It’s a well-known fact that child-care is difficult to afford. The story is no different in Colorado. The Economic Policy Institute reports that Colorado is ranked the 8th highest out of 50 states for most expensive infant care, and that the average annual cost is $15,325. To put this into relative terms, that is about 60% more than tuition for a Colorado public university, and about 10% more than average rent. With rising costs of living, Colorado families literally cannot afford to engage in the workforce, and look to the state to take action. House Bill 1295, to create the Department of Early Childhood, achieved bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. Should the bill pass, Colorado’s Universal Pre-K program could then begin in 2023. This program is a huge step in the right direction for Coloradans, saving families an estimated average $4,300 per year in child-care.
Child-care is crucial for our workforce. Last year, Young Invincibles researched the connection between workforce accessibility and child-care, and found that child-care was a key factor in women’s workforce involvement, especially in communities of color, and the pandemic drastically worsened the child-care crisis. Without affordable child-care, Colorado families are unable to work and support their families. In 2021, 15% of families surveyed by Young Invincibles had cut back on other basic needs in order to pay for child-care, and 9% borrowed from a credit card or financial institution. Families should not be going into debt or cutting down on groceries in order to simply pay for child-care. Signing House Bill 1295 into law is a way that we can ensure financial stability and economic opportunity for our state’s residents who need it most.
As we move forward, we must keep in mind that our child-care workforce, or “the workforce behind the workforce”, needs plenty of support in order to provide for the needs of Colorado families. Child-care centers have reported difficulties filling positions – as of 2019, 70% of center directors reported challenges in hiring, and the pandemic forced many centers to close or limit hours. Low wages force many child-care workers to look for employment elsewhere. However, this workforce will only become more necessary in the coming years: the number of young children under the age of four is projected to increase by 22% by 2026. House Bill 1010 creates an Early Childhood Educator Income Tax Credit which will provide some monetary support for qualified child-care providers. Supporting the child-care workforce like this is absolutely necessary if we expect to make child-care accessible for all families – our entire state benefits when we pay child-care providers adequately.
Our state’s leaders have done incredible work on passing bills that make child-care affordable, and there are still additional ways in which our government can and should support families. On a federal level, one important example is the Child Tax Credit, which supported parents of about 1 million children in Colorado during the pandemic and decreased our state’s rate of child poverty. Congress failed to renew this program at the end of 2021, abruptly leaving families without needed support. We must continue to advocate for Congress to bring this program back, and in the meantime, our state must continue to find ways to support families, who are still feeling the effects of the pandemic even if the emergency aid has ended.
–Linda Schiller (she/her), graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2019. She joined the Young Advocates Program in Fall 2020, and later joined the team as a Research & Policy Fellow. Before starting at YI, she worked and volunteered in direct services in the medical field. In the fall of 2022, she will begin attending USF Morsani College of Medicine to become a physician.