The Childcare Crisis Is in K-12, Not Early Childhood
By Katharine B. Stevens
OP-ED
May 29, 2020
How can the economy “reopen” if parents can’t go back to work because they don’t have childcare? That’s the question childcare advocates have increasingly raised over the past several weeks, in a widespread campaign linking the childcare industry to reopening the U.S. economy. Daily headlines describe the upcoming crisis — “Without child care, the economy won’t restart,” “Want to actually help the economy? Bail out child care providers,” “Coronavirus child care crisis tops concerns as nation pushes to reopen” — as advocates stress the need for tens of billions in new federal spending to keep childcare centers afloat.
High-quality early care — whether at home, a childcare center, or grandma’s house — matters greatly to young children’s healthy development. But to get the economy going again, the critical problem is care for school-age children.
In a recent study on this question, University of Chicago economists used 2018 Census Bureau data to calculate the share of the workforce affected by childcare constraints, focusing on working parents with children under age 14 and no available caregiver in the household. They found that 24 million workers (15 percent of the U.S. workforce) have school-age children from ages six to 14 and 17.5 million workers (11 percent of the workforce) have children under age six. They concluded: “Substantial fractions of the U.S. labor force have children at home and will likely face obstacles to returning to work if childcare options remain closed.”
The “childcare” these parents require, though, is largely provided by K-12 schools, not childcare centers. In fact, schools provide care for over three times more working parents with children under age 14 than childcare centers do.
That’s because essentially all who have school-age children depend on schools for childcare during the workday, while a much smaller proportion of working parents with younger children depend on institutional care. Preschoolers with working parents are cared for in a range of paid and unpaid settings, including relatives, friends, neighbors, and home-based “family childcare” along with childcare centers. Among children under age six who are in regular, non-parental care, only 44 percent are in paid, center-based childcare. In addition, while the researchers calculated the school-age population as beginning at age six, over three-quarters of all 5-year-olds — a total of 3.3 million children — attend full-day-kindergarten, further increasing the percentage of working parents who depend on K-12 schools.
The bottom line is that under 5 percent of U.S. workers need access to childcare centers in order to work (that is, 44 percent of the 11 percent of working parents with children under age 6 who need care) — less than one third the proportion who can only work if their children are in school. As the economists summarize their findings: “Childcare-related constraints imposed by school closings should feature prominently in discussions of reopening the economy.” In other words, the major roadblock to getting the economy going isn’t insufficient childcare for young children — it’s the closure of K-12 schools.
Even if the central “childcare” problem has become clearer, though, its solution has not. As Dr. Anthony Fauci recently stressed to the Senate, some states may not re-open their schools in the fall. In states that do, local school systems may still remain closed. Figuring out childcare strategies for school-age children — whether reopening the schools, ramping up “after school” programs throughout the school day, or helping Boys & Girls Clubs, YMCAs, local faith-based programs, and other community organizations expand services — is crucial to getting the economy back on track.
Indeed, the Covid crisis offers new insight into the role of the nation’s public schools. As educational institutions, they may fall notably short. But as childcare providers, it turns out, they’re indispensable.
See Also
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Op-Ed ~ January 6, 2021