Child Care Prices

What Are Child Care Prices?

The Consumer Price Index for day care and preschool, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, divided by its index for everything consumers buy, so general inflation is taken out. It reads 100 where child care prices have risen exactly as much as prices overall since December 1990, when the index began, and above 100 where they have risen faster. Since 1991.

Why Does It Matter?

For parents of young children, care can cost as much as rent, and the bill comes in the years when their pay is lowest. When it outruns other prices, some parents, most often mothers, cut their hours or stop working, which can cost them raises and retirement savings for years after.

Can Politics Influence It?

Through subsidies for lower-income families, the child and dependent care tax credit, Head Start, and state preschool programs, and through state rules on how many children each caregiver may watch, which set how many workers a center must pay. Care is mostly people's time, so it cannot get much cheaper the way televisions have.

Key Idea

It tracks the price of the same care over time, not what families end up spending. When care grows too costly, many families turn to grandparents, split shifts, or one parent leaving work, and none of that shows up here: the index can hold steady while the care a family can afford gets worse.

Scored: A Faster Fall or Slower Rise Ranks Better