rewarding me for? You 
are equating what services that are only equal to $12. If 
doctors do take care of kids, they are paid so much. If 
teachers, if grade three teachers do take care of kids, they 
are paid so much. They are building brains.
    I am handling the most delicate portion of that 
developmental goal, our children. And you think that I only 
deserve $12? When the same kids that I bring up to this level, 
I have done the most difficult job. When I do that job, I pass 
that child on to middle school, to pre-K school, they are paid 
more.
    Chair Warren. Yes.
    Ms. Ngoh. Is that fair? I think the answer is no.
    Chair Warren. So it is very important work. Let me just 
ask, can you easily raise your fees so that the hourly wage 
goes up?
    Ms. Ngoh. How can we raise our fees easily when the parents 
are struggling? I just narrated a story of this lady who makes 
$475 a week with three kids. How do I raise my fees to such a 
parent?
    When the pandemic hit, most parents were unable to even pay 
their out-of-pocket family fees. Now I had a decision to do 
what? To cancel out-of-pocket fees, suspended collecting those 
fees. I had too many things in my mind. If I send away these 
kids, this parent that I can watch their kids for free, what 
will happen when they get subsidies and later on need my 
program and are able to pay?
    So my first answer is no, it is not possible to just raise 
fees.
    Chair Warren. So you have given us the illustration of how 
the childcare market is broken. The price of providing high-
quality care at fair wages is so high that many parents are 
simply priced out of the market. Childcare providers cannot 
offer more slots because they are worried the parents cannot 
pay, which in turn creates more shortages.
    So can I just ask you, Dr. Stevenson, this looks like a 
market that is broken. I am going to ask you wrap up here.
    What should we be thinking about to make this market work 
better?
    Ms. Stevenson. OK. The market is broken and it is broken 
because parents cannot be paying for the investments that need 
to happen when their children are young. These are things that 
should be paid for over a lifetime.
    And that is exactly what our policymakers, what our system 
is set up to do, which is to have Congress fund these 
investments in children, have our Government fund K-12, have 
our Government fund early childhood education and childcare. 
And then our children will grow up to be able to be more 
productive, to earn more, to allow us to produce more. And that 
will actually make it so that we can raise more in revenue, 
more than enough to cover the cost of this.
    So it is incredibly important that we provide that subsidy 
and we take that burden off of parents, who desperately want to 
see their children invested in.
    Chair Warren. Well, thank you, Dr. Stevenson. And thank you 
all who have been here today.
    I think you are exactly right. We do not ask parents to pay 
the full cost of first grade for their 6 or 7-year-old and we 
should not ask parents to pay the full cost of educating and 
caring for a 2-year-old either. And this is exactly why I am 
fighting for a $700 billion investment in childcare.
    After parents, childcare providers are some of children's 
most important teachers. We need to transform our childcare 
system to recognize the skill and the value of care workers. 
Expanding quality care would mean that providers can offer fair 
pay and benefits, and it would make it easier for families to 
be able to find quality care.
    We have this opportunity. This is our moment. We are 
rebuilding America's infrastructure. And a core part of that is 
making sure that we make the investment in our next generation, 
in our children. We do that and that lets mothers go back to 
work, and fathers go back to work now. That helps our economy 
and it helps our youngest Americans.
    We have to make sure that when we rebuild infrastructure in 
this country that we create good middle-class jobs and that 
childcare providers are not left behind.
    So I want to thank all of our witnesses who are here today. 
I appreciate your providing testimony.
    For any Senators who wish to submit questions for the 
record, those questions are due 1 week from today. That is 
Wednesday, June 30th.
    For our witnesses, you have 45 days to respond to any 
questions.
    And again, thank you all. I appreciate your being here. We 
have a chance to do something important.
    Thank you.
    This hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 4:02 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
    [Prepared statements and responses to written questions 
supplied for the record follow:]

                PREPARED STATEMENT OF FATIMA GOSS GRAVES
             President and CEO, National Women's Law Center
                             June 23, 2021
    Good afternoon Chair Warren, Ranking Member Kennedy, and other 
distinguished Members of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs 
Subcommittee on Economic Policy. My name is Fatima Goss Graves, and I 
am the President and CEO of the National Women's Law Center (NWLC). 
NWLC fights for gender justice--in the courts, in public policy, and in 
our society--working across the issues that are central to the lives of 
women and girls. We use the law in all its forms to change culture and 
drive solutions to the gender inequity that shapes our society, and to 
break down the barriers that harm all of us--especially women of color, 
LGBTQ people, and women and families with low incomes.
    I am grateful for the opportunity to testify before you today on 
the childcare crisis our Nation currently faces, and the investment and 
policies needed to rebuild this critical foundation of our society and 
economy equitably.
America's Childcare Crisis
    I want to begin by thanking lawmakers for their leadership on the 
care economy and focusing on childcare in the context of relief, 
recovery, job creation, and advancing racial and gender justice. We are 
lucky to have Chair Warren championing this issue.
    We are also eternally grateful to Congress for The American Rescue 
Plan and the 2020 COVID-19 relief packages, which together provided 
over $50 billion in relief funding for childcare and early learning and 
helped save the childcare sector from collapse.
    But make no mistake, the investment in childcare cannot end there.
    The American Rescue Plan provided urgently needed relief, but it 
was just that--relief. It was not designed or sufficiently funded to 
address the long-term structural flaws in our economy that made the 
pandemic so devastating, for women--especially women of color--and 
their families.
    For the childcare and early learning sector, the pandemic has laid 
bare and exacerbated the deep inequities of a childcare system that 
relies on families paying unaffordable sums, early educators being paid 
poverty-level wages, and too many communities across the country 
lacking sufficient workforce or facilities to meet childcare demands. 
Since the start of the pandemic, one in eight childcare jobs has 
disappeared, \1\ women have lost a net 4.2 million jobs,\2\ and 1.79 
million women have left the workforce entirely,\3\ with childcare 
obligations likely playing a significant role. Additionally, as the 
country reopens, childcare programs are facing enormous and 
unprecedented staffing shortages, which means fewer slots and longer 
waiting lists. This blow to the childcare industry will affect 
childcare providers, parents, and children long after the health crisis 
has passed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \1\ Claire Ewing-Nelson and Julie Vogtman, National Women's Law 
Center, ``One in Eight Child Care Jobs Have Been Lost Since the Start 
of the Pandemic'' (June 2010), https://nwlc.org/resources/sector-
report-child-careworkers/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The United States has not had a comprehensive childcare and early 
education system since a brief period during World War II. Since then, 
American families have been largely left on their own to fend for 
themselves, relying on the underpaid labor of Black, Latinx, 
Indigenous, and immigrant women so that others can work, and the time 
of older siblings to cover the care needs of families instead of 
attending to their own education.
    It does not have to be this way. The pre-COVID status quo was 
unsustainable and left families and our entire economy more vulnerable 
to the ravages of the pandemic. We can and must do better as we recover 
and rebuild. We now have a unique window of opportunity in front of us 
to deliver for women and their families. To build the childcare 
infrastructure that shows women we have heard their cries for help and 
that we value care work--both paid and unpaid--as the backbone of our 
economy.
    Even before COVID-19, America faced a quiet childcare crisis.
    It was frankly far too easy to bring the childcare industry to its 
knees. Before anyone had heard of the coronavirus:
    Families were struggling to afford childcare costs--if they could 
find childcare at all.

    In more than half of States, care for an infant in a 
        childcare center costs more than in-State college tuition,\4\ 
        and in one study, over 80 percent of two-child families spent 
        more on childcare than rent.\5\ Additionally, low-income 
        families spend an average of 35 percent of their income on 
        childcare which amounts to five times what is considered 
        affordable.\6\

    Fewer than one in seven eligible children were served by 
        the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) and related 
        Federal childcare programs.\7\

    Families--particularly in rural areas--struggled with a 
        lack of care options. Research has found that over half of 
        Americans live in a childcare desert, or a neighborhood with an 
        insufficient supply of licensed childcare.\8\

    Early educators were paid poverty-level wages for caring for and 
educating our children.

    Childcare is one of the lowest-paid professions in the 
        United States,\9\ despite how valuable the work is, rising 
        requirements for credentials and education and extensive 
        research pointing to the of the early years for young 
        children's healthy development.\10\

    Wages for providers average less than $12 per hour,\11\ 
        about half of programs do not offer health benefits, and recent 
        data show that over half of childcare providers were enrolled 
        in at least one public assistance or support program.\12\

    These inequities disproportionately impact women and families of 
color.

    Virtually all childcare providers (over 90 percent) are 
        women, and disproportionately women of color and immigrant 
        women.\13\

    Black and Latinx mothers are more likely to work in jobs 
        with low pay and few or no benefits, making care more difficult 
        to afford.\14\

    In addition, Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) 
        families are more likely to face more significant barriers to 
        accessing care,\15\ including high costs, lack of care options 
        that match their work schedules, language barriers, and lack of 
        culturally competent, trusted options, all leading to 
        inequitable participation in licensed childcare across racial 
        groups.

