Parents have lost access to childcare services because of pandemic shutdowns and childcare providers have had to confront new costs and protocols to keep children and workers safe from the virus, experts told a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Tuesday.
These challenges could worsen "childcare deserts" -- areas where there is not enough licensed childcare providers to serve a community, Rasheed Malik, a senior analyst for early childhood policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, told lawmakers during Tuesday’s hearing.
"The signs we’re seeing from the industry are worrying," Malik said.
"One-third of the childcare workforce lost their jobs in April and those jobs may not come back without a public investment. Revenues have been decimated due to lower enrollment while operating costs associated with reopening have increased dramatically," Malik said. "Without new federal funds to support the physical infrastructure of childcare facilities, we should expect diminished childcare supply, which could inhibit our economic recovery."
Malik, his colleagues at the center and a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota have launched an online tool that features interactive maps showing where childcare deserts exist in neighborhoods across the United States. “Our team could identify the location and capacity of more than 235,000 child care providers, including both home-based childcare and childcare centers," Malik said.
"We found that approximately 51% of families with a young child live in a childcare desert," Malik said. That was before the pandemic.
"Childcare deserts primarily impact low- and middle-income families. Predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods are very likely to be childcare deserts and many but not all predominantly Black neighborhoods lack sufficient childcare," Malik said. "Also rural areas have very little licensed childcare and tend to rely more on home-based providers, whose numbers have been in decline over the past decade.
