Child care as economic driver

'Can't be a solution without significant public investment'

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Hi all! Katie here, stepping in for Liz this week while she’s out visiting one of our state’s 58 community colleges as we wrap up our #Impact58 project (see above).

This week I had the opportunity to do a deep dive into a new report from the NC Early Childhood Foundation. In October 2020, NCECF conducted a statewide parent survey to learn how the COVID-19 pandemic was affecting families with children age 5 and under. Now they’ve published a new analysis of those survey results that shows how child care and North Carolina’s economic future are “inextricably linked.”

Here are some findings that stood out to me:

• 400,000 working parents across the state are constrained by child care needs.
• 45% of parents with young children were dropping out of college/training or were declining training.
• Almost half (44%) of NC families with children lived in “child care deserts,” with less than one licensed child care slot for every three children from birth to age 5.

I was also surprised to learn — as were the report’s authors — that parents with two-year and four-year degrees were likely to live in low socioeconomic status (SES) households. Perhaps even more surprising was that 40% of parents with advanced degrees were also low SES. 

I spoke with Muffy Grant, executive director of NCECF, about this finding and she agreed with my hypothesis that student loans were likely the reason behind it. 

“And then you layer on top of that the fact that child care costs even more than the average tuition to a four-year degree-granting institution in the state of North Carolina,” Grant said, “it’s just not a tenable situation.”

In order for the state to reach the myFutureNC attainment goal of ensuring that 2 million North Carolinians have a high-quality credential or a postsecondary degree by 2030, Grant says, we’re going to have to change how we think about early care and education, especially for children age 3 and under.

“There really can’t be a solution without significant public investment in the early care and education system,” Grant said. “Child care in and of itself should be seen as a public good, like parks and libraries and K-12 education — learning doesn’t start at 5 or 4.”

You can read my overview of the report and more from my interview with Grant, or read the NCECF report yourself.