    In short, the pre-COVID status quo was unsustainable and left 
families and our entire economy more vulnerable to the ravages of the 
pandemic. We can and must do better.
    As we recover, we are entering a new struggle in childcare.
    Childcare programs have been faced with unpredictable demand 
throughout the pandemic. While most of the economy was closed during 
the first phase of the pandemic, many providers struggled to keep their 
doors open to serve frontline workers or to stay open amid declining 
enrollment and increased operating costs.\16\ Two in five providers 
report taking on debt for their programs using personal credit cards to 
pay for increased costs and three in five work in programs that have 
reduced expenses through layoffs, furloughs, or pay cuts.\17\ However, 
as parents increasingly transition out of remote work, programs are 
dealing with a surge of demand and are unable to find and retain their 
childcare workforce. The potential impacts include a lack of stability 
for children in care and immense burdens on parents, including job 
loss.
    As a Pennsylvania childcare program executive director pointedly 
noted in a local paper, if you are a childcare worker making only $11 
an hour, but the local grocery store is paying $14 an hour, that is 
where workers are going to seek employment.\18\ Another director said 
she sees fast-food restaurants incentivizing new workers through sign-
on bonuses when she cannot offer much over minimum wage let alone 
benefits.\19\
    Elliot Haspel, a childcare scholar, recently noted in the 
Washington Post that it is not just childcare for young children that 
is disappearing. He also cited a public school in Michigan that was 
forced to end its program that provided before- and after-school care 
for the upcoming school year due to staffing shortages.\20\ According 
to analysis by the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), only one 
in four children who want to be in an after-school program are 
currently enrolled.\21\ Black and Latinx families are even more 
interested in participating in such programs,\22\ but these programs 
are increasingly hard to find.
    And a childcare shortage means fewer high-quality options for 
children and greater barriers for parents--especially mothers--to 
enter, stay in, and advance in the labor force.
    Federal relief dollars for childcare cannot fully address the 
workforce crisis.
    While the relief money is in the process of helping to stabilize 
programs in creative ways such as allowing temporary signing bonuses, 
as well as expanding services to parents that work nontraditional 
hours, children with disabilities, and those living in childcare 
deserts, it is not a sufficient or sustained investment to raise wages 
or provide benefits. The infusion of funds is short term with States 
having to spend all relief stabilization grants by September 2023 and 
their CCDBG supplemental by 2024. Building up high-quality childcare 
supply is about more than investing in facilities--it means attracting 
and retaining a highly qualified workforce to ensure sufficient slots 
for enrollment. And doing that requires long-term investments in 
building a system that values childcare workers.
Why Does This Matter?
    We need reliable, affordable, high-quality care so that parents--
and mostly women--can get and keep jobs. Before the pandemic, in 
February 2020, we celebrated women comprising over half the 
workforce.\23\ Fast forward to today, and 1.79 million women have left 
the workforce entirely since the start of the pandemic,\24\ in large 
part due to caregiving responsibilities. Analysis by the National 
Women's Law Center underscores that ``Before the pandemic, women's 
labor force participation rate had not been this low since 1988.''\25\
    Lack of access to affordable, high-quality childcare is an 
important piece of the puzzle. Last month, the Federal Reserve in 
Minnesota released a study showing that in the last quarter of 2020, 
childcare was still a big barrier to parents' participation in the 
workforce. Nearly a quarter of all parents were either working less or 
not working at all because of disruption in care and schooling for 
their children.\26\ The study also underlined the disproportionate 
effect on mothers who are being prevented from full participation in 
the workforce, and even more severe labor force impacts for Black, 
Latinx, single mothers, and those with low incomes.\27\
    A recent survey of families with children age birth to five found 
that since the pandemic, more than one in three female caregivers had 
to leave the workforce or reduce their work hours/responsibilities.\28\ 
Of the women who had to stop working, over 80 percent said it was due 
to financial constraint.\29\ The shares of women who were more likely 
to indicate these changes in workforce participation were higher for 
Black and Latinx women.\30\
    While these numbers are cause for alarm, in fact it is more 
surprising that we are not seeing a larger reduction in labor force 
participation. Throughout history, mothers have always found 
workarounds--accepting a lower paying job because it offered more 
flexibility, putting off educational opportunities, foregoing other 
necessities because the cost of childcare ate up a third of their 
income, working themselves to the bone to try and balance breadwinning 
and caregiving. Additional childcare workarounds became commonplace for 
parents during the pandemic, including but not limited to: piecing 
available care together weekly or even daily depending on schedule and 
who is available; working full-time while caregiving full-time; finding 
creative caresharing responsibility arrangements (neighbors, friends, 
grandparents, pods, alternating work schedules, etc.); working all 
hours of the day and night to care for children during waking hours; 
and, all at the expense of parents' free time and mental health.
    But these sacrifices also bring a cost: in opportunities foregone, 
stress intensified, a bottled-up primal scream that was finally 
released during the pandemic as these issues can to a head. These 
mothers know that without bold and urgent action, we are setting them--
and the families who depend on them--up for a lifetime of economic 
insecurity and stress.
    The first years of a child's life are critical to their long-term 
development.
    As parents desperately seek childcare slots, we risk not only 
undermining parental employment and economic growth but also children's 
long-term development.
    The science is clear: developmental disparities take root well 
before children are 5 years old, and families' economic instability and 
stress--which have intensified during the pandemic--are associated with 
adverse outcomes in terms of health and educational achievement.\31\
    Luckily, the inverse is also true. When we invest in children 
starting at birth, it yields long-term positive outcomes for health, 
education, and employment.\32\ Since children under 5 years old are the 
most diverse generation in American history, investing in high-quality, 
affordable childcare and early learning also advances racial 
equity.\33\
    Investing in higher wages and benefits for childcare providers 
leads to higher quality care for children since attracting and 
retaining caring, consistent providers supports healthy child 
development. Quality childcare programs have been associated with 
positive health benefits, including higher immunization rates, 
screening and identification rates; improved mental health; and reduced 
smoking.\34\ In addition, childcare plays a vital role in supporting 
parental employment, which matters for children because family economic 
security positively impacts children's healthy development. Stabilizing 
the childcare sector and rebuilding a more equitable system is a 
crucial investment in our youngest children.
What Does an Equitable Childcare System Look Like?

    Ensuring no family pays more than 7 percent of their income 
        on childcare. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 
        (HHS) recommends that childcare be considered affordable if 
        family out-of-pocket costs are equivalent to 7 percent or less 
        of total household income.\35\

    Paying childcare providers like similarly qualified 
        elementary school teachers. From birth to age 3, children's 
        brains are making more than a million neural connections per 
        second, influenced greatly by their interactions with their 
        caregivers.\36\ Childcare workers should be fairly compensated 
        for the valuable and complex work of supporting this 
        development.

    Building the supply of available childcare so every family 
        can find the childcare that meets their unique needs. A 
        family's zip code should not determine their available 
        childcare options.

    There are current proposals in Congress that would help us achieve 
the equitable childcare system I just described, covering children from 
birth until they are age 13. We thank Chair Warren for her leadership 
in introducing strong pieces of legislation, including the Universal 
Child Care and Early Learning Act, which focuses on increasing 
compensation for providers, limiting family copays to 7 percent of 
family income, and building the supply of care. A complementary bill 
was recently introduced by Senator Wyden with Chair Warren that invests 
in rebuilding childcare infrastructure and provides additional 
mandatory funding. We are also supportive of Senator Murray's Child 
Care for Working Families Act which also has these principles. We 
estimate the need at $700 billion over 10 years to build this system.
    Such a bold and robust investment would create 2.3 million good-
paying jobs\37\--a combination of jobs with better compensation for 
early educators and a necessary support for parents' workforce 
participation.
    The investment would also enable parents--especially mothers--to 
participate in the labor force and have greater financial security.
    NWLC has a new study out together with Columbia University's Center 
on Poverty and Social Policy that shows that public investments to 
guarantee high-quality, affordable childcare for all would increase the 
number of women with young children working full-time by about 17 
percent and by about 31 percent for women without any college 
degree.\38\ Women with less than a college degree and lower incomes 
would experience the most significant relative economic gains, mostly 
from being able to enter the workforce.\39\ Additionally, Black and 
Latinx women, who already face compounding labor market discrimination, 
lower wages, and more difficulty finding childcare, would experience 
larger percent increases in their incomes.\40\ A strong investment in 
childcare is good for the economy as a whole.
    Childcare programs cannot compete for workers like other sectors of 
our economy and need.
    Childcare programs can attract the workers they need so working 
parents can find and rely on the care they need Federal support to 
attract and retain the workforce. A recent study on teacher turnover in 
early childhood using statewide data in Louisiana showed that even 
prepandemic more than one third of teachers leave their program one 
year to the next, and of those, the considerable majority are not 
teaching in another program the following year.\41\ However, positions 
in the K-12 system where teachers receive better wages and benefits, 
have only a 16 percent turnover rate, and of those, half are merely 
changing schools rather than leaving the profession entirely.\42\ We 
must invest in raising providers' wages to build the supply of 
childcare for working parents.
    The investment will advance gender and racial equity:
    The disproportionately Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian American 
and Pacific Islander, and immigrant women who work in childcare and 
early education deserve better jobs and working conditions.
    Our Nation's children, nearly half of whom are children of color, 
deserve investments in their care and education from birth to age 
13.\43\
    Mothers deserve childcare they can depend on.\44\ Access to high-
quality, affordable childcare is especially important for Black mothers 
who are more likely than other mothers to be in the workforce and to be 
their family's primary breadwinner.
    Overall, these investments would transform women's earning 
capabilities and retirement security.
    Over the entire life course, access to affordable care could 
increase the lifetime earnings for women with two children by about 
$94,000, which would lead to an increase of about $20,000 in private 
savings and an additional $10,000 in Social Security benefits. It would 
also boost the collective lifetime earnings of a cohort of 1.3 million 
women by $130 billion. By retirement age, access to affordable, high-
quality childcare would mean that women with two children would have 
about $160 per month in additional cash flow from increased private 
savings and Social Security benefits. This policy would also advance 
racial equity and help close racial earnings and wealth gaps. Black and 
Latinx women see additional lifetime Social Security benefits of 
$13,000 and $12,000, respectively (compared to $8,000 for white 
women).\45\
Conclusion
    Childcare is infrastructure. It connects workers and jobs. It makes 
all other work possible. It supports the positive growth and 
development of our Nation's children. Without a childcare system that 
works for every family, our economy will suffer in the short and long 
term. Therefore, it must be a key facet of our national economic 
infrastructure.

