As child care costs soar, more parents may have to exit the workforce
cbsnews.com
cbsnews.com
There's something deranged about a metric when deciding to take care of your own children, rather than pay someone else to do so, results in a worse number.
A statistic can’t be deranged, only what actions one takes because of it.
If a high earning person could take in more than the cost of child care, but chooses to stay home, it does impact GDP.
It still might be a fine decision.
If you're both staying at home and paying each other X then where did you get the money from to generate X.
You would've had to do some economic producing activity.
https://www.bea.gov/data/special-topics/household-production
For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to have gotten much attention.
I'm surprised this wasn't taken into account long ago? Are homemakers really excluded from any GDP calculation?
Yes.
Vote for people who support better policy, few alternative options that can lead to some amount of success. Good policy is not hard, just takes will (confirmed by a quick review of other OECD/developed countries).
But at least we're at full/maximum employment amirite? [3]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/27/us-leg... ("A meat processer killed a 16-year-old. Yet US lawmakers want more child labor")
[2] https://www.casey.senate.gov/news/releases/as-child-labor-vi... ("As Child Labor Violations Skyrocket, Casey, Murray, DeLauro Introduce Legislation to Combat Child Labor Exploitation")
[3] https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCprescon...
Bonus APM Marketplace episode: https://www.marketplace.org/2023/09/01/gdp-measure-of-econom... ("When it comes to measuring economic welfare, GDP doesn’t cut it")
Wellbeing Economy Alliance (mentioned in above episode): https://weall.org/
On the subject of policy, things like the expanded child tax credit and school lunches pay the government back incredibly well, so support for stuff like that isn't just helping your neighbor, it's helping yourself, too.
Other people become stay-at-home parents because their partner earns a six-figure salary, they've decided to have 4-6 kids which they can afford, and with that many kids a stay-at-home parent just makes economic sense for a few years. Their household income is substantially above the national median, despite being a single-earner household. Their children do not grow up in poverty - in fact quite the opposite.
Guess which type of person the average HN reader meets more often?
If people don't raise people, there soon won't be people to economy. You have to invest in people (education, welfare, etc.) before they invest into the economy. These black-and-white deductions only make sense for spherical cows in void.
on edit: looks like I'm getting downvoted now! How exciting!!
Well, the comment in question uses a lot of conservative tropes: a) ppl not earning = on welfare b) victim blaming c) GDP uber alles
> It's almost impossible for children who grow up in this situation to escape it themselves.
Understanding that people cannot escape poverty by 'themselves'
>On the subject of policy, things like the expanded child tax credit and school lunches pay the government back incredibly well, so support for stuff like that isn't just helping your neighbor, it's helping yourself, too.
seem to support paying more taxes to help less fortunate people.
These things taken together makes me think the parts that sound uncaring are maybe just poorly phrased.
> a) ppl not earning = on welfare
"probably on welfare" is what they say, which if you "can't afford child care" it might be that you need some government assistance of some sort when one of the partners drops out of the workforce to take care of the children.
This is of course different than "the benefit of the partner working in comparison to paying for child care is negligible", which would be another reason for one to drop out and take care of the children.
For some reason everybody came with the example of "the benefit of the partner working in comparison is negligible" examples in contrast to "can't afford child care", which would be understandable if they said well there's another reason than just not being able to afford why people drop - but they didn't make that comment.
So for these various reasons I think the comment was reasonable compassionate but did have a GDP viewpoint on why the system should be changed to allow people to continue working and afford childcare.
Just had to clarify what should be a simple concept, but sometimes I worry.
on edit: this is essentially the point michealt made earlier https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38111884 but they made it evidently as a reason why the original comment should be downvoted.
on second edit: of course assumption is the other partner earns a lot.
All the talk about "we need more kids" is completely moot, if you want people to have kids, give them a reason not to fear it. I am thankfully in a position where a phone call from the school means I'll work the rest of the day from home. My neighbor has limited options because she can't afford to work and childcare while her husband is at work. So her only options are: Don't work, work such that she never shares any off time with her husband, and thus is effectively living alone and basically that's it. And her job prospects aren't such that most jobs will cover daycare + more. In fact most jobs will barely pay above the cost of daycare.
They are not solving the problem, they are just pushing the problem onto people who's future will be destroyed. And it is causing many secondary catastrophes in our economy. And this article points out exactly one such. Healthcare is another. And food security is a third. There are others.
So perhaps resting our a bulk of taxation on income tax may not be a sustainable model. Especially when the corporate and high income wealth is so tax preferred (or evading taxes).
Refactoring our tax system to a less extraction model may be the better approach. Wealth taxes, financial transaction taxes, more effective property taxes (ie, land value tax) could result in a more livable country for the vast majority of people (numbers will go down a bit for the billionaires).
> Vote for people who support better policy
The problem here is that the latter is controlled by those in charge of the former because unlike those other OECD countries, bribery is pretty much legal in America.
"A meat processer killed a 16-year-old. Yet US lawmakers want more child labor" is very much not a headline chosen by someone who is aiming for good policy. It is a clear ploy to get an emotional response. There are two topics that are reliably used for that - the first is protecting children and the second is war and combat metaphors (after thinking that, I read 'combat' in the 2nd link with a certain ironic smile).
The world is a very harsh place, and a lot of people are going to suffer through it. Blanket banning people from working - even 16 year olds - is unlikely to get to the best place. There are a lot of young people who's best path probably was working very hard at a job to get away from their families. Issues like that should be considered at length - and calmly. Just because the idea doesn't sit well doesn't mean it is a bad one.
When people stay home the economy loses 1+1/N incomes where N is the number of children a day care worker can take care of.
Even assuming you have a good answer for that, what makes you think it matters? Birth rates are falling globally. Open borders only forestalls the inevitable.
Coming to the border, making a (legitimate|illegitimate) asylum claim, being processed, given a Notice to Appear, and being released into the interior of the United States is as easy as a $1-2,000 payment to smugglers.
From there, either working under the table or working off of a stolen identity is the norm. Thankfully, the latter is hard because the United States has a robust identity verification system with the secure, secret identifier known as the Social Security Number and thankfully all states require employment verification to prevent abuse of stolen identities and the abuse of these workers.
People are just walking over the border nowadays, not sure if smugglers are even needed.
I don't think you can say that that's "nearly impossible", and even if it is, the numbers are still very large; by far the most in the world.
That said, this shrinking growth is a worldwide issue. Unless America imports more Africans (again...) and other 3rd world countries to try and balance things out, it's going to be a rough gen Alpha and beyond.
You can have different opinions on whether that's good or bad, and I personally think you can make a strong case for it being a good thing, but there's nothing wrong with the metric itself.
I have another kid on the way and daycare for both kids (when the new one is about 8-9 months old) is going to be around $3,700/month, or $44,400 per year. For my family we will spend more than half the median household income just on child care. The story is almost the same with nearly every parent I talk to.
Positive economic and negative economic externalities are too complex to factor in, at least of what I've seen.
So the net balance seems ambiguous.
That's why OP says the following:
> It's even harder for new businesses to start up because costs are high enough that you NEED investment funds.
Wealth concentration implies that someone doing something valuable over there is making what I do less valuable. It's the wrong thing to think about, IMO.
A valid question might be: could we have higher quality lives if we made it easier for people to create competitors?
Another one might be: how do I have a much better life than a monarch of my country from only 200 years ago?
> lobbying made sure of that
Lobbying does nothing. People who write and enforce regulations are the ones doing it.
For example I as a software engineer do not have enough money to start my own business despite having worked for around a decade. This is because the salary I earn and the amount I've saved is not enough to keep me afloat and start a business.
> Another one might be: how do I have a much better life than a monarch of my country from only 200 years ago?
Most of those gains are from socialized benefits, or due to the regulations we've created due to our experiences with rampant corruption or issues with societal growth.
Inflation comes from: policies making things more expensive to do; taxes making foundational things more expensive (e.g. fuel, which affects most goods); minimum wage laws, which bumps up costs of goods and services; inflating the currency, which taxes your savings; ever-more tax and trading laws, that require businesses to employ more people to keep on top of them, and pay auditors to make sure they're following them. Inflation isn't out of nowhere. Businesses try and get prices down, so they beat their competition so you choose them and not someone else. But they are fighting all those forces, and more, all the time.
Wealth isn't the same as money. Having a majority stake in a valuable company is wealth, but it doesn't affect your wages at all. The idea of wealth concentration is built on the false premise that "net worth" is in any way to do with money, instead of mostly just being silly headline fuel.
> Most of those gains are from socialized benefits
No, they're from inventions. Most things that look like societal benefits are downstream of technology and enterprise. I can take painkillers if I have a headache, wear glasses if my eyes are imperfect (or now, contacts, or laser eye surgery), have healthy teeth my whole life, not worry about Polio or the Measles, and for an extremely low sum due to continuous improvement, innovation, and competition.
I’d argue that the teaching of modern economics spreads a mindset that is a major contributing force to indescribable amount of unnecessary suffering and the destruction of our biosphere.
