High-quality and affordable child care and early learning programs lay the foundation for young children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development. Since nearly 70 percent of children under age 6 in the United States had all available parents in the workforce in 2023, access to high-quality care is critical for both children and their families. With recent threats to an already-fragile child care ecosystem—including the Trump administration’s withholding of close to $1 billion in Head Start funding and the closure of half of the Administration for Children and Families’ regional offices—it is more important than ever that congressional leaders champion protections for and investments in the nation’s youngest learners.
The recently reintroduced Child Care for Working Families Act would further invest in care infrastructure to reduce costs for families, support early childhood learning and development, and bolster the child care workforce. This fact sheet explains why the Child Care for Working Families Act is a critical step toward building a free, universal, mixed-delivery birth-through-5 early care and education system.
Investments in child care are investments in children, families, and the economy
The U.S. economy loses an estimated $122 billion in revenue, productivity, and earnings annually due to the country’s lack of investment in child care. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sets the affordability benchmark for child care at 7 percent of annual family income; under this metric, 43 percent of families with young children currently pay unaffordable rates for child care, and 134,000 families are pushed into poverty by child care expenses every year. Child care costs rose from 2020 to 2024 to surpass an average annual price of $13,000, consuming 10 percent of a married couple’s median household income and more than one-third of a single parent’s median household income.