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


                                 ______
                                 
                 PREPARED STATEMENT OF BETSEY STEVENSON
  Professor of Public Policy and Economics, Gerald R. Ford School of 
                             Public Policy
                             June 23, 2021
    Chair Warren, Ranking Member Kennedy, and distinguished Members of 
the Subcommittee, thank you for the invitation to speak to you today 
about childcare. I am an economist who has spent much of the past three 
decades trying to better understand women's employment, families, and 
the porous boundaries between our personal lives and our work lives. 
These porous boundaries were completely shredded during the pandemic as 
tens of millions of people began to work from home for the first time 
along with their children who lost access to in-person school and 
childcare.
    My research has shown that policy choices shape the constraints 
that people face and therefore their employment and family decisions. 
The choices you make now about childcare will shape the U.S. 
macroeconomy for decades to come by influencing who returns to work, 
what types of jobs parents take, and what kinds of promotion paths 
parents take. It's not just women, men's employment choices are also 
shaped by access to childcare. In 2014, a survey found that 49 percent 
of parents had passed up a job because it conflicted with family 
obligations. \1\ The pandemic caused nearly all parents to face these 
kinds of choices over the past year. In a recent survey I conducted in 
conjunction with RIWI we found that childcare responsibilities during 
the COVID-19 crisis impacted the employment of 59 percent of parents. 
Many cut their work hours, turned down promotions, changed jobs for 
more flexibility, paused training or education, and some quit jobs 
entirely. These impacts were reported by men and women almost in equal 
number, a fact that reflects the shift toward greater equality in the 
home that has led men to increase the number of hours they spend on 
primary childcare and household chores over the past several decades, 
partially offsetting the decline in time women spend on those 
activities. \2\ Dads are increasingly playing the role of the primary 
caregiver in the household: 1 in 5 fathers are the primary caregiver of 
preschool-age children when the mother is employed. \3\ In the last 30 
years, the number of families with stay-at-home dads and a working mom 
doubled, \4\ the number of father-only families more than doubled, and 
in 2019 nearly a quarter of single parents with children under age 18 
were father-only households. \5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \1\ Harris Poll of 4,096 U.S. adults conducted online May 27-30, 
2014. Reported in ``Eleven Facts About American Families and Work'', 
October 2014 Report of the Council of Economic Advisers https://
obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/docs/eleven-facts-
about-family-and-work-final.pdf.
     \2\ Bianchi et al. (2006); American Time Use Survey.
     \3\ Survey of Income and Program Participation, 2011.
     \4\ Census Table MC1 from 2019 Current Population Survey.
     \5\ Census Table FM-1 from Current Population Surve.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    However, the pandemic highlighted the fact that women continue to 
bear disproportionate responsibility for care giving within families 
and the childcare crisis impacted women more than men in many ways.
    The first factor was the nature of the recession itself. This was 
our first service sector driven recession. The United States is an 
economy dominated by the service sector. In February 2020, there were 
131 million service sector job--86 percent of private sector jobs in 
the United States. Despite this large share of jobs, in every previous 
recession job loss has disproportionately occurred in the goods-
producing sector. For example, in the 2009 recession, half of all jobs 
lost were lost in the goods-producing sector. In 2020, roughly 10 
percent of the jobs lost were in the good-producing sector. Women work 
disproportionately in the service sector and therefore the 
concentration of job loss in the service sector meant that women bore 
more of the job loss. Between February 2020 and May 2020, women lost 13 
million jobs compared to 9 million jobs lost by men. However, over the 
last several months of recovery the gap has reversed as jobs held by 
women have been expanded faster than jobs held by men.
    The second factor was the closing of schools and childcare. More 
than two-thirds of children live in households in which all parents 
work. \6\ The pandemic made salient the many roles that schools play. 
While K-12 education is typically thought of as a source of education 
for children and therefore investment in the next generation. It is 
also a source of childcare for many families who are able to work for 
pay during the roughly 6 hours that their children are being taught and 
cared for by professional educators. Childcare for younger children 
serves very similar functions to primary school. Early childhood 
educators can improve outcomes for children by engaging in 
developmentally appropriate curriculum-based activities. They also 
provide crucial care for children in households in which all parents 
work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \6\ American Community Survey 2019 Table B23008.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The third factor is related to changes in family life that meant 
more mothers were likely to be in the labor force than in the past. In 
2019 mothers of children 6 years old and younger had the highest labor 
force participation than at any other time in the past. \7\ These 
mothers were also older than in the past, as the average age of mothers 
has been rising over time. Finally, a greater share of 40-something 
women were mothers than in the past. The total number of children born 
to women by the end of their fertile years, known as completed 
fertility, hit a low in 2006 and has risen over the ensuing decade and 
a half. \8\ The culmination was a large number of women with 
substantial work experience, whose families relied on childcare.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \7\ BLS, Current Population Survey.
     \8\ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/07/with-a-
potential-baby-bust-on-the-horizon-key-facts-about-fertility-in-the-u-
s-before-the-pandemic/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These challenges that women faced were not, however, unique to the 
recession. Instead, they highlight our failure to adapt childcare, 
workplace flexibility, and workplace parental leave policies as women 
have entered the workforce and gained experience, training, and 
education that has made them an essential part of the economy. Women 
are no longer secondary earners as economists used to refer to them-
able to step back from work whenever their household demands required. 
Today, more than 40 percent of mothers are the primary earner for their 
family, earning at least half of total household income. \9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \9\ https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2019/05/
10/469739/breadwinning-mothers-continue-u-s-norm/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Our transformation of our economy and our families has taken place 
over the past 50 years.
    In 1970, 43 percent of women participated in the labor force 
participation, but over the next three decades women's labor force 
participation grew to 60 percent, hitting a peak in 1999. During this 
period of growth, the United States had one of the highest female labor 
force participation rates of any OECD country. This surge in women's 
paid employment was important for fueling U.S. GDP growth, accounting 
for nearly one-fifth of real GDP growth in the 1970s and 1980s. The 
U.S. prepandemic economy was roughly 15 percent larger than it would 
have been if women were employed at the same rate and worked the same 
number of hours that they did in 1970.
    Yet, in the ensuing decades, the U.S. rank has fallen to near the 
bottom among 22 OECD countries as these countries have expanded family 
friendly policies including parental leave and childcare. \10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \10\ Blau and Kahn, 2013 https://www.nber.org/papers/w18702.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While women's labor force participation growth stalled in the 21st 
century, it declined even further for men. Declining labor force 
participation was one of the challenges that the U.S. economy faced in 
the 2000s even prior to the 2008 recession, which further exacerbated 
that decline. However, the ongoing economic recovery led to a recovery 
in the labor force participation rate that accelerated in the 5 years 
prior to the pandemic. That recovery was fueled by women's--and 
mother's--increasing labor force participation. The Kansas City Federal 
Reserve Bank found that college-educated women in particular drove the 
rebound in the prime-age labor force participation rate between 2015 
and 2019. \11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \11\ https://www.kansascityfed.org/research/economic-bulletin/
women-driving-recent-recovery-labor-force-participation-2019/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Economic growth over the past several decades has been concentrated 
in the service sector. To put this in perspective in February 2020 the 
goods sector still had a million fewer jobs than it had at the start of 
the 2008 recession. In contrast, the service sector had a 15 million 
more jobs. This shift has both been fueled and helped fuel women's 
labor force growth. Roughly two-thirds of the job growth since the 
start of the 2008 recession went to women. With that job growth for all 
women, also came growth in employment in the childcare sector.
    By December 2020 women held the majority of nonfarm payroll jobs in 
the United States. They held that position for January and February 
and, while it was undone with the pandemic, they are likely to regain 
that position again as we continue to recover. Already women's job 
growth has exceeded that among men.
    Even though women will likely return to employment in numbers that 
allow them to regain their majority share of jobs, great growth in 
women's employment and better matching of parents to jobs in which they 
can be most productive requires a more reliable, affordable, and a 
higher quality childcare sector.
    It's not only women's rising labor force participation that has 
changed, but our rising life expectancy has changed our working lives. 
A smaller share of adulthood is spent with young children in the home. 
A century ago, women having children could scarcely expect to live 
beyond age 50 and the typical woman had roughly four children. Not 
surprisingly, many women's entire adult lives were spent caring for 
children. In contrast, women today have a life expectancy of roughly 80 
and have half as many children. As a result, women's adult lives are no 
longer spent primarily raising children. This is not to say that 
children are not an important part of most people's lives. Parents 
require support and flexibility, both of which will help them develop 
labor market skills that they will be able to use for decades. Equally, 
the time that parents need off to care for children is a shrinking 
fraction of the total amount of hours they will work over their 
lifetime. We can afford to give them that time.
    Let me conclude by talking directly about childcare.
    As the banking committee you understand the importance of a strong 
financial sector to a functioning U.S. economy. When the great 
financial crisis swept the globe in 2008, Congress, the Federal 
Reserve, and the U.S. Treasury took swift action. The financial system 
was regarded as the backbone of the economy--if it were to collapse it 
could take the entire economy with it. Part of the banking and 
financial sector's importance is that financial transactions allow us 
to invest in companies, new ideas, and capital equipment. That 
investment allows higher productivity growth and therefore ongoing 
economic growth.
    Childcare and education has more in common to the banking system 
then you may suspect. It is the backbone of our future economy because 
it invests in and develops our human capital. While women have often 
done this labor for no or little pay, do not underestimate its value. 
Human talent is developed through these investments and its ultimately 
human ingenuity that fuels our economic growth.
    The last several decades have brought tremendous strides in our 
understanding of children's learning. Infants and toddlers take in the 
world around them at birth, laying the foundation upon which the rest 
of their knowledge will be built. Researchers have established that 
profound advances take place in individuals' reasoning, language 
acquisition, and problem solving in early childhood. Children need age 
and developmentally appropriate play and learning from very early ages. 
We now know that it is not sufficient to begin a child's education at 
kindergarten. However, there is great inequality in access to early 
childhood education. Yes, parents are investing heavily in their 
children--both mothers and fathers are spending more time with their 
children than earlier cohorts did, despite fewer children living in 
homes with a stay-at-home parent. But early childhood education 
requires knowledge about child development that not all parents have 
and most children will spend time with other caregivers.
    More than two-thirds of young children live in households in which 
all parents are working--either a single working parent or a two-income 
household. Yet high-quality childcare is hard to find and is expensive. 
Families of children under the age of 5 spend $250 per week on average 
on childcare. \12\ Research looked at parents preferences and 
understanding of childcare to attempt to understand why so few children 
get access to high quality early childhood education and care. The 
research found that the childcare market's quality problems reflect 
parents' inability to afford high quality care and challenges in 
identifying quality among programs, but it does not reflect an 
unwillingness to pay for these programs. \13\ The distinction between 
an inability to afford rather than an unwillingness to pay is 
important--parents would invest more in their children if they could. 
And that is why parents with high incomes do invest so much in their 
children. Lower income parents simply cannot afford the high cost of 
high-quality programs. The result is unequal investment in children 
that fundamentally erodes the ability for the level playing field 
necessary for a competitive market economy to thrive.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \12\ https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/news/
2020/02/18/480554/child-care-crisis-causes-job-disruptions-2-million-
parents-year/
     \13\ Gordon, Hebst, Tekin, 2018 ``Who's Minding the Kids'', NBER 
working paper https://www.nber.org/papers/w25335.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Early childhood education does three things: (1) it provides 
childcare that allows parents to work thereby raising household income 
(2) it develops skills in children that lead to higher lifetime 
earnings and (3) supports the equal investments in children necessary 
for a competitive market economy to reach its potential. \14\ Research 
suggests that expanding early learning initiatives would create 
benefits to society of nearly $9 for every $1 invested, about half of 
which comes from higher earnings among the children who receive these 
investments. \15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \14\ Havnes and Mogstad, 2011 AER https://www.aeaweb.org/
articles?id=10.1257/pol.3.2.97.
     \15\ 2016 Economic Report of the President ``Inequality in Early 
Childhood and Effective Public Policy Interventions''.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I want to highlight an often-overlooked act of Congress that gave 
some communities in the United States high-quality low-cost childcare 
for a temporary period. The ``Defense Housing and Community Facilities 
and Services Act of 1940''. which was popularly known as the Lanham 
Act, funded childcare in communities with defense industries. All 
families, regardless of income, were eligible for what was high quality 
childcare at a low cost. Research into the childcare that was provided 
as a result of Congressional funding found that family bonds were 
strengthened, children enjoyed the childcare, that the primary goal--
increasingly mother's employment--was achieved, and that children's 
long-term outcomes were improved. \16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \16\ Herbst (2017) ``Universal Child Care, Maternal Employment, 
and Children's Long-Run Outcomes: Evidence From the U.S. Lanham Act of 
1940'', Journal of Labor Economics and https://
obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/01/22/experiment-universal-
child-care-united-states-lessons-lanham-act.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    High-quality early education for all would narrow the achievement 
gap. Dozens of preschool programs have been rigorously examined since 
the 1960s. Overall, across all studies and time periods, early 
childhood education increases cognitive and achievement scores by 0.35 
standard deviations on average, or nearly half the Black-White 
difference in the kindergarten achievement gap. Since higher income 
children are currently more likely to have access to high-quality early 
education, expanding access to all would narrow the achievement gap.
    The Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama did some 
calculations using the findings of the vast body of research on 
preschool as one example of early childhood education. They found that 
if all families were able to enroll their children in preschool at the 
same rate as high-income families, the subsequent earnings gain that 
would accrue had a net present value of $4.8 billion to $16.1 billion 
per cohort even after subtracting the cost of the program. \17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \17\ https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/
docs/early--childhood-report-update-final-non-embargo.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Finally, let me conclude by mentioning the aging population. While 
the past several decades have seen declining fertility rates, completed 
fertility has actually risen since 2006. This rise reflected the burst 
of fertility of women in their late 30s and 40s in the 2000s and 2010s. 
Children are born to mothers at increasingly older ages.
    But in recent years women have reduced their fertility at all ages. 
This is raising concerns that completed fertility among younger 
Millennials will ultimately be lower than that of the previous 
generation. College graduates in middle-class families struggle to pay 
student loans, to save for the downpayment on a home, and to get a 
stronger foothold in the labor market. Women with less education 
struggle to find a job that will pay a living wage, let alone high 
quality early childhood education. The shift to having children at 
older ages reflects the desire by many people to establish their 
careers and achieve financial stability prior to having children. 
Research shows that women's careers and wages stagnate after having 
children, a fact that leads many women to postpone having children as 
long as possible. Women and couples are making decisions about having 
children while considering the challenges of balancing work and 
children, the support they will get from their employer, the difficulty 
in arranging trustworthy childcare, and the financial cost of having 
children.
    In conclusion, women and parents are essential to the success of 
our economy. The majority of college-educated workers in the United 
States are women. This trend will continue since nearly 60 percent of 
those graduating from college today are women-meaning that in a decade 
an even greater share of college-educated workers will be female. It is 
important that policymakers concerned about the macroeconomy understand 
the crucial role that women are playing. But while women are crucial to 
the functioning of our economy, our workplace policies and Government 
policies have not kept up with the emergence of women as primary or co-
equal household earners.
                                 ______
                                 