One of the healthier economic models is the Doughnut economics model.
It’s like seeing “$3B was saved by eliminating duplicate work” and saying “what a deranged statistic when it improves when people lose jobs”
<Insert large number> grabs people’s attention.
> Because some people who don't care about raising children do care about the economy.
This seems even worse for me than "it's just a number", since in the long-term is a contradiction that leads to collapse. The economy is a sum of human activity, and the future economy will be done by today's children. If you don't raise them well you're simply extracting value created by others that wasn't quantified just so you can pad your metrics.
Not caring about children when you're thinking about the economy is like not training any new employees, but only extracting maximum value from your existing workforce, but done on a societal level.
I don't think there have been many societies in human history that don't have some kind of communal child care for that exact reason. It is actually pretty deranged that we have each parent raise their own kids in relative isolation (until school).
The commercial daycare center is hardly the ideal model, but it is at least something besides total individualism.
in my experience, this is a feature of city dwelling. when people live in villages there’s a tendency to have the same neighbors for a lifetime, and so to form more lasting bonds, which allows the full expression of our humanity. i have lived in some french villages and the community i experienced there isn’t different from how anthropologists described community among primitive cultures.
My parents did the “right thing” and delayed having children until they could feed us. I delayed getting married until I felt stable. In previous generations, I’d imagine my parents would look after my children while I was out tending goats or tilling a farm but it would be incredibly unfair for me to expect my aging parents to look after a child.
I can’t make the math work no matter how I slice it. I had a very fortunate childhood considering the childhood my parents had. If I have children, I want to give them at least the same level of comfort and security which right now I can’t. I think people who are having multiple children without thinking it through are being extremely selfish.
The great part about this arrangement is that the adults get to plan all kinds of community events for families and kids. Parties, get togethers, camping trips, etc. Our lives are richer because of it and more communal because we're not all sitting in cubicles each day.
It's amazing and way less isolating than my own childhood of daycare. My kids get solid friends who they see almost everyday. We know the families well so they see their friends in more than one context.
Being a stay at home parent doesn't literally mean staying at home.
And to address the last point, my in laws live two blocks away, so my kids get a lot of time with them. And my parents live a short drive so we see them multiple times a week.
And it's an actually community. Not some "I care for your kids because I get paid for it".
If we barter it the economy doesn’t notice.
If we do the wood/fence ourselves the economy diesnt notice
If we charge $1000 each the economy booms more than charging $100 each.
It does. Of course it might not be properly reflected in the statistics but it still creates additional value in the economy.
Now you're thinking with Line Go Up!
In the first example there are various taxes that you will pay. Income tax. VAT or sales tax. Maybe license fees.
These taxes go to the government, who in turn uses that money in some way.
In the latter two examples tax revenue does not go up.
I don’t have the stats handy, but I am fairly confident that a large portion of the barter income is not reported.
The first economist says to the other “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The second economist takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.
They continue walking until they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist turns to the first and says “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The first economist takes the $100 and eats a pile of shit.
Walking a little more, the first economist looks at the second and says, "You know, I gave you $100 to eat shit, then you gave me back the same $100 to eat shit. I can't help but feel like we both just ate shit for nothing."
"That's not true", responded the second economist. "We increased the GDP by $200!"
It's more efficient but also better for everyone if kids to grow up socializing and interacting with others in a communal setting than alone at home with one single adult.
To put it clearer: The law makes no distinction between a housewife and a unemployed woman, both get half even if the actions that resulted in the divorce were her fault and she engaged in them continously. Keep that in mind if you are unmarried.
They do not. 90% of US households have a total household net worth of less than $300,000. Even if you got all of that, it's not enough to make up for the lack of marketable skills. Similarly, a judge can award all the alimony and childcare in the world, but that does not help you if it does not get paid.
These insane expectations are part of the reason why marriage is a bad deal for the provider.
Also, alimony and child support are two different things.
What you call accountability for partner at home is not accountability. It is just complete helplessness and dependence.
Go to family court as a woman, make up a sob story about abuse and provide no evidence and you'll have the power to prevent a father from seeing his children. That father is experiencing helplessness. Having to get a job isn't, that's accountability.
Otherwise said, being at home makes you very vulnerable and puts you at risk of poverty. The longer you stay, the worst off you are. I am not the one pushing for the system where one parent has to sacrifice his or her independence when kids are born. I am just saying that if economy requires one of them at home, that person is being put at risk.
> Go to family court as a woman, make up a sob story about abuse and provide no evidence and you'll have the power to prevent a father from seeing his children. That father is experiencing helplessness.
In these situations, when father contests, courts tend to side with father. It takes a lot for father to not be allowed around the children in reality. It is simply not true that a single sob story would made course side with mother.
As with any legal process you can find examples where justice has failed, but overall a world with alimony and child support is way better than the world we had before, where women were condemned to destitution after divorce.
Great deal for women. Horrible deal for men.
Just look at the statistics: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/population-profiles/marital-...
In broad strokes: married people tend to be way wealthier than never married people, and divorced women do much worse than divorced men do. (Women are much poorer across the board also, of course). If your claim was true then the poverty gap between divorced men and divorced women would be much smaller, and we see that's not the case. If alimony/child support is such a raw deal for men it should be visible in the statistics.
Note the poverty rate for men who never got married vs men who got divorced. Marriage is not the raw deal for men you think it is.
And still, in USA, women do file for divorce more, because simply that financial control is not enough to keep someone in. Funny enough, it tends to be be organizations dominated by men who push against no fault divorces and toward even bigger financial dependence of their female partners.
Even if it goes to plan with her getting alimony and partial retirement, she's still dependent on her ex-husband which is a frustrating and often vulnerable position. It means he is still in her life. He can harass and badger her about how she spends money. He may pay, but he might often be late, or sporadic, which causes her bills to be overdue and have late fees. Maybe he starts hiding money, he could even tank his income for a year or two to have the courts change the agreement. None of this stuff is transparent and can be very adversarial.
You are a victim of a common cognitive bias: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect
Maybe we could start with making the minimum wage a living wage again so this doesn't happen.
And I'm very ambivalent about this. The problem with "justice" here is that the govt. has no incentive to cut off alimony because it means the govt. foots the bill. That's why even some outrageous outliers like someone's sperm being stolen from a bank has resulted in that man paying alimony. Judges exist to cover edge cases like that and its just not being done.
Also, currently alimony even as those are rare and requires years of being without income. At that point, you can defend yourself by divorcing partner that does nothing long before alimony kicks in.
Also one could argue insofar this is actually "better for everyone". It will result in kids that are "more socialized" in some way maybe, but not necessarily socialized better. And it also doesn't take into account other developmental aspects.
If I look at young adults here (Europe) that have been more or less raised in daycare vs young adults that have been raised at home, I certainly don't see an advantage for the former (which might have many confounding factors of course).
It’s not about how we measure it, it’s about actual productivity. Having some sort of communal childcare which allows the majority of parents to work full time will always be more productive.
> work inside the home should have a value higher than zero.
And it does. You don’t spend money on childcare and other services and can spend it on something else (assuming you have it).
What's measured is the amount paid. Hiring exclusively 1-on-1 tutors is "more productive" than communal childcare. Paying more money for the same services is also "more productive."
That’s not obvious, those tutors might be doing something else which is more productive instead.
Just spending money does not do much on it’s own. e.g. paying $100 for a good/service when you can get an equivalent for $50 doesn’t “increase” productivity it just means your money is worth less.
If children educated by private tutors are not significantly more productive than those from a normal school longterm that would only lead to lower productivity/higher inflation.
But you lose, at least in the UK, from tax. If a married couple works, they each get tax allowances; first 10k is tax free, each, and then the next 30k is taxed at 20%, and the rest (up to 100k) is taxed at 40%.
If one person works and the other doesn't, they exist in a world where most couples work and bid up house prices, and they're taxed more for it. It's massively disincentivised to have a parent who raises your own kids and does other community activities (e.g. be on PTAs/school boards), unless you earn so much you can push through it.
Add up extra food costs (vs cooking at home) and extra cleaning costs ($140 every two weeks so about $4k and the value prop of having one SAH parent doesn't look as bad (which is what several college-educated friends have done, sp the ones with 2+ kids)
I suppose what I meant more would distinguish between valid services that you buy because it makes your life easier, e.g. cleaning help, and government-mandated disincentives to stay at home, e.g. tax brackets.
because it's becoming less and less viable to not give it up. That's why many simply don't have kids, or are having the later.
Yea its called multigenerational housing.
This is our life now…
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966
As far as housing affordability, there are plenty of affordable homes in the US. You just have to be willing to live there.
You're not. You're full on Gen X. Your parenty (probably) were boomers.
yeah, other countries just call that "taking care of family" instead of treating it like a free handout. Beware that the US "kick the kids out the nest" mentality isn't a shared one worldwide, and even in the US is a fairly recent phenomenon.
