Help For Families Who Can’t Afford Childcare Hits Decade Low

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Help For Families Who Can’t Afford Childcare Hits Decade Low

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/02/25/3330751/childcare-assistance-decade/



Spending on childcare assistance last year fell to the lowest level since 2002, according to a report from the policy organization CLASP.

The primary source of funding for subsidies that help low-income parents afford childcare is the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), and spending on that grant was at a decade low. States can also contribute to subsidies with matching funds as well as by using federal funds from the Temporary Assassinate for Needy Families (TANF) block grant. Federal TANF funds were at the lowest level since 1998. In total, $11.4 billion was spent on childcare subsidies, down from $12.9 billion the year before.

One factor that the CLASP report points to is the lapse of extra childcare funding that was included in the 2009 stimulus bill. Another is that the federal block grant to TANF — a fixed amount of money given to states each year — hasn’t been adjusted for inflation since it was created in 1996. It “thus has lost about one-third of its value,” the report notes. In the first few years after that change, the amount of funding directed to childcare grew from less than $300 million to a high of $4 billion in 2000, but it has declined since and was just $2.6 billion last year.

Alongside the lower spending, fewer children are getting childcare thanks to subsidies. Last year, 1.5 million children a month were given childcare thanks to CCDBG aid, the lowest number since 1998, and the number of children has fallen by about 263,000 since 2006. Meanwhile, just 40 percent of children ages three to five are enrolled in preschool, with less than a third of four-year-olds in state-funded Pre-K programs.