                 PREPARED STATEMENT OF BERNADETTE NGOH
               Founder, Trusted Care Family Day Care Home
                             June 23, 2021
    Good afternoon Senators Warren, Kennedy, and Members of the 
Subcommittee on Economic Policy. My name is Bernadette Ngoh. I am the 
Owner/Director of Trusted Care Family Day Care Home, fondly called Mamu 
Daycare in West Haven, Connecticut. Thank you for this opportunity to 
speak to you today.
    Trusted Care provides quality and affordable childcare services. 
Our mission is to provide childcare in a nurturing environment where 
kids play, explore, and learn at their pace with fervent guidance. This 
gives parents opportunities to work, attend school or participate in 
other functions with peace of mind, knowing that their children are 
Home at Mamu Daycare. We are State-licensed and working toward national 
accreditation.
    I was raised in Southern Cameroon by a single mother, Dorothy 
Akoba, who believed strongly in the value of education even though she 
had no form of formal education. As a peasant farmer and small business 
owner, she worked hard to educate us. I am the first girl in my family 
to go to college. I received a LLB in English Private Law from the 
University of Yaounde II SOA, Cameroon, and a Diploma in Women's Law 
from the University of Zimbabwe. I attended the University of 
Bridgeport, where I earned a Master of Science in Counseling, 
Professional Diploma for Advanced Study with specialization in 
Counseling and Master of Business Administration.
    Up until 2010 I was an Adjunct Professor at the University of 
Bridgeport in the great State of Connecticut. In 2011 I had twins. I 
looked around for quality and affordable daycare, but the reality of 
the times motivated me to start one in 2012. Our program gave me the 
opportunity to care for my own children. With my kids as partners, we 
tested most of the activities that characterize our program as it is 
today: outdoor learning, the untapped learning space for kids. Our 
activities offer kids opportunity to play, explore, exercise, and have 
fun as they learn and enforces ``magic'' words and expressions such as: 
``Thank You,'' ``No thanks,'' ``I'm Sorry.'' Our kids build life 
skills, such as problem solving. Each child irrespective of their zip 
code or the financial standing of their parents and/or guardian has the 
potential of doing what they know to do best. I have the fun, hard job 
of supporting our kids' curiosity, hoping that it will follow them in 
their later ages, their needs will guide their adventures, their 
innocence will last a little while and love, truth, and hard work will 
pave the way for the next generation of Senators, CEOs, engineers, 
doctors, and teachers. Oh, how I love my job! Oh, how hard my job is! 
Oh, how even harder it is for the kids, especially kids 6 weeks through 
5 years. Each day the kids leave for work, sometimes very early in the 
morning to give Mom, Dad, or their guardian time to be the essential 
heroes they are: decision makers, CEOs, doctors and other health care 
workers, scientists, IT engineers, farmers, and grocery store workers. 
The kids, as well as their parents, are heroes. They get up early, go 
to work on time and oftentimes are obligated to work extended hours to 
support the job that you are doing. At the daycare, they play hard. 
Playing is a ``factory'' for learning. Daycare educators provide 
families with an environment that helps children be the best they can 
be, that helps them learn to fly. I support children's language 
development, social/emotional development, and behavior. Character is a 
scarce commodity that has its roots in early child education.
    Before the pandemic, the youngest child in my care was about 3; 
most of the children ranged from ages 3 to 8. I lost business, 
enrollment fell and attendance dropped. Today my youngest is about 18 
months, one is 2 years old and the majority are between the ages of 3 
and 10.
    The pandemic was tough--it hit us so hard. We quarantined twice. My 
husband got extremely sick, and it was scary. We were not sure he was 
going to make it. I became sick too. But eventually we both recovered 
and were able to go back to work.
    A parent lost his job and pulled his child out of daycare. Other 
parents shared their difficulties of paying for additional expenditures 
(mask and sanitizers) with their budgets. I suspended collection of 
out-of-pocket family fees from most of the subsidized parents. I had 
several unfilled slots at the daycare. It's tough financially--you're 
just wondering, ``if I don't take this child [for free], I may lose 
them when they get subsidy.'' Then I look at parents. They have even 
less than me and I can see some of them are struggling. I run a 24/7 
childcare program, which helped with my income but meant very long 
hours during the pandemic.
    We might be getting out of the pandemic but the day-to-day 
struggles of struggling families date back to before COVID-19 pandemic, 
and they require a lot, especially from family childcare providers. We 
are not only educators, but also business people, nurses, counselors, 
and social workers for parents as well as children, I have parents with 
kids who are paid about $475 a week and could not afford diapers, 
wipes, and taxi fares to daycare or work on stormy days. One works a 
late shift, picks her child up late and has a long walk to and from the 
bus. She is barely surviving. As hollow as I see my unmet financial 
needs, the struggles of a parent like this one add to my duties. It is 
the ``unseen labor'' of many childcare providers. I buy diapers to 
supplement what she can afford. I arrange for her to be dropped off at 
the bus stop and home when she is running late, the weather is not 
favorable or when it too late in the night to be pushing the stroller 
with the baby. To do my job, I must be able to shift quickly from one 
role to the next, drawing on all the knowledge and skills I have gained 
from continuous training and experience to support that parent and her 
child.
    True, it takes a community to raise a child, but learning begins at 
home. Due to the changing nature of our work, family daycare homes have 
become homes where most of the foundation for learning begins. 
Sometimes childcare providers spend more time with children than their 
parents. Providers spend ``day-time'' time with our children. We are 
among the first people who will impact the lives of children in ways 
that will determine tomorrow's society.
    How do we place a value on this work? Is it as important as the 
work of doctors or policemen? Let's look at remuneration. If I became 
sick and closed my doors tomorrow, five parents would not be able to 
work. And I would not receive sick pay, disability benefits or a 
pension if I were older.
    When the pandemic hit, schools and childcare centers closed their 
doors, but family childcare stayed open. We were recognized as 
essential workers, but we are not supported the way other essential 
workers are. Senators, without us most of you could not be working. 
Childcare providers taught you. We are teaching your children and 
grandchildren, nieces and nephews their first words. Jeff Bezos 
wouldn't be working either. And even our businesses, hospitals and 
police officers would not be at work if we close our daycare programs. 
This is the multiplier effect of childcare on the economy.
    Building a strong childcare infrastructure is long overdue. Our 
country has been pennywise, and pound foolish. If we do not build a 
strong foundation, there will be cracks that will be much more 
expensive to fix later. Investments in childcare now also enable us to 
save more later, when children become adults and their challenges are 
much more costly to address. A stitch in time save nine.
    As a daycare provider, parent, and a business owner I am submitting 
that:

    Our country has a childcare infrastructure problem.

    Investment in childcare infrastructure will provide 
        immediate and long-term economic benefit.

    Childcare providers cannot afford to do this work, parents 
        can't afford to pay for it, and children are missing out on the 
        nurturing and support they need to thrive.

    We need professional development and compensation to retain 
        experienced childcare educators in the field.

