Publication: Financing Child Care

• Behrman, Richard E.

This issue of the journal focuses on the financing of child
care and early education services in the United States.
Such services have become necessities for most families and
the norm for most children in America. The nature of child
care can powerfully affect children and their families:
good quality care can prepare children cognitively and
socially for school, and child care services that are
stable and of high quality can help parents find and keep
jobs. But, only sufficient investment can provide the
quality and quantity of child care services that will
produce benefits for all families, and evidence suggests
that current expenditures are insufficient.

The articles in this journal issue review the history of
federal child care financing in the United States and
today's public and private expenditures that benefit both
rich and poor, the current status of child care services in
America, and the relationship between the cost and quality
of child care. These articles suggest that (1) most child
care is of mediocre quality, (2) spot scarcities of care
exist, (3) low-income families face complex eligibility
rules and long waiting lists for child care subsidies, and
(4) the child care work force is paid wages so low that
staff turnover averages 40% annually, to the detriment of
children's well-being.

Addressing these problems will require additional
resources, and several articles in this journal issue
propose and analyze approaches to securing those additional
resources. These include financing child care through the
public K-12 education system, creating a child allowance,
and implementing a parental leave system. Although no
single approach to financing child care is endorsed, this
journal issue suggests that the current approach of sharing
the costs among parents, government, business, and
philanthropy should continue, and that a universal system
of support for child care and child rearing for all
families with children under the age of five should be
created.

The articles presented here summarize knowledge and
experience in selected areas that we believe are relevant
to improving public policies in the United States that have
an impact on the financing of child care. We hope the
information and analyses these articles contain will
further understanding of the important issues and thus
contribute to reasonable changes in policies which will
benefit children.