Six Things Cheaper than the Cost of Childcare

Six Things Cheaper than the
Cost of Childcare

A recent article in the Huffington Post plots the cost of childcare in the USA against other lifestyle necessities such as cars, petrol, college education and rent… and it's not good.

We have published many articles in the past about the rising cost of child care in this country and that for some parents caught in the middle income band that doesn't guarantee huge salaries but doesn't meet the means test requirements for Child Care Benefit either and for whom working just doesn't make financial sense any more. We can safely say that the cost of living in terms of accommodation, groceries and fuel in the USA is actually pretty much lower than it is in Australia, so some of these things may well surprise you.

See below for the article. It's quite shocking!

And you thought the cost of college tuition was bad. Even as college costs continue to rise, it turns out the greatest expense facing parents may be basic child care.

Parents in the majority of (US) states last year paid more to leave their infant at a day care center than they would have paid for the child attend a public college or university, according to a recent report by Child Care Aware of America. The annual cost to provide center-based child care (as opposed to in-home child care) to an infant and a 4-year-old child rose by 2 percent and 4.2 percent, respectively.

The expense of child care is inescapable for parents who don't have anywhere else to leave their children while at work. Yet more and more low-income working parents are unable to meet their child care obligations and many quit their jobs or lose them because of unplanned absences, leading to increased dependency on welfare programs, The Huffington Post's Peter Goodman reported in April.

For single parents living in states at the higher end of the cost spectrum, child care is simply unaffordable. The average single mother of an infant in New York, Minnesota and Massachusetts would have to pay more than half of her income for day care at a center, according to the report.

Last year, the average cost of infant care was higher than $10,000 per year in 19 states and Washington, D.C. Infant care was as high as $15,000 in Massachusetts, and before- and after-school programs for school-age children cost $11,000 on average in New York.

In some states, the child care costs were so high that they exceeded all other basic living expenses, including rent. Here are six major things that are cheaper than child care:

A year's tuition fees of college education
Annual median rent
More Than Five Years Worth Of petrol
A new car
A year's worth of electricity for eight households
A year's worth of groceries for two four-person families

Click here to see all the details!