    You have an awesome responsibility: voters are asking you 
        to rebuild America's infrastructure in the wake of the 
        pandemic. Every dollar you invest in childcare--including 
        family childcare programs like mine--generates significant 
        economic benefit. The danger is not in investing too much, but 
        in investing too little.

    We need high-quality care for all children from birth to 5, and 
equitable access to funding so that all families can enroll their 
children in the childcare program of their choice. For the sake of our 
future, I urge you to invest as much new funding as possible in 
rebuilding the childcare infrastructure over the next decade.
                                 ______
                                 
                 PREPARED STATEMENT OF RACHEL GRESZLER
  Research Fellow in Economics, Budget and Entitlements, The Heritage 
                               Foundation
                             June 23, 2021

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]



                PREPARED STATEMENT OF ABBY M. MCCLOSKEY
              Founder and Principal, McCloskey Policy, LLC
                             June 23, 2021
    Chair Warren, Ranking Member Kennedy, and Members of the Committee, 
thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I have spent most of my 
career focused on policies to improve upward economic mobility and to 
support working families, including paid parental leave and childcare.
    In the testimony that follows, I will discuss the economic impact 
of childcare for parents and children, review the current policy 
landscape and proposals for reform, and turn to policy principles and 
recommendations.
The Childcare Challenges Facing American Families
    To understand the childcare challenges that face working families, 
it is helpful to consider the dramatic evolution of work and family 
over the last 60 years. Since 1960, the share of U.S. households headed 
by single parents has more than tripled, with unmarried parents now 
representing approximately one-third of American households. \1\ The 
majority of women participate in the labor force, and mothers are now 
the sole or main breadwinners in 40 percent of American families, 
according to the Pew Research Center. \2\ Globalization and 
technological advances have depressed wage growth for America's low-
wage workers relative to higher earners. \3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \1\ Pew Research Center, ``The American Family Today'', 2015, 
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/12/17/1-the-american-
family-today/.
     \2\ Pew Research Center, ``In Four in Ten Families, Mom Is the 
Primary Breadwinner'', 2015, https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/
2015/12/17/parenting-in-america/st-2015-12-17-parenting-20/.
     \3\ Brookings Institute, ``Middle Class Income and Wages'', 
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2020/01/24/charts-of-the-
week-middle-class-income-and-wages/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This has created new tensions around work and care that public 
policy and markets have failed to adequately address. In particular, 
access to affordable and high-quality childcare is out of reach for 
many families. Childcare costs are higher than the costs of college, 
food, and housing in many parts of the country. \4\ For parents living 
in poverty, childcare costs can consume up to 30 percent (or more) of 
their monthly income. \5\ Research by the Center for American Progress 
has identified what it deems ``childcare deserts''--areas where there 
is little or no access to licensed childcare providers. \6\ Providing 
high quality care inside the home is also difficult. For many families, 
it is not financially possible for a parent to be the primary caregiver 
for their child even in the first few weeks of life, let alone in the 
years before a child reaches elementary school. A Department of Labor 
study found that one in four women return to work within two weeks of 
giving birth, and few fathers take any time off at all. \7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \4\ Childcare Aware of America, ``The U.S. and the High Price of 
Childcare: 2019 Report''. https://www.childcareaware.org/our-issues/
research/the-us-and-the-high-price-of-child-care-2019/.
     \5\ Lynda Laughlin, ``Who's Minding the Kids? Child Care 
Arrangements: Spring 2011'' (U.S. Department of Commerce, April 2, 
2013), www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p70-135.pdf.
     \6\ Aparna Mathur and Abby McCloskey, ``The American Dream in 
2020'', AEI Paper https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/the-
american-dream-in-2020-how-to-strengthen-it/.
     \7\ AEI-Brookings, ``Paid Leave an Issue Whose Time Has Come'', 
2017, https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/paid-family-and-
medical-leave-an-issue-whose-time-has-come/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Lack of access to affordable, high-quality childcare exerts 
pressure on the economy in two main ways: First, it impacts parents' 
economic opportunity. There is a large literature showing that high 
childcare costs are associated with less work among mothers. In a 
review of the literature, economist Jean Kimmel found that a 10 percent 
increase in childcare costs is associated with a 2.0 percent to 7.4 
percent decrease in women's employment. \8\ Policies that offset 
childcare costs are associated with increased employment and reduced 
dependence on Government welfare. Using data from the 1999 National 
Survey of America's Families, David Blau and Erdal Tekin found that 
childcare subsidies for welfare recipients resulted in a 13-percentage-
point increase in the likelihood of employment for single mothers. \9\ 
Another study found that the introduction of subsidized childcare in 
Quebec in the late 1990s resulted in a significant employment boost for 
married women. \10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \8\ Aparna Mathur and Abby McCloskey, ``How To Improve Economic 
Opportunity for Women'', AEI Research Paper, 2014, https://www.aei.org/
wp-content/uploads/2014/07/-how-to-improve-economic-opportunity-for-
women--120143477839.pdf?x91208.
     \9\ David Blau and Erdal Tekin, ``The Determinants and 
Consequences of Child Care Subsidies for Single Mothers'', Journal of 
Population Economics 20, no. 4 (May 2003): 719-41.
     \10\ Michael Baker, Jonathan Gruber, and Kevin Milligan, 
``Universal Childcare, Maternal Labor Supply, and Family Well-Being'', 
Journal of Political Economy 116, no. 4 (2008): 709-45.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The high cost of care likely impacts childbearing rates, reducing 
the size of the future labor force. A recent New York Times survey 
found that the most common reason young adults are having fewer 
children is that ``childcare is too expensive'' (64 percent of 
respondents). \11\ Lack of paid parental leave is associated with an 
uptick in welfare use for new mothers and reduced wages upon returning 
to work. \12\ According to Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn, about 
28 percent of the decline in female labor force participation in 
America relative to other countries in the Organisation for Economic 
Cooperation and Development (OECD) can be explained by the Nation's 
lack of family-friendly workplace policies, including paid parental 
leave and childcare. \13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \11\ Claire Cain Miller, ``Americans Are Having Fewer Babies. They 
Told Us Why'', New York Times, July 5, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/
2018/07/05/upshot/americans-are-having-fewer-babies-they-told-us-
why.html.
     \12\ AEI-Brookings, ``Paid Leave an Issue Whose Time Has Come'', 
2017, https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/paid-family-and-
medical-leave-an-issue-whose-time-has-come/.
     \13\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Second, lack of access to high-quality care--both inside the home 
and outside of it--impacts children's economic outcomes. While all 
children would benefit from high quality care in their early 
developmental years, it is least available for disadvantaged children 
whose families often can neither afford high-quality care options 
outside the home nor do they have access to such options inside the 
home.
    Research pioneered by Nobel-prize winning economist James Heckman 
has found that investment in early childhood care for disadvantaged 
families has lifelong economic implications for children, impacting 
their health, education, and professional outcomes. \14\ His research 
has primarily centered around two intensive and highly targeted early 
childhood development programs--the Perry Preschool Project and the 
Carolina Abecedarian Project--which focused on low-income Black 
children and their families in the 1960s and 1970s, providing in-home 
coaching and wraparound services in addition to high-quality preschool.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \14\ James Heckman, ``Invest in Early Childhood Development'', 
https://heckmanequation.org/www/assets/2013/07/F-
HeckmanDeficitPieceCUSTOM-Generic-052714-3-1.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Heckman's most recent research found that these gains continued 
across generations, with improvements in education, employment, crime, 
school suspensions, and health for the children of those who had 
participated in the Perry Preschool Project. \15\ This suggests that 
investments in early childhood care and education, properly structured 
and targeted, could be a critical tool to unlock intergenerational 
upward mobility and economic opportunity. Furthermore, investments in 
early childhood have shown greater gains in economic opportunity than 
investments in adolescence and adulthood, suggesting that we would 
benefit from shifting our policy interventions to earlier in life. \16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \15\ Heckman, James, and Ganesh Karapakula. ``Intergenerational 
and Intragenerational Externalities of the Perry Preschool Project'', 
2019.
     \16\ James Heckman, ``Catch 'em Young'', Wall Street Journal, 
2006, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113686119611542381.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current Policy Landscape
    The current policy landscape for childcare is far from bare. Many 
Government programs subsidize childcare; however, none provide 
comprehensive support.
    The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) is administered by the 
Department of Health and Human Services and provides block grants to 
the States to assist low-income families in attaining childcare for 
children under the age of 13. Federal law states that children are 
eligible for services under CCDF if their family income is at or below 
85 percent of the State median income; however, the majority of States 
set eligibility limits below that. Families currently on welfare, 
specifically Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), are 
usually given priority for the funds, leaving low-income families on 
the verge of welfare without service. \17\ Economists Mezey, 
Schumacher, and Greeberg found that fewer than 30 percent of those 
leaving welfare were receiving a childcare subsidy. \18\ A 2021 GAO 
report found that only 4 percent to 18 percent of federally eligible 
children were receiving CCDF subsidies. \19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \17\ Aparna Mathur and Abby McCloskey, ``How To Improve Economic 
Opportunity for Women'', AEI Research Paper, 2014, https://www.aei.org/
wp-content/uploads/2014/07/-how-to-improve-economic-opportunity-for-
women-120143477839.pdf?x91208.
     \18\ Jennifer Mezey, Mark Greenberg, and Rachel Schumacher, ``The 
Vast Majority of Federally Eligible Children Did Not Receive Child Care 
Assistance in FY 2000'', (Center for Law and Social Policy, October 
2002), www.clasp.org/resources-and-publications/archive/0108.pdf.
     \19\ GAO, ``Child Care Eligibility and Receipt, and Waitlist'', 
2021, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-245r.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit provides a nonrefundable 
tax credit ranging from 20 to 35 percent for eligible childcare costs; 
costs that are capped at $3,000 for one child and $6,000 for two or 
more children (this was temporarily increased $8,000 and $16,000 and 
made refundable as part of pandemic relief). The permanent limits are 
only 1.5 times the 1976 values, considerably less than the rate of 
inflation or the growth in childcare costs. And the credit is 
nonrefundable, which presents a challenge for low-income families who 
might not have income tax liability against which to claim the credit.
    There is also an employer-based childcare tax exclusion. Under this 
exclusion, employees can set aside $5,000 from their pretax salary for 
childcare expenses. Employers can choose whether or not to offer the 
exclusion. Higher-income families generally benefit more from the 
exclusion, since the excluded income avoids both income and payroll 
taxes.
    Several other Government support programs may offset the cost of 
childcare, albeit indirectly. For example, the Child Tax Credit is a 
tax credit of up to $2,000 per child under the age of 17 (temporarily 
increased to $3,600 per child under age 6 from pandemic-related 
legislation). Presumably, this could be used to offset some of the 
costs of childcare, but mostly for middle-class families with tax 
liabilities. The Tax Policy Center found that families in the bottom 
quintile are the least likely to receive a credit, and when they do, it 
is smaller than for higher income families because the credit is not 
fully refundable. \20\ Additionally, the Earned Income Tax Credit 
(EITC) may be used to offset childcare-related expenses for low-income 
families, although it need not be used for this purpose.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \20\ Tax Policy Center, ``Tax Policy Center Briefing Book'', 2018, 
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/briefing-book/
taxes-and-the-family.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Last but not least, the Head Start program is the Nation's largest 
Federal program providing early childhood education for disadvantaged 3 
and 4 year olds. Results on the efficacy of Head Start program have 
been mixed, with some studies showing positive effects and others 
finding that gains fade over time. \21\ Moreover, in the same way that 
the quality of K-12 schools varies widely across the country, the 
quality of various Head Start programs also varies widely. A 2013 
National Institute for Early Education study found that 60 percent of 
Head Start centers were rated as medium to low quality, with Black 
children over-represented in lower quality programs. \22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \21\ HHS, ``Head Start Impact Report'', 2010, https://
www.acf.hhs.gov/opre/report/head-start-impact-study-final-report-
executive-summary.
     \22\ Katharine Stevens and Elizabeth English, ``Does Pre-K Work?'' 
AEI Paper, 2016, https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Does-
Pre-K-Work.pdf?x91208.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current Proposals for Reform
    Even in our polarized political climate, the challenges of access 
to high-quality childcare are widely recognized. As such, there have 
been a number of proposals put forward by political leaders across the 
ideological spectrum to improve investments in childcare.
    On the political Right, many of these proposals have involved 
shifting the timing of existing tax credits (Child Tax Credit) or 
retirement benefits (Social Security) to be accessed upon having young 
children in order to help cover the cost of paid leave or childcare; 
setting up tax-advantaged savings accounts to be used for pregnancy, 
paid leave, or childcare expenses, and; providing tax credits to 
companies that provide family-friendly policies, such as paid family 
leave. While these policies benefit from having a small spending 
footprint--an important consideration in our current fiscal 
environment--they keep early childhood care an undersized share of our 
overall Federal portfolio and would provide limited support to the 
neediest families who would not benefit from nonrefundable tax credits 
or tax-advantaged accounts.
    On the political Left, efforts have largely centered around the 
creation of large new public programs, such as universal childcare or 
universal pre-K. Recently, President Biden put forward the American 
Families Plan, which among other provisions, includes universal 
preschool for 3 and 4 year olds, a larger and refundable Child and 