>there are plenty of affordable homes in the US. You just have to be willing to live there.
maybe now, very recently with workplaces in tech specifically opening up to remote work. That wasn't the case when I graduated college as recent as 5 years ago. You don't get much negotiation for remote work and move wherever the job you choose takes you.
What you describe as a digital nomad lifestyle for you and your spouse speaks to your experience and value. Young 18-23 year olds don't get that flexibility in their new careers, nor have the savings lying around to start cosidering that.
Some families can make multigenerational housing work well, but it's not a realistic general solution for affordable child care.
Personally, it worked out for me. raise in my grandparents house until I was 12, but also grew up to see my parent go to military for ~6 years and my uncles getting kicked out later on as well. It's far from perfect but increasing divorce rates don't exactly show that being separated is better.
Not quite. The rule is generally 6-8 kids depending on what state you are in, and the younger they get the lower the number is. 3-4 under 5 years old and only 2 under 2 years old.
The quality of communal childcare varies widely; and having seen some examples of under-stimulating and inattentive care settings, I’d say the choice to raise one’s own children can be more rational than deranged, particularly if you have a caring and empathic relationship with your own children. In my own n=1 experiment, the decision to leave behind an income in the mid six figures to stay home with my child during her early formative years was anything but deranged.
I'm also pretty certain than in, say, more ancient societes, even if there was communal child care, it wasn't a 1:10+ ratio.
And even if. The decision is basically, would you rather be working for your children, or for "the man"?
It's a good thing those daycare's aren't just one person renting out a large building, in that case. Real shame the people getting the most money out of it aren't doing any caregiving, though.
>And even if. The decision is basically, would you rather be working for your children, or for "the man"?
Sure, if most people could help it, they would never work a day in their life if they got 10m dollars (post tax). Not everyone, but I wager 80+%.
But that's not the fantasy we live in. While it was great to encourage women into the work force, the government took nasty advantadge of the 2-income households and made it the standard, all while spending power atrophied for decades. Now childcare is rising so much that it's more financially viable to NOT work for some parent's cases. It's all a mess.
Not all of it, but enough to kind of not make it worthwhile anymore (even from a purely financial perspective, not considering factors that parents might actually want to be with their kids ;)
1:10 is only valid for preschool age. It gets more expensive for kids under 30 months.
But the other benefit is that your kid has other kids to play with, and learns out how to interact with kids and adults outside of their own home (e.g. they learn how to stand in line and such). It is also a huge boon for the kids if their parents are less engaged (i.e. avoid excessive screen time).
For more complete context, https://archive.org/details/ost-business-pigou_0316_ebk_v60/...
"Yet again, the services rendered by women enter into the dividend when they are rendered in exchange for wages, whether in the factory or in the home, but do not enter into it when they are rendered by mothers and wives gratuitously to their own families. Thus, if a man marries his housekeeper or his cook, the national dividend is diminished. These things are paradoxes. It is a paradox also that, when Poor Law or Factory Regulations divert women workers from factory work or paid home-work to unpaid home-work, in attendance on their children, preparation of the family meals, repair of the family clothes, thoughtful expenditure of housekeeping money, and so on, the national dividend, on our definition, suffers a loss against which there is to be set no compensating gain. It is a paradox, lastly, that the frequent desecration of natural beauty through the hunt for coal or gold, or through the more blatant forms of commercial advertisement, must, on our definition, leave the national dividend intact, though, if it had been practicable, as it is in some exceptional circumstances, to make a charge for viewing scenery, it would not have done so."
The incentives are not aligned. That's all.
This has always been going on through the history of civilization, but since nationalism became the strongest cultural force, the population no longer accepts being eliminated by foreign powers, so instead that work is being done by domestic rulers – focusing most of their efforts to exterminate the young to the benefit of the old.
This is your understanding of economics and you’re going around telling people they’re wrong. It’s okay to just admit you have no idea and ask a question rather than make a statement.
It's giving children your undivided attention that is ultimately way more productive than outsourcing it.
Or actually: life forces us to send them off, so every bit of additional parental attention is precious.
Other people help children too. Child care - especially pre-schools! - expose children to kids that are different than themselves, teaching them how to deal with others. They meet children that they would never meet through their parents. Other people also teach your children things that you might not consider or teach in a different way. Time away from one's caregivers is important.
You can insert something here about independent play: You really shouldn't give your children attention all the time. Helicopter parenting is bad. Young children? Stay close enough, but not hovering.
Not to mention that a stay-at-home parent is definitely not giving undivided attention. That adult still has to do adult things: Shower, make dinner, clean, etc and they will probably be expected to do a big share of it since they are home. Not to mention that most folks wind up socially isolated, especially if the other parent doesn't take the children and give the stay-at-home parent a break. Or if poverty prevents someone from spending time with others.
Quality time is precious: Time itself simply isn't the same.
Any derangement is as a result of trying to link economic value with personal value. It doesn't mean the answer is to ignore the economic reality.
To say they produce “more value” letting others care for their children is an effect of what we choose to measure — and emphatically not a measure of their actual economic contributions, as defined by what goods and services are provided.
Case in point:
Two housewives caring for each other’s children increases GDP since the salary is measured — even though both families are strictly worse off.
Samuelson remarked along the lines that (old-fashioned gender roles alert) "if a man marries his maid, GDP falls".
Unfortunately, that hasn't stopped politicians and journalists using it to keep score.
So "the economy" loses $122 billion from moms going home?
WHO is "the economy"? Well it's not the parents, because they are making the individual economic decision. Who could it be? The government? A bit, indirectly.... you know, like 15% of it, maybe.
Oh right, it's the rich/elites that rake in all the money, and set government policy. That phrase should actually be;
"The ultra-wealthy who control all the money and corporations lose 122 billion per year when their underpaid wage-suppressed mothers stop working, maybe we should throw them some more crumbs to get them back to work so we can collect that money back"
Where's the numbers about "overworking parents and denying childcare assistance so that people don't procreate, and 'costs' the US economy trillions?"
And America has a higher baby death rate than China, Russia, Japan, and the EU.
I wonder what all those countries have in common that we don't.
May our children be our joy, our responsibility, our honor. I don't know the mindset that produced this, some form of "progressive" thought or outright communism (which is famous for this), but this must be countered wherever found. It is not Good or healthy.
In this way economic measurements, investment bankers, the spooky IMF, etc are an active assault on community living. The Coffee-Cola Song comes to mind.
Labor in the US is pretty expensive in the grand scheme of things. $15 is peanuts to make, but a lot for parents to cover.
Take this scenario. You have an infant room with 8 kids and have 2 teachers in a LCOL area. Tuition is 325/week. Total incoming weekly tuition is 2600. If you find 2 people who will work for $15/hr thats 1200/week in labor costs. Plus FICA, insurance, and anything else required to pay per employee. With no redundancy (so no sick/vacation days). Then you have to pay rent, utilities, maintenance, front office staff, and have enough left over for someone find it all worth it.
There is really no way around it - if you want people at the bottom to make a decent wage then customers will have to pay it. And $15 isn’t exactly decent even in LCOL so daycare costs would probably need to rise at least another 33% in this scenario which moves the low end price of daycare from 1300/month to 1729/month.
Will this help? I'm unsure. Children are heavily subsidized in Scandinavian countries with pro natalist policies (in some circumstances, governments paying cash for children does not move the needle much and comes at a high cost), not subsidized much at all in China comparatively, and both cohorts continue to see a decline in total fertility rates. These are complex systems problems where the cost to modify inputs is high, and latency in feedback also high.
https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/4141600-pro-natalist...
https://ifstudies.org/blog/pro-natal-policies-work-but-they-...
https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/Policy_res...
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3136991/can...
I don't know for a fact, but I suspect it is possible to have two parents working from home and an external person coming home a couple of hours during the day and have both career + children, but I'm not entirely sure (my wife is fully dedicated to children, although we are at the tail end).
That being said, the choice shouldn't be determined by sex. Breastfeeding is a thing, but with Canada's paternity/maternity leaves, the problem is heavily mitigated (1 year, although with very low compensation)
I'm not saying that choice is plentiful, but it exists. I'm sure there are other people willing to have kids but also wants to progress in their career.
>I suspect it is possible to have two parents working from home and an external person coming home a couple of hours during the day and have both career + children, but I'm not entirely sure
sure, we call those nannies or simply babysitters, depending on the amount of involvement. Not impossible but it is a large expense to consider. Alternatively, be fortunate enough to have trustworthy neighbors who has a stay at home parent who can keep an eye on things for a few hours.
I wouldn't mind a return of the latchkey kid. those stranger danger initiatives probably did more damage than good with regards to letting a kid properly engage with the world.
Also, to maximize health benefits for the children, breastfeeding is preferable (according to WHO, for 2 years), which partially takes away that choice (it's really hard to make a choice against child health if it's purely based on my interest).
Can't say much about the breastfeeding. if that needs to be from the source and is an invariant for you you are definitely treading in deep waters. Still not impossible, but wet nurses are a very archaic concept (and crazy expensive these days if they still exist).
