I just read an article in the Dallas Observer that shocked me. In Texas, child care costs more than college tuition. I have a son getting ready to go to college and I know how costly this will be.
It makes sense why many choose to stay at home. It also makes sense that those who work need to find ways to cut corners and save. What do you think?
Here is the skinny from the Observer:
The Economic Policy Institute issued a report —“High Quality Child Care Is Out of Reach for Working Families” — that examines the sky-high cost of child care in the United States. The report has an interactive chart that displays, state-by-state, the ratio of average infant and child care costs to the full-time, in-state tuition at a four-year public college. In two-thirds of states, including Texas, the costs for infant care exceed college tuition:
Child care gets less expensive as kids get older, so the ratio shrinks when one considers 4-year-olds instead of infants, but parents still have to shell out 90 percent of what they’d be paying to send a college freshman to a state school:
According to EPI, a family of four living in the Dallas-Fort Worth area needs to make $61,500 per year to achieve a modest but comfortable standard of living. Built into the calculation is an estimated $835-per-month in child care costs to cover preschool for a 4-year-old and after-school care for an 8-year-old, an amount second only to housing in terms of its hit on the family budget.
Such middle-income families can afford a college-sized dent in their income, even if it is a struggle. The picture is bleaker for those further down the economic ladder. Families living below the poverty line are eligible for federally funded child care (i.e. Head Start and Early Head Start), though a minority of eligible children are enrolled. According to a 2014 report from Texans Care for Children, just 5 percent of eligible children up to age 2 and 31 percent of eligible 3-year-olds were enrolled in those programs. (Dallas ISD offers pre-K to low-income 4-year-olds and some 3-year-olds.)
To read more of this article, go here.