Dependent Care Tax Credit, an expanded Child Tax Credit, a $15 minimum 
wage, and a national 12-week paid leave policy for family and medical 
reasons. Too often these proposals overlook the existing policies that 
are in place, come at a tremendous cost to taxpayers (and the future 
generations likely to pay for our historic debt burden), and go beyond 
what research suggests would be most beneficial for parents and 
children. Proposals for universal public preschool at times seem to 
overlook the emergent issues in our public K-12 system, which is 
falling behind our global peers, or Head Start where results have been 
less robust than in more targeted programs. We shouldn't add to the 
system without trying to better understand how to make the existing one 
work better.
    Other reforms have focused on increasing pay and benefits for 
childcare providers. On average, the median hourly wage for childcare 
workers was $10.72 in 2017, and half of childcare workers are on a 
public assistance program relative to 21 percent for the workforce. 
\23\ Increased opportunities for skills-attainment would help to 
support higher wages and professional advancement for care providers. 
Multiple States--including West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Colorado--
have begun to implement registered apprenticeship programs for early 
childhood educators. These programs provide early childhood educators 
with on-the-job training and a career pathway to improve their 
knowledge and skills. They create more opportunities for workers to 
move into roles of greater responsibility and pay, a virtuous cycle 
resulting in higher quality care. \24\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \23\ Bipartisan Policy Center, ``Registered Apprenticeships: A 
Viable Career Path for Early Childhood Educators'', 2019, https://
bipartisanpolicy.org/download/?file=/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/BPC-
Early-Childhood-Issue-Brief-RV4.pdf.
     \24\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Mandating higher wages and benefits may inadvertently reduce the 
number of care providers that centers can employ further contributing 
to the shortage of care. Increased costs are also likely to be passed 
onto parents, many of whom are low-wage earners themselves and already 
struggling with access and affordability of care. According to the 
Center for American Progress, more than half of Hispanic families live 
in childcare deserts, and the cost of center-based childcare for two 
young children consumes 56 percent of median household income for Black 
families. \25\ Higher care costs could result in at-risk families 
moving to lower quality or informal care providers or needing to leave 
the labor force entirely. For entry-level care providers, wage support 
through programs such as the EITC and a tightening labor market from 
economic growth would boost wages without limiting the supply of care.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \25\ Center for American Progress, ``How Child Care Disruptions 
Hurt Parents of Color The Most'', 2020, https://
www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/news/2020/06/29/486977/
child-care-disruptions-hurt-parents-color/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While proposed policy solutions differ widely, there is bipartisan 
recognition of the need for reform and a recognition of the economic 
benefits from high quality care for parents and children. This suggests 
that there is a way forward that could garner broad support.
Principles and Recommendations for Moving Forward
    As policymakers weigh varying investments in early childhood care 
in the postpandemic economy, I'd like to put forward five principles to 
guide the discussion to common ground:
1. The benefits of high-quality early childhood investment are most 
        pronounced for disadvantaged children and their parents. We 
        should focus our investment here.
    The literature shows tremendous gains from targeted care 
investments for disadvantaged children. As stated earlier, Heckman has 
found 7 percent to 13 percent annual return on investment from early 
childhood interventions in economically disadvantaged families, 
including improved educational and career prospects as well as reduced 
health and criminal expenses. \26\ Recent research by Heckman and 
others has found that the children of those who attended such programs 
also exhibit improved outcomes, suggesting that investment in early 
childhood education could be an unlock for intergenerational economic 
opportunity. \27\ This could be particularly powerful if paired with 
economist Raj Chetty's research on upward mobility to target early 
childhood interventions by neighborhood.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \26\ James Heckman, ``Invest in Early Childhood Development'', 
https://heckmanequation.org/www/assets/2013/07/F-
HeckmanDeficitPieceCUSTOM-Generic-052714-3-1.pdf.
     \27\ Heckman, James, and Ganesh Karapakula. ``Intergenerational 
and Intragenerational Externalities of the Perry Preschool Project'', 
2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In contrast, the research on universal childcare and preschool 
programs is mixed. Some studies have found negative effects when full-
time, center-based care becomes the norm and other care solutions are 
removed. For example, Quebec's universal childcare program has been 
associated with negative outcomes for children on a variety of 
behavioral and health dimensions, including increased aggression, 
physical illness, and lower quality parental relationships. \28\ Other 
studies, including a 2021 NBER working paper on the effects of 
universal preschool in Boston have found improvements in college-going, 
college preparation, standardized test scores, and behavioral outcomes 
from access to pre-K. \29\ This suggests universal pre-K and universal 
childcare are an over-reach relative to the current evidence base, and 
resources are best targeted towards at-risk families.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \28\ Michael Baker, Jonathan Gruber, and Kevin Milligan, 
``Universal Childcare, Maternal Labor Supply, and Family Well-Being'', 
Journal of Political Economy 11, no. 4 (2008): 709-45.
     \29\ Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Parag A. Pathak, Christopher R. Walters, 
``The Long-Term Effects of Universal Preschool in Boston'', 2021, 
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28756.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Policymakers should seek to maximize care options for parents 
        instead of one-size-fits-all solutions.
    While there is a strong case for public investment in early 
childhood care for disadvantaged families, this does not translate to a 
one-size-fits-all public program. Childcare needs and values vary 
widely. As such, policymakers should seek to create more care options 
for families, rather than fewer.
    One of the most promising channels for reform in the childcare 
space is an expansion of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, such 
as that proposed by President Biden in the American Families Plan, and 
along the lines of what I've proposed with my former colleagues Aparna 
Mathur and Angela Rachidi at the American Enterprise Institute. \30\ 
Tax credits for childcare can be thought of as a school choice program 
for early childhood care and education. Parents who need care outside 
of the home can choose to send their children to center-based care, 
help pay for a nanny, enroll their children in a religious program, a 
dual language class, all of which could be full-time, or part-time, or 
something in between. An expanded CDCTC would allow for a proliferation 
of different types of programs in response to parental preferences and 
negate the need for a universal, public program. A refundable credit 
would benefit low-income families, for whom childcare costs are a 
barrier to work and high-quality care outside the home is financially 
prohibitive.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \30\ Aparna Mathur and Abby McCloskey, ``Fostering Upward Economic 
Mobility in the United States'', AEI Research Paper, 2014, https://
www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/-fostering-upward-economic-
mobility-in-the-united-states-151727618007.pdf?x91208.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Some have argued that offsetting childcare expenses pushes parents 
into the labor force and away from the home. This overlooks the costs 
of working, such as payroll and income taxes that working parents incur 
and stay-at-home parents do not.
3. New programs should take into account existing programs and make 
        sure new spending is paid for.
    We must be judicious with our spending priorities as well as with 
our pay-fors. The Federal debt is already at historic levels and that's 
before an infrastructure package or any further Government spending. 
Federal debt held by the public is equal to the size of our entire GDP. 
\31\ Moreover, we are not starting from scratch in the childcare space. 
As outlined in Section II, there are childcare block grants to the 
States, Head Start, the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, the Child 
Tax Credit, tax credits to employers and more.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \31\ CBO, ``The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2021-2031'', https://
www.cbo.gov/publication/56991.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    New programs should seek to rationalize the existing landscape of 
Federal and State policy to prevent duplication, waste, and overlap. 
For example, an expansion of the Child and Dependent Tax Credit could 
be paired with a streamlining of existing policies. In our AEI paper, 
``Improving Economic Opportunity for Women'', Mathur and I propose 
substantially increasing the amount of the CDCTC and making it 
refundable. This would reduce the need for CCDF and employer-sponsored 
tax credits, making childcare support available regardless of employer 
options or State policies. \32\ While all of us would appreciate an 
offset in childcare costs or a child allowance expansion, it is 
particularly important for low-income and disadvantaged families; this 
suggests that we should have a relatively tight income limit on tax 
credit eligibility.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \32\ Aparna Mathur and Abby McCloskey, ``How To Improve Economic 
Opportunity for Women'', AEI Research Paper, 2014, https://www.aei.org/
wp-content/uploads/2014/07/-how-to-improve-economic-opportunity-for-
women-120143477839.pdf?x91208.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Some have argued that investments in care programs would pay for 
themselves given that society is already bearing the burden of 
underinvestment in early childhood. Importantly, this has not been the 
case with our existing public preschool programs, even those targeted 
towards at-risk children, such as Head Start. In the words of Heckman, 
``there is little basis for providing universal programs at zero 
cost.'' \33\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \33\ James Heckman, ``Catch 'em Young'', Wall Street Journal, 
2006, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113686119611542381.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. We should make it easier for parents to spend time with infants.
    While much of the discussion on childcare focuses on care outside 
the home, care inside the home is vitally important. In her book, What 
Children Need, Columbia University economist Jane Waldfogel finds that 
a parent being actively present during the first year of a child's life 
is linked to a host of positive emotional, physical, and mental health 
outcomes for children.
    Yet the status quo makes it very difficult for parents to spend 
this critical time with their children, especially low-income parents 
who have a thin financial margin and lack access to benefits such as 
paid leave from their employers. Fewer than one in five workers have 
access to paid parental leave from their employers, and 40 percent of 
workers lack job protection following the birth of a child. \34\ As a 
result, one in four mothers returns to work within two weeks after 
having a child, and many fathers take no time off of work at all. \35\ 
The impact is significant, from reduced rates of breastfeeding to one 
of the highest rates of neonatal fatalities in the developed world. 
\36\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \34\ AEI-Brookings, ``Paid Leave an Issue Whose Time Has Come'', 
2017, https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/paid-family-and-
medical-leave-an-issue-whose-time-has-come/.
     \35\ Ibid.
     \36\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A modest Federal paid parental leave policy would protect those 
early weeks between parents and infants and has been supported by the 
bipartisan AEI-Brookings paid leave working group (in which I'm a 
member). \37\ While there have been calls for more expansive leave 
packages for family and medical purposes, the most pronounced benefits 
in the paid leave literature accrue from paid parental leave. As such, 
we should unbundle this from the other leave policies and prioritize 
its implementation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \37\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Boosting wages through wage subsidies such as the Earned Income Tax 
Credit and economic growth also would allow parents to scale back hours 
to spend more time at home, while helping to ensure that one or both 
parents remain attached to the labor force. Additionally, the most 
successful early childhood care interventions have also been paired 
with in-home visits and parental coaching, suggesting that care inside 
the home and outside of it are dynamic complements, and the latter does 
not negate the former. \38\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \38\ James Heckman, ``Invest in Early Childhood Development'', 
https://heckmanequation.org/www/assets/2013/07/F-
HeckmanDeficitPieceCUSTOM-Generic-052714-3-1.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. We should address the supply side of care to bring down costs.
    One potential contributor to heightened childcare costs is the 
decline in the supply of providers. A 2019 report noted a 35 percent 
decline in small family childcare providers from 2011 to 2017 and a 
concurrent decline in large family care providers by 8 percent. \39\ 
This could, in part, be the result of childcare regulation. As with 
occupational licensing measures, safety and quality standards are 
crucial; however, overly burdensome restrictions that may prevent 
otherwise qualified care providers from entering the market. \40\ 
Therefore, a care package should include incentives for States to 
streamline their care regulations to ensure children are receiving 
optimal care and other burdens are removed so that consumers (i.e., 
parents) do not wind up paying the high price.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \39\ Aparna Mathur and Abby McCloskey, ``The American Dream in 
2020'', AEI Paper https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/the-
american-dream-in-2020-how-to-strengthen-it/.
     \40\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Additionally, more attention is needed to increase the supply, 
retention, and advancement of care providers. As discussed in Section 
IV, apprenticeships and vocational training for care providers are 
promising solutions to increase the supply of caregivers, as well as 
improve their skills and wages. Multiple States have begun 
experimenting with access to registered apprenticeship programs for 
early childhood educators.
Conclusion
    To conclude, childcare impacts the economy through parental 
participation in the labor force as well as children's developmental 
outcomes. These impacts are particularly pronounced for disadvantaged 
families. While there are many existing Government programs that seek 
to offset childcare costs and increase access to care, these programs 
are not comprehensive and have left out many low-income families. As 
policymakers weigh how to improve the childcare landscape in the 
postpandemic economy, investments in early childhood care for at-risk 
families should be at the core of Federal childcare policy given their 
well-documented record of generating significant economic returns, 
upward mobility, and improved labor force attachment. New programs 
should take into account existing policy and seek to create more 
options for high-quality care--both inside the home and outside of it--
instead of one-size-fits-all solutions.

       RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR KENNEDY
                      FROM RACHEL GRESZLER

Q.1. How has COVID-19 impacted women's employment and economic 
activity?

A.1. Initially, early in the pandemic, women lost more jobs 
than men. They were also more likely to drop out of the labor 
force to stay home with children when schools and daycare 
centers closed.
    In the first 2 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, women's 
employment was down by 1.2 million more than men's. But as of 
June 2021, men's employment is actually down by 252,000 more 
than women's. Female unemployment peaked at 16.1 percent in 
April 2020 as men's hit 13.6 percent. Yet today, the 
unemployment rate among women is lower than among men (5.7 
percent vs. 6.0 percent).
    And while women's labor force participation rate has 
declined slightly more than men's since the pandemic began (1.7 
percentage points vs. 1.6), women's 5.3 percent increase in 
earnings is more than twice that of men's 2.2 percent gain.

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    Not only have women largely recovered from those initial 
disparities, but the workplace changes brought on by the 
pandemic will arguably propel women forward in the workplace, 
as opposed to setting them back.

Q.2. Due to the pandemic, many childcare providers were forced 
to close their doors. According to The Chamber of Commerce, 
over 70 percent of working parents with children younger than 6 
years old stayed home throughout the year. Additionally, with 
greater accessibility to childcare, 68 percent of employed 
parents say they'd be able to work more. Question: Has the 
pandemic and childcare struggles disproportionately impacted 
parents' employment?

A.2. Yes, parents' work was disproportionately impacted at the 
beginning of the pandemic. In large part, their hours were 
affected (having to cut back on them by an average of 8 hours 
per week), and to a lesser degree some had to stop working 
entirely. Somewhat surprisingly, this is no longer the case and 
parents' employment has been less impacted than nonparents.

Q.3. How have working parents been disproportionately affected 
by both the pandemic and issues related to childcare?

A.3. At first, childcare center and school closures meant many 
parents had to cut back on work or stop working entirely. But 
most childcare centers opened long before public schools. And 
fortunately, many families found alternatives to childcare 
providers through the use of family- and friends-care.
    Surprisingly, a study by Jason Furman, et al. (Furman is a 
former Chair of President Obama's Council of Economic 
Advisers), found that, as of May 2021, working parents with 
young children were actually less likely than workers without 
young children to have experienced declines in employment.

Q.4. The American Families Plan, Biden's proposal, would invest 
$200 billion into universal preschool for all 3 to 4 years 
old--saving the average family $13,000 and assist 5 million 
children. Senator Warren's $700 billion proposal would expand 
federally offered childcare, Head Start, to establish a 
``universal system for families'' who don't qualify for their 
services. Thus, wealthy families who could afford childcare 
would be eligible for a Federal subsidy. Question: Who stands 
to benefit most from a universal, subsidized childcare for all 
proposal?

A.4. Wealthy and affluent families have stronger preferences 
for center-based childcare and thus would be most likely to 
benefit from these proposals. Moreover, wealthier families 
living in high-cost areas would likely receive the highest 
subsidy amounts as annual daycare costs often exceed $20,000 
per child in large cities.

Q.5. Who stands to benefit from universal childcare help the 
most? And how would this proposal truly benefit both childcare 
workers and families?

A.5. Wealthier families with two earners, and also single-
parent families, would benefit the most from universal 
Government childcare programs. The proposal to mandate higher 
wages for childcare workers would benefit some, but not all 
childcare workers, as the Government-directed childcare centers 
would provide higher wages while workers who prefer to care for 
children in smaller, family-based, and religious centers (or 
who do not live in areas where large providers exist) would be 
less likely to qualify for the subsidies and thus higher wages. 
Moreover, the proposal to mandate that childcare workers in 
programs receiving subsidies have the equivalent education of 
kindergarten teachers would effectively eliminate the jobs of 
many childcare workers who do not have college degrees and are 
likely not in positions to get them.
    Evidence from Quebec shows widespread Government-subsidized 
childcare harms children and families. There is similar 
evidence from within the U.S. in targeted lower-income 
subsidized programs. And recently, evidence from Chicago and 
Trenton, New Jersey, show the unintended consequences of 
creating two-tiered systems and driving out the provision of 
private, non-Government care, while also diverting funds meant 
to benefit children and families and instead aiding cronyism 
and corruption.

Q.6. President Biden's proposal also includes a $15 an hour 
wage for everyone working in the Head Start program and pre-K. 
A recent report done by the Heritage Foundation found that this 
could significantly increase the cost of childcare, especially 
in Louisiana. If Congress raised the Federal minimum wage to 
$15 an hour, in Louisiana, this would lead to a 37 percent hike 
in costs. A $5,487 increase in cost for one child enrolled in 
infant care and one child in 4-year-old care. Question: Do you 
know how much it would cost the families in my State of 
Louisiana if Congress were to enact a $15 minimum wage for 
childcare?

A.6. Currently, the average cost of childcare for an infant in 
Louisiana is $7,728 while care for a 4-year-old is $6,912 per 
year, for a total two-child cost of $14,640. I estimate that a 
$15 minimum wage would increase childcare costs to $10,624 for 
an infant (an increase of $2,896) and to $9,503 for a 4-year-
old (an increase of $2,591). In total, a family with two 
children in childcare would see their annual costs rise by 
$5,487, from $14,640 to $20,127. It is important to note that 
my estimates of the impact of a $15 minimum wage on childcare 
costs likely represent the lower bound as they only assume that 
workers with wages currently below $15 will receive raises to 
$15 per hour, but in reality, workers with higher wages will 
also have to receive pay raises (including childcare directors) 
in order to maintain a just and competitive compensation 
schedule.
    With the median annual income in Louisiana equal to 
$46,460, a 37 percent increase in childcare costs would impose 
tremendous financial burdens on families. Infant care alone 
would consume 23 percent of an average worker's income, and 
care for an infant and 4-year-old would require 43 percent of 
an average workers' income.

