Across the country, no matter what background, faith, or color, people are working hard to provide for their families. But as this work has made America prosper, the nation’s current leadership has rigged the rules, redirecting the nation’s resources away from the majority of communities, and toward the wealthiest individuals and corporations.
Today, the Trump administration is essentially building a wall—a wall between working people and any possibility of providing a better life for their families. His policies are jacking up the costs of basics such as groceries, housing, and health care, while enabling CEOs to use worker productivity to line their own pockets instead of raising wages. For too many families, it is nearly impossible to afford a decent life, let alone a great one.
And as the president’s policies raise the price of goods and services across the board, the cost of child care in particular continues to rise at a faster pace than inflation. This combination of high costs for housing, food, and other necessities and the rising cost of child care is breaking the bank for many families.
Child Care Is a Significant Expense for Families
There are about 22 million children under age 6 in the United States and over 24 million more children in school who need after school and summer care. Seventy percent of children under age six have all available parents in the workforce. That means a lot of families need child care solutions.
Child care is one of the largest expenses on families’ monthly balance sheets. The national average annual price of child care for 2024 was $13,128, according to Child Care Aware of America. This is more than the annual cost of mortgage, rent, or public college tuition in the majority of states. Child Care Aware found that, for a married couple with median income, it would take 10 percent of that income to afford child care; for a single parent, the bite out of income would soar to 35 percent.
The impact of this high price on families is significant. For some families, it means they simply cannot afford child care at all, and instead are cobbling together piecemeal solutions that can be disruptive both to their work lives and their children’s lives. For example, when MomsRising member Daphne and her husband moved to North Carolina—far away from the family that had helped with child care for their two older children (ages 8 and 5)—they found out just how hard the challenge of finding affordable child care for their three children was. They put their two-year-old on waitlist after waitlist, and in the meantime arranged for piecemeal care, like so many families do. Between juggling work and taking care of her children, relying on friends to help out, alternating schedules with her husband, staying up late to catch up on work after the kids go to bed, and even using PTO (paid time off) to make up for lost work time, the stress levels are high. Daphne and her husband work hard, but without a child care guarantee to rely on they are exhausted and stretched.
Daphne’s story is not unique. In Rio Rancho, New Mexico, for example, Mary and her husband commute an hour twice a day—once in the morning and once in the evening—to get to the only affordable child care program they could find, facing the added stress of the commute, the cost of gas, and the sacrifice of time together as a family. Alexandra, in Florida, quit her job as a teacher when she couldn’t find affordable child care in her community. So many moms like Alexandra either quit, reduce their work hours, or choose jobs that are flexible even if they are not the right fit.
Stories like these have become the norm, underscoring the harm of this child care crisis to families, employers, and regional economies alike. The KPMG Parental Work Disruption Index found that an average of 1.34 million workers were affected by inadequate child care options each month in 2024, which meant up to 1.44 billion lost potential work hours. For those families, on aggregate, it’s a loss of between $15 billion and $44 billion in wages due to child care challenges, which is a huge stress on family budgets.
The resulting forgone income can greatly impact families’ financial well-being. Households where parents have reduced work to care for children do less well on a range of financial measures, with less than half reporting they could cover an unexpected $400 expense with cash or that they are doing “at least okay” financially. They also forgo longer-term earnings and retirement security, meaning the impacts of this child care crisis will be felt by parents and their families many years into the future.
Finally, some families are cutting into their budgets—often already tight—to pay for child care, sometimes leaving them in debt. According to a Lending Tree survey, across all parents, 75 percent say having and raising children has been far more expensive than they expected, and more than half (55 percent) say they have gone into debt for child-related expenses, including child care.
The result is not only an increased struggle for families, but also growing income inequality, as families with higher incomes are more likely to be able to afford paying for child care than families with lower incomes—and thus are more likely to keep their jobs and accrue wealth. Among parents with younger children, those with high incomes were about twice as likely as those with low or middle incomes to use twenty or more hours of paid child care per week. Nationally, families using paid care on average have an income that is $53,000 higher than families not using paid care for young children. Households with young children with incomes lower than $75,000 per year are more likely to leave work to provide child care, with about 35 percent of these households reducing work to care for children. Higher earners are much more likely to pay for child care (see Figure 1), and less likely to reduce work to care for their children.