Additionally this can tend to have bad effects on the rest of our systems, for example the nursing shortage isn't resulting in better pay for most individuals despite them being in high demand. It's resulting in a rise in traveling nurses which also impacts the salary of other nurses. Companies are incredibly resistant to paying people more, especially when they have monopolistic control over jobs in certain areas which allows them to forcibly depress wages.
And companies always underestimate how much their burn and churn affects the next year at the cost of the quarter. I won't exactly sympathize with them as they degrade and a facility that doesn't drain blood from a rock rises.
Also, if half the working population stayed home, the economy would be half as productive. Wages won't automatically increase; business will just go to some country or region where comparable labor is more abundant, and the country's economy becomes less competitive.
> I thought it was WW2 and the lack of men to do the jobs they usually would.
I thought it was common to teach that women's employment rose with second-wave feminism in the 1960s.
My background knowledge: after WW2 ended, women were fired and replaced with men. The average age of marriage dropped, and the portion of women attending college descreased. Housewives were increasingly dissatisfied, which drew them to the second-wave feminist movement. This is why the book The Feminine Mystique sold well.
that would time well with being one generation removed from the one that lost 400k to war. the 60's would be when boomers would start entering the work force.
I'm sure some of the silent generation women also entered, but they wouldn't lead the bulk of the workforce shifting by the late 60's/70's.
That doesn't track the reality of the timeline of women in the workforce. Women temporarily worked during WW2, and after the war things returned to the previous status quo. Women weren't common in the workforce until the 1960s. It wasn't until 1967 that women's labor force participation broke 40%[1] but then it pretty quickly hit 50% by 1978.
"Women's liberation" is what brought women into the labor force. That doesn't mean it "ruined America", it just means the approach had flaws that need to be iterated on.
I don't think any progress in women can be attributed to feminism. They still don't have any ownership of their own bodies (abortion, sex work), their bodies are controlled by 80+ year old white males running the govt.
I don't think anyone is advocating for returning to the 1950s status quo. We should, however, do away with the delusion that couples can have both two careers and raise children. Sheryl Sandberg sent this message to women quite a while ago at this point, she just tilted it toward "give up on the family and focus on the career".
We can create incentives that allow it to make sense for a family to have a single income, and a mother to raise her own children again, without telling women they're required to do that. Right now there's not much of a choice at all. Couples are forced to have two incomes because they can't make economic ends meet otherwise. Giving women real choice is a whole lot better than what we currently have and better than the 1950s. Women who wants careers can have them, and women who wants to be full-time mothers should be able to do that without it meaning being destitute.
Like I said, though, I kind of wonder how a country could get there. If it became more common, the country would become less "productive" in the short term, because we don't count raising children towards the GDP, even though we should. So, in the short term, if voters and politicians keep chasing short term GDP growth, they'll never try to make the ideal outcome a reality. That would only start doing so when population goes down and immigration can't supplement population growth anymore, but by then it will be too late.
technology and education already solved this. We're not in the 50's anymore with a Ford-esque assembly worker chain dedicated to pushing one pencil each. One modern 2020's man can do the work of 10 minimum wage men back then. So why does he have less earning power than his grandfathers?
we're plenty productive, and the govt. shouldn't treat their people like a tech company does chasing "infinite growth". pay people a living wage, give them choices in lifestyle (part time, full time, contract, etc.), invest more in training and growth so each worker can do more, because to be frank we don't need a single cashier dedicated full time to checking items out anymore (as one example). If that training is valuable enough to poach, bring back proper bonuses and other retention incentives (but let's be real, most of that training these days is in college).
And come down the other way too. Stop letting housing rent for people who are actually living in a place get out of control. Same with food (and it'd be a nice bonus to subsidize more sustainable, healthy foods while we're at it).
A better term than subsidy might help. For example, we don’t describe property taxes that go to your school district as an “education subsidy”. It’s just a public service you pay for (that everyone benefits from at some point in their lives).
For-profit childcare centres have absolutely mastered the art of simultaneously minimising operating costs (underpaying staff) while increasing pricing. These increases then create pressure to improve subsidies. With CCS at up to 90% for low income households this creates a flow of public funds directly to their shareholders while not actually improving anything for the people it should help.
Yes this is the right choice. We have immigration to make up for the missing workers. This is not a social problem like you are portraying it.
Society gains nothing from people having kids when we have unlimited immigration potential. Society would just be subsidizing someones lifestyle choice which is not its job.
> form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity
I don't see "increase economic output" in there. I do see an explicit line item about Liberty for our Posterity (i.e. the authors' children and descendants). One might infer that actually that entire list was meant for us and our children too, and not just the people of the time.
All because you believe it would benefit in some invisible deity of "society".
There are no missing workers and has never been. There are only missing wages.
Natives in America were historically the victims of genocide, because rulers and industry at the time decided it was too expensive to get them to labour effectively. The natives wanted to spend their time on other things, such as caring for their children. And European settlers were not reproducing quite fast enough for the hunger of the business rulers for young workers. So the natives were exterminated and replaced by cheap and effective labour brought in from Africa. How does history judge those actions?
And now hackers are here in 2023 using the same arguments again.
I need to see your definition or consensus sample:
the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". These five acts were:
- killing members of the group (nope)
- causing them serious bodily or mental harm (you can argue mental harm, but it's a huge stretch)
- imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group (living conditions are down, but it'd be disrespectul to compare my living to slavery or a concentration camp)
- preventing births (I guess this is your angle. But discouragement =/= prevention. My parents discouraging me from having a kid isn't genocide. Moreover, this is a decision mostly made on free will; you CAN still have a kid, but the costs of raising a kid are always present)
- forcibly transferring children out of the group (nope)
>Natives in America were historically the victims of genocide, because rulers and industry at the time decided it was too expensive to get them to labour effectively.
yeah, because they furfilled at least 3 of the 5 definitions. You can easily argue all 5. What's happening today is 2 very iffy arguments across a nation, with ways out of society in the worst cases.
Economic subjugation / destruction of economic life is mentioned in several of these definitions. For example that a young family is forced to go into life long debt in order to have their own home, or pay exorbitant rents.
Especially the first definition in the list is worth reading, because it dispels the myth that genocide needs to be immediate and brutal. It can also a long-term plan carried out by rulers to exterminate an ethnic group.
> yeah, because they furfilled at least 3 of the 5 definitions. You can easily argue all 5.
There is nobody today that would argue that natives in America weren't subjected to genocide.
uh no. I didn't read rest of your comment.
We do this in America, although it’s through the back door in the form of generous tax credits. With two children we receive a fat tax refund every year. For those on the dole, solid increases in benefit allotments come for those with children.
We could always consider it a public good. $35 billion a year is the rough estimated cost I've found to provide universal pre-k (ages 3-5), with people leaving the workforce costing $155billion elsewhere in the thread. We spend at minimum $880 billion on the military. Seems like a no brainer to me.
There definitely does seem to be a learning curve involved here. They try to teach DK to K standards because there are no other standards. Which is just unrealistic, especially as you start accepting nearly newly 4 year olds.
Transitional kindergarten. Basically staying a year early around 4.
What about 0.5 - 3?
But this structure is also rather unrelated to the real productivity of the economy - the creatively destructive portion of American business always has something to say about it. If those companies want their labor to be cheaper and less frequently disrupted, they have to go cause grief for one of these rentier businesses, socialize some things and cut into some monopoly inaction or low standards. But they only reach that conclusion by letting the economy get into a highly unstable position first.
You’re pulling these numbers out of your ass, to be frank.
I live in a Low-Cost of Living Area (rural South Carolina, near Clemson) and we pay $160 per week for care for a good facility. Formerly, in a now High-Cost area (Charleston) we paid about $200 per week in 2020 with that rising to about $225 for an ok facility. If you wanted to pay $325 you’d have your pick of the litter of high-end facilities with nice add-ons like Spanish-immersion and music education.
For further context, my wife currently makes $15 per hour as a simple line cook in order to have a 9-5 style schedule, and covers daycare, vehicle expenses, and groceries on her paycheck. If we had a second child added we would be about break-even on her at that pay grade. For further context, her 9-5 prep-cook pay was $20 per hour at her Charleston employer and prior to was making 55k salaried with benefits and PTO as a sous chef.
The issue we faced as a family was lack of availability at most facilities. We spent a year on a waiting list to get accepted in. My wife couldn’t work even if she wanted to the first year. In the city, that might have stretched further.
Say there are 5 cohorts in a daycare - 40 kids. $800 excess funds per week or ~$3500 per month. Out of that comes rent, insurance, supplies, cleaning, utilities, and probably property taxes and maintenance on a typical triple-net lease. Seems like a losing proposition.
You know why. Because labor costs are "insane". Not insane from the perspective of the low-wage earner making 60k in NYC, but insane for the 4 families that are paying their salary. That's $15k per family per year. But that's not the final cost, they then have to cover a share of center overheard + some margin which easily hits 25 or 30k.
and for a high CoL area, it's not even 1200 a month. It's more like 2500-3000. Literally a 2nd apartment's worth of rent. Unless things went down over the pandemic.
