Broken Child Care Economics

Child Care workers make less than a living wage in America. They live in poverty. And these are the people who spend the most time with our children. These low wage workers are literally shaping our future.

Link to an article that addresses poverty among child care workers:

Low pay for child care workers puts more than half at poverty level, study finds


Economists at Berkeley have been looking at this for a while. Here's a link to a helpful report on caretakers - it includes child care, elder care, and disability care.

http://cscce.berkeley.edu/at-the-wage-floor/



But this has been known for a long time. Why haven't people worked to address this?

Well, we know it's a BIG problem when Fox is finally reporting on it.

'Broken' economics for preschool workers, child care sector

Hey, maybe it will get some attention now.
I have worked as a camp counselor and also in an infant nursery. I really thoroughly enjoyed the work. But it paid very poorly. So poorly, in fact, that I would never be able to afford to send one of my children to the places that I worked if I only had the income that I made as I worked there.

Child Care costs are through the roof. And still pay is horrible. What. The. Heck. Broken indeed.

Ok, now you know the problem.
What's your solution?

Here's mine:------------------------------------------------------------

We need more co-ops.
What's a co-op?
It's a place that is owned by the workers. But in child care, I have seen it play out a few different ways. A group of parents pool resources to pay a teacher. The parents often defray costs by volunteering, so they don't have to pay assistant teachers or administrative staff. So parents are also trained staff.

Here's a piece from The Guardian that describes child care cooperatives and how they could imrove the future:
Why co-ops should be the future for childcare


Here's a piece from The Atlantic that describes co-ops in general.
Worker-Owned Cooperatives: What Are They? - The Atlantic