Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen attends a meeting between President Joe Biden and business leaders and CEOs on Wednesday, September 15, 2021 on the COVID-19 response at the Eisenhower Executive Building Library on the White House campus in Washington. increase. (AP Photo / Andrew Harnick)
The US Treasury released a report on Wednesday detailing the high prices and low wages for childcare, the difficulty of parents working, and the problems the Biden administration is trying to fix in its budget.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen published their findings in a statement based on their personal experience. Harris recalled spending weekdays with Regina Shelton, who ran a nursery school from home, while the Vice President’s mother was in the breast cancer lab.
“She became my sister and my second mother,” Harris said. “My mother often said that, but for Shelton, she wouldn’t have been able to do the job she did.”
Yellen remembered posting a babysitter classified ad when he returned to work as a professor of economics after giving birth 40 years ago. Yellen and her husband, economist George Akerlof, have decided to pay more than the market price to get better care.
“It’s a perfectly reasonable reason to pay someone more, especially if the job is some of the most intimate jobs that take care of the children,” Yellen said. “At least in our home, our hypothesis proved to be correct.”
However, Yellen emphasized that her experience is far from normal in the United States. The Treasury report focuses on the nasty paradox of childcare. It costs a lot of money for the family, but workers in the sector are chronically low-paying and impair the quality of care.
“Childcare is the case for broken market textbooks,” Yellen said.
The average family with only one child under the age of 5 needs to spend 13% of their income on childcare. That’s more than the average family spends on food, and the report concludes that it’s not affordable.
Childcare workers earn an average of $ 24,230. Over 15% of industry workers live below the poverty line in 41 states, and half need public assistance. As a result, turnover in this sector is high, with 26% to 40% leaving each year. Also, there is not much room to give among daycare centers that tend to operate with a profit of less than 1%.
As a result, parents are stressed, the level of working women is low, and the level of inequality is widespread.
The Biden administration says it can solve these problems by significantly increasing investment in young children. It will limit childcare costs at 7% of family income. Universal preschools for 3 and 4 years old are offered. Families with children under the age of 13 are eligible for a $ 4,000 dependent deduction per child, or $ 8,000 for two or more children.
The government will also fund daycare centers so that workers can receive living wages.
Another important factor is the expanded child tax credit. It provides families with children under the age of $ 300 per child per month and older children $ 250 per month.
However, some lawmakers are hesitant to offer the relatively strong benefits proposed by the administration.
The president’s plan will remove the labor requirements for families receiving child tax credits. This is opposed by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a Democratic pass vote.
“Tax credits are based on people who are obliged to pay taxes,” Manchin told a reporter insider, a news agency. “As long as they have a W-2 and show that they are working, I will go.”
Harris, Yellen Makes A Personal Case To Modify Childcare | WGN Radio 720
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