>For further context, my wife currently makes $15 per hour as a simple line cook in order to have a 9-5 style schedule, and covers daycare, vehicle expenses, and groceries on her paycheck. If we had a second child added we would be about break-even on her at that pay grade.
Do you pay no taxes? Because 35*15=$525/wk. After state, local, and federal taxes (not to mention property taxes) that should be about $367.50. Minus the $225 for daycare, that leaves $142. Assuming only a single car and around $92/wk in vehicle expenses ($400/mo -- including car payment, maintenance, and gas), that leaves $50/wk for groceries for three people. That seems extremely tight for a high cost of living area.
And I have no idea how you could break even with another $225/wk daycare payment. Even at a 0% tax rate, that would leave just $75 per week for all groceries and vehicle costs for three people.
I am not. LCOL here and 325 is the low end. The ratio by law is 1:4. I'm using the wage ($15) that I've seen advertised for the job. I did the math on the rest. I think you're being unreasonably critical here.
We could instead look at averages but your anecdote isn't more valid than mine. Especially when you fail to mention the SC teacher:child ratio is 1:5 instead of 1:4, and that your kid is presumably not an infant since you've been paying for daycare since 2020 https://www.scchildcare.org/providers/licensing-requirements...
> Formerly, in a now High-Cost area (Charleston) we paid about $200 per week in 2020
SC having a higher ratio proves my point that labor is a major factor in price. Additionally, Charleston isnt HCOL (doesnt hold a candle to NYC, SF, etc) and a lot has changed in 3 years. Not just inflation, but the age of your child. You are comparing my scenario (infant) to yours (toddler) which have different costs.
Friends about an hour outside of Portland are at ~$500/wk, wait list of ~12 months
Friends in Knoxville are at ~800k/wk, wait list of ~2.5 years, and they have access to university daycare.
Friends in the Bay Area are at ~350/wk, wait list of ~12 months.
Daycare is super local, from what I can see. Still, it's crazy expensive even with state subsidies. And the wait lists are really long. I've not heard of one that was less than a normal human gestation period.
NPR had a good story on how daycare is a failed market : https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1153931108/day-care-market-ex...
TLDL: Anytime you have a wait list, you have screwed up your capitalism somehow. You should be raising prices instead. Daycare is unique as most families cannot possibly afford that 'true' market rate. Think lighthouses. This is why nearly every country on the planet, and some US states, step in to help. The US is the only country that has this problem, and it really is a big problem.
We could have a culture where it's typical for people who stay home with their kids to additionally be paid to watch the kids of another family.
There was a way from 1950 to ~1990s though, we could start looking here: https://assets.weforum.org/editor/HFNnYrqruqvI_-Skg2C7ZYjdcX...
> Then you have to pay rent, utilities, maintenance, front office staff, and have enough left over for someone find it all worth it.
That means labour is not expensive, the tributes are expensive.
"Expensive labour" is an oxymoron. If something is not worth doing because it would be too expensive to pay anybody to do it, that means it's not worth doing. The whole meaning of having civilization is to make labour as "expensive" as possible, ie to see that the people doing the work receive as much as possible from their input. This includes making labourers as effective as possible by the help of education and having them operate more and more advanced machinery to increase production.
Labor in the US is significantly cheaper than any other developed country.
This hyperbole makes your point very easy to disprove. All it takes is one example and your statement is factually incorrect. Italy, South Korea, etc. Many definitions of "developed" basically boil down to income so you would basically need the USA to be the least developed of developed countries. But I will try and be charitable and assume you mean USA labor costs are on the low end of developed countries.
What metrics are you looking at? Wages in general in the USA are higher (higher median income). The 15$/hr example I used is higher than most minimum wages in Europe. For example the minimum wage in Germany is about 1600 euros a month or $10/hr for full-time work. The federal averge minimum wage is lower than some developed countries and higher than others, and many states have higher minimum wages than countries like Germany, UK, and France.
Regardless, even if US labor costs are low relative to developed countries (which doesnt seem to be the case), it doesnt change that its a major factor in daycare costs and that increasing wages would just make very high prices even higher.
In 2022 the US had a lower minimum wage than every OECD country other than Romania, Croatia, Hungary and Czechia.
21 developed countries have more expensive labor than the US, and only 4 are less expensive.
Labor in the US is cheap among Developed countries.
https://www.oecd.org/employment/unemployment-rates-oecd-upda....
California, for example, would be at the very top in 2022 ($15/hr). a mid CoL state like Illinois being $12/hr in 2022.
This is definitely the case with other countries too, but the US's (relatively) weak federal government is a consequence of this. They leave the states a lot of autonomy in these matters but set a bare basic floor to prevent obvious abuse. As a result, the federal minimum wage hasn't increased since 2009. Wheras states tend to increase every year or 2 (calidornia increased to $15.50 this year).
According to the OECD, the US was at $15.08 in 2022... which means almost rock bottom for the OECD. So your example of Illinois at $12 is the actual rock bottom, cheapest labor in the entire OECD.
Thanks for making it so clear.
$15/hr is approximately $30k/year if you made the latter argument. US measures its minimum wage hourly so I used that site's own conversion function to save me some mental bandwidth. Which I unfortunately lost by having to reply to this. Oh well.
Around the world it's normally the poorer, not richer, countries that have more kids on average, so I don't think finances are the main story here. A lot of countries with excellent childcare policies like in the Nordics also have pretty low birth rates. (Not knocking those policies though, I'm sure the parents there do appreciate them)
This in turn means that people have to have higher level careers and usually two earners in a home to afford the cost of living.
Overall this all raises GDP but it results in an environment that is hostile to family formation.
It could be a feedback loop too. Fewer kids might coincide with more career oriented lifestyles which drive higher earnings but also bid up real estate and other costs, and so on.
The issue is not that kids are expensive, it's that once you reach a certain level of income you don't want to give up your lifestyle in order to raise kids. People who are lower income don't have to give up on a lifestyle in order to have kids. They still have to work incredibly hard in order to raise kids, absolutely, but it's not like if they didn't raise kids they'd be able to go on vacations, enjoy eating out more often, attend more expensive social events with friends, etc...
Yet the statistics show that:
1. Those with lower incomes have more kids than those with higher incomes.
2. This trend has existed for more than 20 years, closer to 50 years in fact.
Now that I've pointed this out you seem to want to argue that income is not the only factor that determines fertility rates. Certainly that is true, but given that it's true why did you seem to emphasize it so strongly in your post when it supported the conclusion you wanted to make, but when I point out the opposite only then do you decide to diminish the relationship between income and fertility?
If the relationship between income and fertility is not that significant when I point it out, then it's not that significant when you want to use it for your argument either in which case your entire point kind of falls apart.
Finally as an aside, there is no shortage of countries with either cheap or even free child care, mostly in wealthy countries such as Finland, Sweden, Norway. But guess what? Fertility rates in those countries are incredibly low.
Fertility in Sweden has been higher than the average EU rate for a long time (although I think it's been a bit lower recently), and that has been attributed to the generous family policies and access to cheap (and good) childcare.
480 days of tax-funded parental leave per child (caveat emptor, terms and conditions apply).
Tax-supported child care, max cost per month to parents at about $100 per child.
Parents are allowed by law to select to 75% during the child's first 7 years.
About $100 per month and child in tax-funded child benefit(?).
There are waitlists long enough that parents have to sign up before their child is born. That’s nothing, at all, to do with “landlords” or “investors”.
I’m so tired of faux-progressive outrage online that always only focuses on how one of roughly three things are to blame for everything, no matter how tenuous or invented the connection is.
Why isn't the Free Market providing it then?
> I’m so tired of faux-progressive outrage online that always only focuses on how one of roughly three things are to blame for everything
I have roughly 20 straight married friends and 4 have kids (all are making top 5% income) and 10 want them but are waiting until they can better afford housing. Thats the basis of my argument, that cost of living is a common complaint. Cost of living sucks, its worse than its ever been in many areas. In areas with low cost of living, they have the problem that housing is relatively cheap but jobs aren't plentiful. I don't think that's controversial, but please let me know what I'm missing.
I also don’t think many people see it as a glamorous thing they want to get involved in, but the opportunity is clearly there. There’s probably a fortune to be made in figuring out how to “disrupt” the current industry.
To the other, I think if they’re top 5% in income, they’re looking for something very specific in some very specific neighborhood, and are completely unwilling to compromise.
I was in the top 10% in my relatively high (but not Seattle or SF) cost of living city, and had to move several miles outside of downtown. It was completely affordable with few sacrifices.
In short, I’m calling BS.
Like the above comment said, you don't just want anyone watching your very young kid. So minimum wage 18 year old who maybe changed one diaper won't suffice. But sadly, actual caretakers aren't much more well compensated.
