Child Care is a Crisis for Rural New Yorkers

In a classic Catch-22, New York State ranks #12 with an overall score of 66.83 in the 2020 Best and Worst States for Working Moms survey. (Note: In 2018 we ranked 10th, so New York moms have lost ground!)

New York is No. 1 with Best Day Care System but No. 48 with Highest Cost Day Care according to a 2018 report from Care.com. But that doesn’t really capture the child care dilemma rural families find themselves in, day in and day out. Women make up almost most half of the US workforce, but find themselves often behind the 8-ball when trying to find someone to care for their children.

Rural areas, which are a very large percentage by geography of New York State, are often child care desserts, without even one registered or licensed day care in some townships or school districts. As for affordability, too often in New York it is cheaper to send your child to college than to a high quality day care (if you can find one).

At an annual cost of $15,394, quality child care is unaffordable for 90% of New York families. New York State ranks 6th out of all 50 states for the most expensive infant care. In fact, a minimum wage worker has to work for 35 weeks just to pay for one infant's child care. Yet subsidized child care is underfunded and increasingly unavailable.

Many rural areas of the country and here in New York have experienced stalled economic growth, have higher rates of child poverty, and see young children entering kindergarten already behind their metropolitan-area peers in early reading and math skills. The Center for American Progress has identified these critical facts about rural child care:

1.    On average, families in rural areas spend 12 percent of their income on child care.

2.    Rural families use regular child care at rates similar to metropolitan families but are more likely to use home-based child care.

3.    60 percent of rural Americans live in a child care desert.

4.    Family child care providers play an outsize role in rural child care supply.

5.    A typical teacher in a rural child care center earns just $23,000 per year.

The American electorate strongly supports policies that would improve access to affordable, high-quality child care and want their leaders at both the federal and state level to understand that need and to act. Something those leaders have been slow to do.

On the one hand parents need to work, but when child care is not available, is too expensive, or does not meet their needs (split shifts; after-hours needs, etc.), it can drive them further into poverty. And poverty is something rural new Yorkers are far too familiar with.

Living wages jobs are out of reach for many New Yorkers. Ninety percent of the jobs in New York pay less than $32,000 a year, according to Melinda Mack, the executive director of the Albany-based New York Association of Training and Employment Professionals. For the 44% of American workers in low-paying part-time and temporary work with no benefits or security, they bring home less than $18,000 a year.

According to a recent report by the Manhattan Institute, the typical US male worker needs more than one year's salary to afford the typical costs of a family of four. In 1985, it took him 30 weeks' pay to afford $13,227 in expenditures, versus 53 weeks' pay to afford $54,441 in 2018.

The report findings for a female breadwinner are even more discouraging: In 1985, she needed to work 45 weeks to afford the four annual expenses, compared with 66 weeks in 2018. Note that in this report, a family of four's major living costs are: housing, healthcare, transportation, and education. Not included is another critical cost: childcare.

How serious is the child care crises in America? Many folks are having fewer kids because of costs, according to a 2018 CNBC.com story. "Child care is too expensive" was the top reason (64 percent), with "worried about the economy" at No. 3 (49 percent) and "can't afford more children" (44 percent) coming in fourth, showing that economic insecurities and financial concerns are causing many young Americans to skip or delay having kids.

If, as the Center for American Progress has surveyed, voters want child care as a front and center issue up for discussion - and action - by political leaders this year, it is incumbent on all of us to make sure we put child care on the radar screens of candidates running for state and federal officials this November. And to vote for candidates who have demonstrated their commitment to the economic well-being of American families.