Q.7. How can current Government funded programs be changed to 
better align with families' needs and kids' well being?

A.7. The Federal Government already provides significant 
funding for early childhood care and education through 
childcare development block grants and through Head Start. 
Block grant funding should be widely available at providers of 
parents' choices, and Head Start should be made portable, so 
that families can use those funds at a preschool or childcare 
provider of their choice. The reality is that Head Start is not 
a viable childcare solution for working parents as it often 
only provides a few hours of care per day, and yet at about 
$10,000 per student, it costs as much as full-time childcare in 
a majority of States.
    Moreover, State policymakers should examine and remove 
childcare regulations that do not significantly improve the 
safety and quality of care. This would increase the supply of 
providers and lower the cost of care, allowing families to 
choose from more options--including small family and religious 
center providers--that meet their needs and desires.

Q.8. Shouldn't we prioritize maximizing options for parents 
rather than applying this blanket, one-size-fits-all approach 
to childcare?

A.8. For parents with young children, there is nothing more 
important than being able to choose who will care for their 
children, and the type of environment in which they leave their 
children. While blanket childcare subsidies will be available 
to almost every family, they will not allow families to choose 
the providers that work best for them. As envisioned, 
Government childcare subsidies will go to childcare centers 
that comply with a litany of costly and unnecessary childcare 
regulations, such as childcare teachers needing to have a 
college degree, Government bureaucrats imposing wage and 
compensation mandates on childcare providers, childcare workers 
being unionized, and the environments and curriculums mandated 
by Government standards instead of parents' preferences.
    Parents have very different preferences for childcare. 
Many--especially lower-income and Hispanic parents prefer for a 
parent to stay home with children. By definition, families that 
choose to have a parent stay home will have lower incomes. 
Families who sacrifice earnings to care for their own kids 
should not also have to sacrifice more income to pay for the 
care of other families' children. It would be far better to 
make it easier for families to pursue childcare and work 
arrangements that are best for them than to impose a blanket 
policy that would disproportionately benefit wealthy and 
affluent families.

Q.9. Would you think a family's ability to borrow against 
themselves, like borrowing from their future child tax credit 
refund to use as a childcare voucher, would allow them more 
freedom/flexibility to choose a childcare program that best 
suits their needs? What other options should families have 
available to them to help pay for childcare?

A.9. It would seem, economically, that having the option to 
borrow against a once-a-year tax credit would help families 
manage their weekly and monthly childcare expenses, but there 
are some barriers that would prevent such an option from being 
as effective as desired. Families can be understandably weary 
about borrowing against a future Government benefit; the 
paperwork and bureaucratic process would deter many; and issues 
surrounding the legal custody of children could limit the 
availability of such funds, as well as add to complications and 
improper payments.
    Instead of providing child payments to virtually all 
families--without work requirements and extending payments to 
very high-income families--a more effective way to provide 
families with the resources they need to care for their 
children, and to teach them the importance of work, would be to 
let parents keep more of the money they earn--through broader-
based and lower-rate taxes.

Q.10. Do you believe the childcare system needs to be better 
connected to the actual needs of the local workforce and 
community?

A.10. Yes. What works in a big city like Washington, DC, where 
most jobs are information-based, the costs of living are 
extremely high, and most families have all parents in the 
household working is unlikely to work in rural Kentucky where 
jobs like coal-mining and farming have less regular schedules 
and more parents choose family-based care for their kids. 
Heavily subsidized, Government-directed childcare programs may 
meet the desires of upper-income urban families, but what is 
needed in more rural areas with unique industries is more 
small, in-home family and church-based childcare providers that 
can offer more flexible schedules at lower costs.
    The pandemic showed that local governments are best 
equipped to address the childcare needs of their communities. 
Not only are local and State governments the ones that 
determine childcare regulations, but they have personal 
interactions with their residents and business owners that help 
them know how best to meet their communities' needs. During the 
pandemic, communities such as my own provided targeted funding 
to childcare providers, noting the importance of preventing 
permanent closures. Because local governments regulate 
childcare providers, they already had their information on hand 
and were able to get the information out to these providers 
quickly, and to provide assistance in navigating the 
application process. Meanwhile, the Federal funding proposed in 
the so-called infrastructure package would come with so many 
strings attached that they would be effectively out of reach 
for smaller childcare providers. For example, providers would 
only be able to hire childcare teachers who have college 
degrees, their curriculums would be mandated by Federal 
bureaucrats, and even just accessing Federal funds for 
facilities improvements would require childcare providers to 
comply with ``prevailing wage'' laws that dictate the pay and 
benefits that must be provided to contractors who perform 
facilities improvements.
                                ------                                


       RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR KENNEDY
                     FROM ABBY M. MCCLOSKEY

Q.1. Senator Cassidy (R-LA) and Senator Sinema (D-AZ) have 
introduced a bipartisan proposal to assist working families 
with paid leave or childcare expenses. Question: Do you think 
pushing childcare reform through without bipartisan discussion 
will solve the childcare dilemma in the long-term?

A.1. It is essential that working families rely on sustainable 
childcare and paid leave policies that will not change 
depending on the political makeup of Congress or the 
Administration. I applaud Senators Cassidy and Sinema for their 
bipartisanship and hope that more Senators engage in similar 
efforts.

Q.2. What areas of childcare and paid leave policy proposals do 
you believe Democrats and Republicans could compromise on the 
most and why?

A.2. In terms of childcare, Democrats and Republicans should 
come together to support an expansion of the Child and 
Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) for low and middle-wage 
workers. High childcare costs are a barrier to work and thus a 
barrier to financial independence and upward mobility. 
Additionally, the literature has shown that high-quality 
childcare is particularly important for economically 
disadvantaged children's cognitive development. A CDCTC 
expansion should support a wide variety of early childhood care 
and educational opportunities, including in-home providers, 
religious providers, and center-based care as opposed to a one-
size-fits-all public program. In this sense, the CDCTC can be 
thought of as a massive school choice or voucher program for 
early childhood education.
    In terms of paid leave, I believe that Democrats and 
Republicans should come together to support a Federal paid 
parental leave policy. A Federal paid parental leave policy 
would deliver significant economic and health benefits to 
parents and infants at a fraction of the cost of a broader paid 
leave policy. An 8-week paid parental leave policy has been 
modeled by the AEI-Brookings Working Group on Paid Leave (which 
I was a part of) and could be paid for in part by reorganizing 
existing spending.
    While some policymakers have proposed a broad paid leave 
policy--inclusive of parental, family, and medical leave--the 
literature is most robust on the benefits of paid parental 
leave, or paid leave upon the birth or adoption of a child. The 
increase in workforce attachment, health improvements for 
mothers and children, and decrease in welfare dependency are 
all specific to paid leave for new parents. The rest of the 
world treats paid parental leave differently from medical or 
family leave. Combining paid parental, family, and medical 
leave into a one-size-fits-all 12 week policy significantly 
expands the cost of the program, gives rise to the potential 
for significant and repeated business interruptions, and has 
stymied bipartisan cooperation on the issue.

Q.3. How can current Government funded programs be changed to 
better align with families' needs and kids' well being?

A.3. There are many overlapping and duplicative Government 
offsets for childcare, including but not limited to block 
grants to States, tax credits to employers, and tax credits to 
workers. New programs should seek to rationalize the existing 
landscape of Federal and State policy to prevent duplication, 
waste, and overlap. For example, an expansion of the CDCTC 
could be paired with a streamlining of existing policies. In 
our AEI paper, ``Improving Economic Opportunity for Women'', 
Aparna Mathur and I propose substantially increasing the amount 
of the CDCTC and making it refundable. This would reduce the 
need for block grants and employer-sponsored tax credits, 
making childcare support available regardless of employer 
options or State policies. While all of us would appreciate an 
offset in childcare costs or a child allowance expansion, it is 
particularly important for low-income and disadvantaged 
families; this suggests that we should have a relatively tight 
income limit on tax credit eligibility.

Q.4. Shouldn't we prioritize maximizing options for parents 
rather than applying this blanket, one-size-fits all approach 
to childcare?

A.4. Yes. Indeed, maximizing family choice should be a guiding 
principle for childcare reform. Each family's values and needs 
are different. We should seek to maximize choices for families 
both for parental care as well as for care providers outside of 
the home. Options for care outside the home can be increased 
through an expansion of the CDCTC, which in essence functions 
as a large choice program for early childhood care. Options for 
care inside the home by parents can be increased by boosting 
wages for workers through an EITC expansion and economic 
growth. Higher wages would provide families with more 
flexibility to scale back hours or have one parent stay home if 
that's what they wanted to do.

Q.5. Would you think a family's ability to borrow against 
themselves, like borrowing from their future child tax credit 
refund to use as a childcare voucher, would allow them more 
freedom/flexibility to choose a childcare program that best 
suits their needs? What other options should families have 
available to them to help pay for childcare?

A.5. It makes sense to increase the flexibility of existing 
Government programs where possible. The expenses for children 
are highest when they are 0-5 years old, when there are work 
interruptions from childbirth, childcare is most expensive for 
infants, and before a child is old enough to be in elementary 
school. Additionally, investments made early in a child's life 
are likely to have a greater return than those made later in a 
child's life, as has been modeled by Nobel-prize winning 
economist James Heckman. Thus, allowing families the choice to 
access more funding up front makes good economic sense.
    I also support offsetting the cost of childcare directly 
through an expansion of the CDCTC.

Q.6. Do you believe the childcare system needs to be better 
connected to the actual needs of the local workforce and 
community?

A.6. Yes. Childcare needs and costs vary widely. This is why 
it's important to allow for the proliferation of a wide variety 
of care providers instead of a one-size fit all option. It is 
also why it is important to increase the opportunities for care 
providers based on local needs. Multiple States--including West 
Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Colorado--have begun to implement 
registered apprenticeship programs for early childhood 
educators. These programs provide early childhood educators 
with on-the-job training and a career pathway to improve their 
knowledge and skills. They create more opportunities for 
workers to move into roles of greater responsibility and pay, a 
virtuous cycle resulting in higher quality care. They can also 
be tailored to the specific needs of the community and offered 
in tandem with community colleges and local employers.