But let's do the math on Meanswell Bob anyway. Someone working $10/hour full time will be paid $1600 raw. if they can take care of 3 kids and have some extra payment for overhead (not even profit), we're talking $600/family to pay out, before they even profit. raise it to $1000 and we get $1000 profit per month. Parents feel like they are paying way too much and the caretaker isn't making minimum wage in profit, while taking care of 3 kids they don't care about.
$1000/month is great as a side gig, but this is a) a full time job that b) can't be automated easily and c) requires a high level of trust (i.e. experience and initial capital). Bob here either needs to take care of even more kids (possibly illegally, since there are regulations for this) or charge the parents even more just to make ends meet.
You are conflating issues, there is nothing stopping a developer from creating a "35-" development (Except a market of course).
And age discrimination in housing is actually illegal, the 55+ and 65+ situations are special exclusions.
I'd be down, that means young people can't actually own houses, unheard of for my generation.
But yes, it's no secret older folk either have better financial safeties that degraded by millenial/Gen Y (pension, social secrutity) and generally make more money. Great market to appeal to. Meanwhile, the 23- market takes out an un-bankruptable 100k over 4 years hoping to climb through the cracks.
This is wrong. If this was the case there would investors lining up to make a killing.
Planet money did an episode on this
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1153931108/day-care-market-ex...
> GUO: In a month where they're bringing in, like, $40,000, $33,000 is going to payroll.
> ANDERSEN: Our salaries are 83% of our budget per month. That is absolutely insane.
> GUO: And this is pretty representative of the country. And for thinking, well, at least day care workers are getting paid well - right? - because most of the money is going to salaries. Well, they are not paid well. Kelsey pays 12 to $15 an hour.
>But Kelsey says she can't pay as much as those stores because she has more people to pay than they do. For Kelsey's 72 kids, she needs 25 people on staff
I guess this just shows my ignorance, but is a 1:3 kid-parent ratio the norm for day care? I know you can't automate child care like you can a cashier, but given that my grandparents raised 4-5 kids at any one time (they had like, 10 kids between one previous marriage each, but huge age gaps), and my uncle raised 3 himself (and sometimes My mom dropped me off with him. So 3.5), it seems very "inefficient" when considering this is only caring for a third of the time (as opposed to a 24/7 care as a stay at home parent).
>The safety of kids and the quality of care get a little more dicey if you have more than four infants to one teacher. So you just need a lot of grown-ups to take care of babies and even toddlers.
I guess a day care has a higher quality stay than my uncle since it mentions teaching. I guess it's tough to just throw your child at someone you don't trust who may do it for cheap, so there's pressures to not just be "my uncle's house" (not that he's a bad parent. But I was mostly there to play with my cousin and be fed lunch/dinner).
But when you remember the perspective of a school teacher teaching 20-40(!) kids at once for even less money, it makes you feel like something is off. Probably in the case of the teachers, but still.
>But we wouldn't leave 16-year-olds alone. In fact, we don't really leave anyone alone.
tangent but I'm really baffled by this sentiment. Like, I wouldn't leave the country for months with a 16YO, but by 16 I would feel they can operate for a few days without seeing a parent. Just make sure they have allowance to cover food. That's an age where they need to start operating independently anyway since they are potentially close to living alone in college, or moving out a few years into adulthood.
Depends on the state laws based on age of the child. Its not upto the daycare.
What do you mean? We've gotten rid of RvW and a lot of states are making abortion illegal.
We are politicing the HELL out of this problem.
But maybe you have a point in that the reason elites embrace feminism is to increase GDP (see also the USSR selling the shoving of women into grueling factory work as "liberation")
that must be a nice perk that helps influence your fondness.
I'm not at all surprised by this. When you stay at home and depend on your husband's wage, it's much easier to start a boutique business.
Our church is traditional and most women stay at home. Many of the women have businesses. It makes sense. They work on them in the few hours the kids are in classes or napping. They earn enough to keep going and provide an outlet for them to contribute directly to the income
Whereas if I were to start a business, it would have to be with the goal of replacing my wage. The sorts of businesses the wives engage in would be impossible. They simply don't earn enough.
But some of the women's businesses may take off. It's a high risk high reward thing, except that the risk is actually low due to husband's income.
- 400 EUR/mo fees plus 80/mo lunch and drinks for 12 months - 3 years at Krippe (creche/nursery school)
- 120 EUR/mo fees plus 100/mo lunch and drink for 3 - 6 years at Kindergarten (preschool and then US kindergarten year), because Bavaria really, really wants children of non-German-speakers in preschool but found out that subsidizing only those children was politically untenable. There may be further discounts for the Vorschule (school preparation) year that starts at age 5 and is more like US kindergarten
There are further subsidies for parents who don't earn much, especially for 3 - 6 year olds.
In short, very inexpensive as long as you're not trying to work a full-time job, and it's a lot easier to scale a serious full-time job back to a part-time contract for a few years here than it would be in the US. In some areas, there are not enough Krippe and Kindergarten slots; in our area, you have to apply to several and do so a few months ahead of time if you want one reasonably close to your home. We had to take a Krippe slot in the next neighborhood.
Care outside of 07:30 - 16:00 is not nearly as well-organized or subsidized. I've made the choice not to find out; I work part-time and will do so until my kid is well into primary school, in large part because I want to spend a few hours a day making sure that he can speak and read English.
Some of the subsidized Krippes and Kindergartens are run directly by the city adjacent to the public school system; others are run by the major churches (Catholic and Lutheran), Arbeiterwohlfahrt (Workers' Welfare - traditional Social Democrat-aligned social services provider), and other community organizations. They need to meet certain standards to get those subsidies, and so far, the quality of care and education my kid has gotten at both his Krippe and now his Kindergarten compare well to what my friends in the US paid $2000+/mo for.
As in the US, Krippe and Kindergarten workers are not paid very well in Germany, and have had a few warning strikes in the past year.
After school care is less well organized and ( as per my personal experience ) after school tutors are overwhelmed by the amounts of homework and learning that are necessary.
As a consequence kids of parents that depend on after school have a disadvantage. Since this is more often the case in low income families social strata probably get solidified.
(super rough estimates)
in California:
240k after tax which is 20k/mo. About 10k/mo for housing (remember, having 3 kids means you need a big house). 3x2k childcare. 6k gone. Everything is 3x more expensive so that remaining 2k will not go to far.
in Germany
75k after tax which is 6.25k/mo. 2k housing. 0.5k childcare. You're left 3.75k to spend
Kindergarten per child at least 500€. Then Krippe ends, but school starts.
So 5000€ for rent and kindergarten. Maybe you live in other Germany.
Edit: the special thing about German (Bavarian) school system is that in the 4th year in school your teacher does a decision if your child may study. That means, the child is going to learn a lot to have good grades. That’s roughly 30€ pro lesson. At least 8 of them comes every month.
Nobody pays the marginal rate on all of their income in the U.S. unless they're making millions in W2 income, so 500k W-2 salary is 280k after taxes, not including any deductions from taxable income (including deductions, the post-tax range is anywhere from 280k-350k for a unmarried individual with no kids).
Also, most things are not 3x more expensive than they are in Germany; if anything the opposite is true: our produce and meat are 1/4 of what Germans pay, we pay less for utilities, we pay less for auto fuel, we pay less for travel, we pay less for pretty much all our day-to-day expenses, and that's before you take into account exchange rates which makes things in American even cheaper compared to what Germans have to pay.
So $500k in California is the equivalent of about EUR 600-750k German salary. And $500k salaries are a lot more common in California than EUR 600k salaries are in Germany...
big house doesn't mean you need to live in the the trenches of San Fransisco. Even then: very rough numbers on a 30 year lease suggests a 3M dollar home. I see listings around 2M from a quick google. so put 3-4k back in your pocket. Hell, you don't need to have every kid have their own room so you can probably fit into a 3 bed to cut more. And then simply not live in the core of SF to get back under a million.
>Everything is 3x more expensive so that remaining 2k will not go to far.
only if you make it so. Sure, food will be more expensive but not magically 3x the cost of Germany (Germany isn't exactly low COL). Most commercial tech will be the same price there as anywhere else in the country.
You can definitely make it work. You may not be able to get every single luxury, but we're far from penny pinching with a few tweaks.
So your 480€/month for aren't that inexpensive. That's 20% of the take-home salary for a median household of 2 working people.
This discussion is usually framed in terms of "people can't work because they have to parent kids" when in reality is more like "people can't spend as much time parenting because they have to work". If money were not a problem, more people would quit their jobs or work part time to spend more time with kids.
And as other commenters have pointed out taking care of children is indeed a productive job even if a stay at home parent doesn't file a W-2. Furthermore, there's some research (though not without controversy) that kids cared for by parents have better outcomes than those placed in child care.
The puzzle need to be solved is how to let people rejoin the workforce later without their career wrecked (with a discontinued CV).
If you want to, yes.