Figure 1
Child Care Prices Are Rising Faster than Inflation
This problem is not going away, as child care prices continue to rise at a rate two times faster than inflation (see Figure 2). The price of child care has risen by nearly 30 percent since 2020. The most recent data shows that in August 2025, child care prices were 5 percent higher than they were one year prior.
Figure 2
Existing Federal Child Care Programs Are Wholly Insufficient
There are federal programs aimed at low-income families that are supposed to help close the gap between those who can and can’t afford child care, but they are wholly inadequate. Some low-income families (those who earn up to 85 percent of their state’s median income) are able to access federal–state child care subsidies through the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) to help them pay for child care. Unfortunately, due to chronic underfunding, only 11 percent of the 11.5 million eligible children are actually served by this program. The federal government has tried to make CCDBG a more robust program: a 2024 rule from the Administration on Children and Families, for example, required that states ensure no family receiving CCDBG assistance pays more than 7 percent of their income for child care. Previously, in some states, copayments for low-income families were as high as 27 percent of their income, and fewer than half of all states required a 7 percent cap. The Trump administration, however, has threatened to roll back this rule.
Similarly, the federal tax credit program available to support families to pay for child care expenses—the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC)—makes only a small dent and helps higher income families significantly more than lower income ones (see Figure 3). Even with recent changes, the most families will likely be able to count on is about a $1,030 average credit—defraying less than 8 percent of the average cost of care. Families with income less than $35,000 a year are unlikely to receive any support from this policy, and because CDCTC offsets only come once a year at tax time, it doesn’t help families if they are living paycheck to paycheck or need help paying child care bills at the end of each month.
Figure 3
Free Child Care Would Help Families Afford a Better Life
If child care were free to families, that would have a significant impact on the American affordability crisis. A number of leaders in states across the country have begun to take this approach. New Mexico just became the first state in the nation to roll out free child care, to all residents, regardless of income. The New Mexico Governor’s Office estimates that families could save up to $12,000 a year as a result of the new policy. Other state leaders have been taking action to make child care more affordable for families. For example, in Connecticut, child care is now free for families earning less than $100,000 in income annually, and subsidized for families earning more so that the cost is capped at 7 percent of household income. And many candidates running for office increasingly are centering the issue in their campaign platforms, knowing just how important the issue is for families to have a better life.
If free child care were to expand as a policy at the local or state level, and eventually nationwide, the impact on family budgets would be significant. Families currently paying out of pocket for child care would save thousands of dollars a year. Families not currently paying for child care because they could not find or afford it would be able to take advantage of the opportunities for growth that child care provides. And children would benefit from the social, emotional and health benefits of child care as well.
The family economic benefits would include adding work hours, which would increase income; more stable family situations leading to more stable work situations and the ability to take better jobs with higher pay. In fact, a 2021 National Women’s Law Center study with Columbia University found that expanding access to child care to everyone who needs it would lead to an increase in the number of women with young children working full-time by about 17 percent; and 31 percent for those without a college degree. They also found that 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 (contributions plus growth) and an additional $10,000 in Social Security benefits. In addition, increased access to affordable child care results in higher labor force participation and income, more resources to spend in local economies, and more tax revenue to support state and local government—which will have additional economic impacts well beyond individual families.
Free—or even lower-cost—child care could make the difference between families’ budgets being in the red or families making ends meet, and even being able to save to get ahead or have resources for typical family purchases such as birthday presents, sporting equipment, and family vacations.
Coming Together to Demand Change
Child care must be a central component of the affordability agenda in states across the nation and in the national conversation. Unfortunately, when the government prioritizes the interests of billionaires, big corporations, and lobbyists instead of looking out for average American families, those who are responsible are not held accountable for price gouging or for jacking up prices on consumers just to pad their profits. As they stir fears based on what people look like or where they come from, these manufactured divisions are making it harder to join together to demand that the nation’s shared resources be used to deliver the child care families need. Parents, providers, employers and everyone who cares about children’s well-being must come together to demand change.
With gratitude to Lea Woods and Laura Valle-Gutierrez for research and data support.
