What will Joe Biden’s spending bill do for child care in America?
Subsidies would expand access—though they may have unintended consequences
THE PANDEMIC put America’s child-care industry in time out. Demand suffered as parents kept their kids at home. So did supply: staff shortages and covid-safety costs forced many centres to shut, with a third closed in April. Yet covid demonstrated the sector’s importance—not least to mothers. During the pandemic they have been more likely to leave the workforce than fathers or women without dependent children. President Joe Biden has promised to make child care less burdensome, noting that he could not afford it as a young parent on a senator’s salary. In its current form his social-spending bill, which he hopes Congress will pass before Christmas, would dish out up to $400bn on child care and universal pre-kindergarten over six years. How will it work?
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