If you are forced to because you can't afford childcare I would say that's a bad thing
There is economic efficiency in specialisation, it's economically better to have specialist childcarers while other people work in different specialties. The economy should be structured so that people can choose to leave work to take care of their kids if they want, but not be forced to
I think that the ruthless pursuit of efficiency destroys a lot of what makes us human.
However, what I noticed in Finland was a relatively high proportion of women in tech and leadership roles. That's what happens when people can combine a career and a family instead of having to choose. Most women are basically full time employed.
The Netherlands where I'm from has a lot less of this. Result: a lot of women are working part time (something that is relatively rare in other countries) so they can take care of their kids or pausing their career entirely for until their kids are old enough to go to school. Labor participation of women is lower and working part time means the career perspectives are also a bit limited. Companies don't put part time people in important roles. And of course it means less money as well. Child care is expensive to the point that working barely covers that cost. So, many women just quit their jobs. That's a form of hidden unemployment. It's not counted in the statistics but it has a cost.
I currently live in Germany which has a bit better system going more towards the Scandinavian direction. People moan a lot about availability of child care but it is pretty affordable and mostly people seem to manage to get some in the end. Likewise, parental leave is a bit more generous.
The demographics in a lot of places are not great. Populations are shrinking. And that's also going to have an economic impact. There are two ways to fix that: make it more affordable for people to have kids or just get a lot of immigrants. The irony is that the same people blocking the first are also not that keen on the latter happening.
According to the most recent data from the United Nations Population Fund, Finland has a birth rate of 1.4 which is lower than both Germany (1.5) and the Netherlands (1.6). Sweden is only slightly higher at 1.7, which is the same as the U.S.
My goal is to grow it sustainably while targeting small, independent providers.
There is so much shitty software out there that is over priced. I want to build safe, secure software I enjoy using myself while also being accessible for folks who arent savvy with technology everyday.
I am moving very slow right now since it is just me but excited about the potential.
My first customers are free while we figure out features but my goal is to charge $0.25/child/month. Waitlist and landing pages are free. Text and email notifications are pay per use while offering free credits each month.
My wife is a teacher, my mom was an SLP and I am a parent who never had a small, local provider have tech in their day care and payments and comms were manual and paper.
Real ability to affect change here.
Guess what that’s going to do to the price of childcare.
Works well for the parents, but leads to low wages for the personell.
… improve access to childcare?
[edit] seriously, I mean, in case that came off as sarcastic.
My wife just stayed working full time because we need the money to afford our mortgage after interest rate rises. Almost 90% of what she earns goes to pay for childcare, and that's with her mother looking after our kids one day a week. If we had to pay for a full 5 days, it wouldn't be worth her working.
Yes, in a vacuum, it makes total sense. If you loan a bit of money now, a student becomes more educated, earns more, and pays more in taxes in the long run. It's a win win!
But the problem is that once you add that system, all the colleges in the country just start raising tuition to account for it, which is IMO a huge part of why they've gotten so expensive.
More expensive college means more people need loans and it spirals from there.
I wish there was a clean solution, but there isn't.
And even if you somehow did that part perfectly, the money can be shuffled around and reorganized so it looks like the college is spending more/needs more income than it really does.
Audits? we have a federal and state secretary of Education who should have resources to find this stuff out.
The answer to this is that colleges appeal to get more resources if they need it, and they need to prove those extra funds are in the interest of most/all students. Governments can still give grants and whatnot, so the hard cap is just a cap on one source of income.
>the money can be shuffled around and reorganized so it looks like the college is spending more/needs more income than it really does.
yeah, just like any other corporation. Exploits and tax evasion. This is the everyday life of auditors.
But colleges aren't exactly good at hiding what their overinflated administration is doing to begin with.
* People giving up on kids and substitute it with dog ownership * Daycare rackets wherein they just turn on blippi as soon as the parents are gone. * Professionals that have migrated to a 4-day work week have figured out that they could create a co-op daycare/school and help raise one another's kids * Go full remote and grind out the parenting/work until your kid is old enough for some sort of preschool. I've been actually seeing more and more parents just bringing their kids to work.
I really don't think subsidization is an answer. It punishes parents that figured out how to make things work w/o daycare. That and we start getting into a similar scenario as student loans.
My take is that needing to figure this out is the real punishment here.
France has the highest fertility rate in the EU (and higher than that of the US) and subsidies apparently are the way forward.
They need to be applied correctly though. My country is currently doing worse than Japan even though it's spending, as a percentage of GDP, than France on subsidies - these are in the form of what amounts to an UBI scheme for parents per child.
The US has a lot of low-hanging fruit here, like having any sort of actual parental leave, not just whatever pittance the employer throws in people's way.
Those are all awful and while I see your point about subsidization being a band-aid, it's way better than what these "solutions" are. Because they clearly haven't "figured out how to make things work".
- a kid is not a pet. And there's a whole rabbit hole about how people adopted and abandoned pets as the pandemic came and went. Besides, not having a kid makes the whole thing moot and runs into current issues on first world population growth.
- To be honest, this is fine as long as they are honest about it. Not every Daycare doesn't need to be pre-pre school, you may just want a responsible, trustworthy adult to make sure the house doesn't burn down and you can offer that at a discount. But odds are they can't be honest due to regulations.
- I'm very confused on how this works unless every single people in the co-op has their day off on different days.
- this is probably the best compromise out of them all, but the most exhausting. It may be borderline impossible to do depending on the industry you're in.
>That and we start getting into a similar scenario as student loans.
I'd hope we don't get to a point that raising a child is a non-bankruptable loan. But if so, its still better for the current situation than student loans. Many people have children older, and that means they have more savings prepared. And late 20's/30's adults understand debt and interest a lot better than an 18YO leaving home for the first time.
I think the real solution is simply to solve the housing and minimium wage issues, though. Helps way more than parents to boot.
I remember a study that concluded that in reality, there is a cap on how much additional money improves your day-to-day life. And if a family is already past that on one income, why do you need two?
That cant be right. I am in a LCOL area and its almost double that for 1 kid. And its one of the cheapest options.
It says the average is 700 per household. Perhaps it counts households without kids?
The 1 month old is not so fun yet, granted.
In-home daycare is also common too, and then there's not a ton of facility cost.
It’s an empirical question, to be sure, but it is theoretically possible the outcomes are different.
But I do feel like daycare/preschool brings us closer to the traditional "it takes a village" model of raising a child, rather than the isolated 1950s suburban housewife model.
So it's not all about economic efficiencies, but also the value that society gets out of it. A child is socialised with other kids, and learns from adults other than their parents too.
Our 2.5 year old does 4 hour preschool 2 days a week for social exposure etc. And other activities throughout the week.
> rather than the isolated 1950s suburban housewife model
I'll note, people give the 1950s crap, but actually my parents in the 50s spent the entire day outside running around the neighborhood with friends. Kids in the 50s were vastly healthier socially than kids today.
No they weren't. Your parents just lived in a location where their socio-economic status and urban planning supported running around and playing all day. Their parents decided to build suburbs without sidewalks, mass transit availability, or stoops/porches. They did this to keep those people out. Your parents got to enjoy better urban planning as children than you and your kids.
depends on your race, if we're being blunt. certain other neighborhoods were "running around the neighborhood" in a completely different context.
social aspects aside, sure. I wouldn't mind the pendulum shifting away from the helicopter parent spectrum, but it really depends on your location. It could work in my current locattion, but not at most of my previous residences.
So, we lost 5 years of her 401k contributions in exchange for her getting what she preferred, what the kids enjoyed, and a lot more meals at home as a family. That trade was well-worth it.
The UK system gives mediocre benefits and also penalises you if one of you makes >100k a year.
I daren't think about what it'd cost if you had 3 kids under 5 years old!
This is London zone 2
Oddly it has conditioned many friends who were stauch opponents of private schools (waste of money and only generates entitled poorly educated people) to feel more comfortable with paying the cheaper private school fees for primary school (or they took one look at the public alternative and realised the reality)
My local nursery is also owned by Private Equity and was just rated inadequate by Ofsted due to high staff turnover (clearly paying peanuts).
But to be fair, the cost of living is quite high where I live. New build condos are going for $1 mil. Downtown apartments go for $2.5k/mo.
The lack of children being born in the US and other western countries is (partly) a direct consequence of the lack of good quality, subsidised childcare.
More importantly, where is this money going? I know for a fact that the frontline workers who actually _look after_ children aren't seeing a marked increase in their pay. So it's just more profit for the private equity firms who own these businesses.
Every state has maximums for employee to child ratios. Every state has zoning restrictions for facility locations. Some states have college degree requirements.
If your state limits the ratio to 4 to 1, then the cheapest possible cost for coverage would be 1/4 of the employees' salary.
If you want to bring costs down, then loosen these restrictions. Allow facilities to set their own ratios and charge accordingly and consumers to make the choice of the risk they tolerate
The government is mandating minimum _safety_ standards for the people who are minding the next generation of humans.
We really need to be asking where that money is going and why costs are so high. The government really is not the problem here other than that they're not subsidising it enough.
