Surging Childcare Costs Are Hurting More and More Americans

[marmar]

(Bloomberg) It’s not the cost of diapers or even future college tuition that’s rattling Amber Sparks.

“We basically had to remake our entire budget around daycare,” said Sparks, 37, whose three-month old daughter began attending childcare this month when Sparks returned to work for a labor union in Washington. “We’ll eat out a lot less, and have a lot less discretionary spending. We live in an apartment building and I don’t think there’s any way we’d be able to afford a home and pay for daycare and pay for student loans.”

With the job market improving and the millennial generation born after 1980 reaching its prime child-bearing years, demand for daycare will probably continue to outstrip supply, driving costs up faster than overall inflation. That could have wide-ranging economic repercussions, including limiting consumers’ ability to spend on other goods and services and, in the extreme, preventing some parents from joining the workforce.

About 29 percent of births last year were to 25- to 29-year-old mothers, according to National Center for Health Statistics data released in June. The figures also showed the fertility rate, or the total number of births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 years, increased for the first time since 2007. .................(more)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-12/-broken-childcare-economics-slamming-younger-u-s-households