Tags: inflation, donald trump, child care
Free Child Care Would Help Families Afford a Better Life
Across the country, no matter what background, faith, or color, people are working hard to provide for their families. But as this work has made America prosper, the nation’s current leadership has rigged the rules, redirecting the nation’s resources away from the majority of communities, and toward the wealthiest individuals and corporations.
Today, the Trump administration is essentially building a wall—a wall between working people and any possibility of providing a better life for their families. His policies are jacking up the costs of basics such as groceries, housing, and health care, while enabling CEOs to use worker productivity to line their own pockets instead of raising wages. For too many families, it is nearly impossible to afford a decent life, let alone a great one.
And as the president’s policies raise the price of goods and services across the board, the cost of child care in particular continues to rise at a faster pace than inflation. This combination of high costs for housing, food, and other necessities and the rising cost of child care is breaking the bank for many families.
Child Care Is a Significant Expense for Families
There are about 22 million children under age 6 in the United States and over 24 million more children in school who need after school and summer care. Seventy percent of children under age six have all available parents in the workforce. That means a lot of families need child care solutions.
Child care is one of the largest expenses on families’ monthly balance sheets. The national average annual price of child care for 2024 was $13,128, according to Child Care Aware of America. This is more than the annual cost of mortgage, rent, or public college tuition in the majority of states. Child Care Aware found that, for a married couple with median income, it would take 10 percent of that income to afford child care; for a single parent, the bite out of income would soar to 35 percent.
The impact of this high price on families is significant. For some families, it means they simply cannot afford child care at all, and instead are cobbling together piecemeal solutions that can be disruptive both to their work lives and their children’s lives. For example, when MomsRising member Daphne and her husband moved to North Carolina—far away from the family that had helped with child care for their two older children (ages 8 and 5)—they found out just how hard the challenge of finding affordable child care for their three children was. They put their two-year-old on waitlist after waitlist, and in the meantime arranged for piecemeal care, like so many families do. Between juggling work and taking care of her children, relying on friends to help out, alternating schedules with her husband, staying up late to catch up on work after the kids go to bed, and even using PTO (paid time off) to make up for lost work time, the stress levels are high. Daphne and her husband work hard, but without a child care guarantee to rely on they are exhausted and stretched.
Daphne’s story is not unique. In Rio Rancho, New Mexico, for example, Mary and her husband commute an hour twice a day—once in the morning and once in the evening—to get to the only affordable child care program they could find, facing the added stress of the commute, the cost of gas, and the sacrifice of time together as a family. Alexandra, in Florida, quit her job as a teacher when she couldn’t find affordable child care in her community. So many moms like Alexandra either quit, reduce their work hours, or choose jobs that are flexible even if they are not the right fit.
Stories like these have become the norm, underscoring the harm of this child care crisis to families, employers, and regional economies alike. The KPMG Parental Work Disruption Index found that an average of 1.34 million workers were affected by inadequate child care options each month in 2024, which meant up to 1.44 billion lost potential work hours. For those families, on aggregate, it’s a loss of between $15 billion and $44 billion in wages due to child care challenges, which is a huge stress on family budgets.
The resulting forgone income can greatly impact families’ financial well-being. Households where parents have reduced work to care for children do less well on a range of financial measures, with less than half reporting they could cover an unexpected $400 expense with cash or that they are doing “at least okay” financially. They also forgo longer-term earnings and retirement security, meaning the impacts of this child care crisis will be felt by parents and their families many years into the future.
Finally, some families are cutting into their budgets—often already tight—to pay for child care, sometimes leaving them in debt. According to a Lending Tree survey, across all parents, 75 percent say having and raising children has been far more expensive than they expected, and more than half (55 percent) say they have gone into debt for child-related expenses, including child care.
The result is not only an increased struggle for families, but also growing income inequality, as families with higher incomes are more likely to be able to afford paying for child care than families with lower incomes—and thus are more likely to keep their jobs and accrue wealth. Among parents with younger children, those with high incomes were about twice as likely as those with low or middle incomes to use twenty or more hours of paid child care per week. Nationally, families using paid care on average have an income that is $53,000 higher than families not using paid care for young children. Households with young children with incomes lower than $75,000 per year are more likely to leave work to provide child care, with about 35 percent of these households reducing work to care for children. Higher earners are much more likely to pay for child care (see Figure 1), and less likely to reduce work to care for their children.