Solve the cost of living and labour becomes cheaper and thus things like childcare come cheaper.
Yes. Just like certain apartments are cheaper than others when the unit has no washing machine or microwave. Or like certain cars are cheaper because they don't have a backup camera.
The cost doesn't disappear because you scream "Think of the children!"
The US prioritises other things, so childcare is more expensive than it otherwise might be.
My cousin has several car dealerships. During the Cash for Clunkers program, the government was giving a $2000 new car tax credit. He raised the cost of every car on the lot by $2000 exactly.
If you want something to come down in cost, then you must make it's input costs decrease in price.
Then the government steps in and forces them not to. I understand that in the US the idea that the government could have the best interests of its citizens in mind is an alien one, but in much of Europe this is a solved problem. It requires political will.
The costs of childcare haven't actually soared, it's a captive market. Reducing quality is dangerous (because, again, these are small humans who require high-quality care from qualified individuals), so regulation is the only option.
I'm going to be honest. Im a republican voter living in Portland Oregon of all places. It's a high cost of living area. We go to a fairly traditional church where couples of all incomes are having 4-5 kids each and usually one spouse working. So basically, we go to church with other republicans living in a high cost of living area.
I vote the way I do because I honestly don't understand child care. I was never put in child care the way people seem to do it now
I'll be honest when I see my neighbors put their few weeks old babies into daycare I am simply filled with horror. Yet the parents seem to think this arrangement is great. Children should be at home with their mom or dad. I know many couples in this same area making it work. They have richer lives because having a spouse at home leads to greater community involvement and better neighborhoods.
Moreover, when I talk to my neighbors about finances, it is dubious whether they're actually making more. They're also not taking into account basic costs that inevitably crop up.
For example because my wife stays at home, we have one car. Because my wife stays at home, our entire community will get fed when they have a new baby because the mom's have arranged meal trains amongst themselves as a standard 'benefit'. Because of how close the mom's are after seeing each other day in and day out, we often 'share' money. If a family is having a tough time, money is just shoved onto them. This means things like emergencies are much less scary. Again, these are all costs those families would have to incur if they both worked and couldn't take part in the community. Even childcare for things like date night can be arranged pretty easily. It's amazing and I estimate we save thousands upon thousands per year because of it. Elizabeth Warren of all people covers these hidden benefits of staying at home extremely well in her book 'The Two income trap'. I highly recommend it.
Now going back to politics. I would venture that many more republicans have my arrangement. Thus when we see calls to subsidize daycare, we see people wanting our tax money for less desirable outcomes. Children raised at daycare instead of parents. Parents too stressed out that they the report they have no 'village'. Lack of community in our cities and towns and rural areas, etc. Lonelines. All these things are symptoms of the continued financialization of the nuclear family, the extended family, and the neighborhood.
And yes I'm very much against that.
Oh wait, there are multiple concert visitors, and a kindergarden group has multiple kids per carer there.
Yes, a very made up number, Taylor Swift tickets for this year's tour were between $50 on the low end and $500 on the high end (plus fees) for the initial sale[1], and averaged $1600 in the resale market, with some tickets for that were close to the stage selling for up to $6300[2].
[1]: https://stylecaster.com/entertainment/music/1624301/how-much...
[2]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/taylor-swift-eras-tour-tickets-...
$5000/mo with 4 kids is only $1250/mo/kid or only about $300/week/kid. Plus you don't have to go drop off or pick up your kids at a separate facility, as usually the nanny comes to the children.
As a child care provider working as a nanny you'd make $60k/year. Can you make $60k/year working at a child care facility?
https://institute.bankofamerica.com/content/dam/bank-of-amer...
Childcare is consolidating, which means higher costs and lower pay. Lots of childcare chains in the US: https://winnie.com/resources/the-biggest-childcare-brands-in...
Our taxes contribute to the kindergarten system and the government requires that all children from the age of 1 have a right to attend. We have hundreds of both private (owned by the government) and public (for profit) kindergartens in the Oslo area. So it scales well and benefits the entire community and local economy.
I wish the US could experience what we have here in Norway.
I think these may be inverted - public is what is owned by the government, private is for profit.
Nonetheless, children being raised by the state is not a positive. As a parent you get to see your child for a couple of hours a day during the week and for two full days during the weekend. Not ideal to be honest.
Serves the state politically in terms of education and control, prevents crime, and keeps the economy humming (preventing deflation and supporting burgeoning debt service costs)
If the standard of living has fallen so far that any second income is just going to be a wash against a $700 monthly expense for a wide group of people, I find it frustrating that culturally we can't talk about class.
At this point, the US is hybrid artificial hive-mind intelligence optimizing for creating the largest megacorp monopolies in the world instead of optimizing for their working population.
That’s been US policy for the last 100 years or so, especially post-WWII. Citing Chomsky, et al.
Certainly, paying taxes for daycare is more fruitful for the country as a whole rather than paying taxes for welfare for those who do not work (yet have many children) — a huge net negative for society, and of course taxes for waging war which you don’t seem to bat an eye at.
Care.com inflates market prices to pursue its own margin goals. Caretakers who aren't using care.com or agency, operating in a cash business, charge far less than reported in the care.com marketplace.
This aside, you're still paying 15-25 dollars per hour in the NYC metro area for such services.
Perhaps this is how the population eventually flattens. Maybe it is okay that the marginal cost of another human being keeps increasing.
If adding a child to the planet is expensive, people will have fewer. The population will plateau. An even worse overpopulation problem may be averted or mitigated.
Furthermore, the USA is not overpopulated, the world is. This is a Western problem. People from India or Nigeria have no problem having 5+ children, so your solution makes no sense other than to punish working parents.
If this is the market value of childcare, and those children are being cared for, then can we say that the value has been transferred rather than lost?
Following the link to an article about the study suggests the figure is an aggregate of a few other estimates:
> The report found that not having child care — or enough child care — costs individual parents more than $5,500 a year, or more than $78 billion in total. And businesses lose $1,640 on average for each working parent due to lost revenue and hiring costs because of insufficient child care, totaling $23 billion annually. And the government loses, too — about $21 billion in lost income and sales tax revenues a year, or $1,470 less per working parent because parents without enough child care earn less and therefore consume less in their communities.
I suppose this assumes that the level of care given to the children is approximately equivalent in both cases. In which case, I presume the argument is that more efficient childcare (fewer carers per child) is better.
There's also a child care tax credit which gives a similar amount of tax savings. So overall you do have some tax benefits to help with daycare costs, but they could be better.
I disagree. Because Federal intervention comes with caveats to shape the image of the "noble poor" Federal intervention is a trojan horse to create a dependence on them. Don't take their poisoned charity.
I feel like the chasm between a work-at-home mid-west farm family, a single mother raising a kid in a metropolis, and a dual-income SV couple with an au pair have very little in common.
Federal intervention fails not because of a lack of empathy but because our regional cultures and beliefs play a significant role in the sacrifices and choices that shape how we think our kids should be raised.
Stop letting Washington raise our children as if all 350 million of us were a monolith of shared values.
When we were having our 2nd kid, there were complications that killed my daughter and almost killed my wife. The trauma caused us to need to move closer to family and I went several months without a job. We relied on family to help us pay bills.
Should we have lost our first kid because we didn't think things through and plan enough financially? I didn't consider when I had my first kid that several years later I would be dealing with trauma that would derail my life and career.
Everyone seems happy now and we have money, but your point is that I should have never started a family at all since I did have a period of time where "childcare was too expensive"?
700x10x12 = 84K, not 840K.
First they made the cost of living so expensive that two parents need to work to live comfortably, and now they've made it so expensive that childcare is unaffordable, which just puts more stress on the entire family.
The propensity of the wealthy to keep their ill-gotten gains is going to heavily depend on how they treat benefits in the US, but the problem is that Republicans are going to demand a "free market solution," which is going to be virtually indistinguishable from school vouchers. It will result in daycares simply raising their rates and pocketing the difference.
Public school systems largely already have plenty of property to house preschool kids. Make it a federally funded program and put daycares under the existing school systems. Yes, some small business owners will be out of luck, but their employees will all be vastly better off because those jobs pay virtually nothing and the benefits are always garbage if they even exist, and the kids will be better off because the workers will have more accountability.
>So they can afford 2 cars
>So they can both go to work
>So they can afford child care while they're working
>So they can pay for the dinner they can't prepare themselves because they're working
>And the people who work in school and childcare
>Do so to afford 2 cars
>So they can go to work
>So they can afford school & childcare
>And they can afford to pay service workers to prepare their food
>...
People are starting to wake up to this madness for shilling every single human to become a worker unit. Children are suffering. People who've shilled for this arrangement should be charged with crimes, as they've harmed children, if only indirectly.
But states and corporations should bear the brunt of the punishment, as they've worked in unison to create propaganda that agentizes the uneducated to shill work as a noble end, rather than a means to an end, all so GDP and profits can soar.
When your god is money and efficiency, you suffer, especially your children.