Figure 1
Child Care Prices Are Rising Faster than Inflation
This problem is not going away, as child care prices continue to rise at a rate two times faster than inflation (see Figure 2). The price of child care has risen by nearly 30 percent since 2020. The most recent data shows that in August 2025, child care prices were 5 percent higher than they were one year prior.
Figure 2
Existing Federal Child Care Programs Are Wholly Insufficient
There are federal programs aimed at low-income families that are supposed to help close the gap between those who can and can’t afford child care, but they are wholly inadequate. Some low-income families (those who earn up to 85 percent of their state’s median income) are able to access federal–state child care subsidies through the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) to help them pay for child care. Unfortunately, due to chronic underfunding, only 11 percent of the 11.5 million eligible children are actually served by this program.1 The federal government has tried to make CCDBG a more robust program: a 2024 rule from the Administration on Children and Families, for example, required that states ensure no family receiving CCDBG assistance pays more than 7 percent of their income for child care. Previously, in some states, copayments for low-income families were as high as 27 percent of their income, and fewer than half of all states required a 7 percent cap. The Trump administration, however, has threatened to roll back this rule.
Similarly, the federal tax credit program available to support families to pay for child care expenses—the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC)—makes only a small dent and helps higher income families significantly more than lower income ones (see Figure 3). Even with recent changes, the most families will likely be able to count on is about a $1,030 average credit—defraying less than 8 percent of the average cost of care. Families with income less than $35,000 a year are unlikely to receive any support from this policy, and because CDCTC offsets only come once a year at tax time, it doesn’t help families if they are living paycheck to paycheck or need help paying child care bills at the end of each month.
Figure 3
Free Child Care Would Help Families Afford a Better Life
If child care were free to families, that would have a significant impact on the American affordability crisis. A number of leaders in states across the country have begun to take this approach. New Mexico just became the first state in the nation to roll out free child care, to all residents, regardless of income. The New Mexico Governor’s Office estimates that families could save up to $12,000 a year as a result of the new policy. Other state leaders have been taking action to make child care more affordable for families. For example, in Connecticut, child care is now free for families earning less than $100,000 in income annually, and subsidized for families earning more so that the cost is capped at 7 percent of household income. And many candidates running for office increasingly are centering the issue in their campaign platforms, knowing just how important the issue is for families to have a better life.
If free child care were to expand as a policy at the local or state level, and eventually nationwide, the impact on family budgets would be significant. Families currently paying out of pocket for child care would save thousands of dollars a year. Families not currently paying for child care because they could not find or afford it would be able to take advantage of the opportunities for growth that child care provides. And children would benefit from the social, emotional and health benefits of child care as well.
The family economic benefits would include adding work hours, which would increase income; more stable family situations leading to more stable work situations and the ability to take better jobs with higher pay. In fact, a 2021 National Women’s Law Center study with Columbia University found that expanding access to child care to everyone who needs it would lead to an increase in the number of women with young children working full-time by about 17 percent; and 31 percent for those without a college degree. They also found that 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 (contributions plus growth) and an additional $10,000 in Social Security benefits. In addition, increased access to affordable child care results in higher labor force participation and income, more resources to spend in local economies, and more tax revenue to support state and local government—which will have additional economic impacts well beyond individual families.
Free—or even lower-cost—child care could make the difference between families’ budgets being in the red or families making ends meet, and even being able to save to get ahead or have resources for typical family purchases such as birthday presents, sporting equipment, and family vacations.
Coming Together to Demand Change
Child care must be a central component of the affordability agenda in states across the nation and in the national conversation. Unfortunately, when the government prioritizes the interests of billionaires, big corporations, and lobbyists instead of looking out for average American families, those who are responsible are not held accountable for price gouging or for jacking up prices on consumers just to pad their profits. As they stir fears based on what people look like or where they come from, these manufactured divisions are making it harder to join together to demand that the nation’s shared resources be used to deliver the child care families need. Parents, providers, employers and everyone who cares about children’s well-being must come together to demand change.
With gratitude to Lea Woods and Laura Valle-Gutierrez for research and data support.
Notes
Tags: inflation, donald trump, child care