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The article is paywalled so I can’t read more than the intro. Personally, I think there are several factors in child care getting more expensive. For one, pare

The article is paywalled so I can’t read more than the intro. Personally, I think there are several factors in child care getting more expensive. For one, parent’s expectations are higher. It’s really hard to take care of many kids at once, and if the ratio of workers to children at a childcare center is too high, some kids end up being ignored or neglected rather than being actively taken care of. Parents are more sensitive to that now. Another factor is urbanization - there are more people living in places with high cost of living, and the childcare businesses simply have more expenses. It’s also difficult to have a lot of consumer choice in these areas. In a suburban or rural area, sure you can easily drive to a childcare business that’s further away. But in a city that travel can take away several hours a week (even if by car) and so you have to go with whatever is located near you. If you rely on transit, forget it - lugging a child and their essentials (think car seat, stroller, diaper bags, etc) is incredibly difficult. Another issue is different social habits and increasing isolation. People don’t live in multi generation homes anymore, so there are no grandparents to rely on. And since the economy is increasingly concentrated in cities, people move away from family for jobs. And people are less willing to inconvenience friends by asking for help watching their kids, even though this was normal only a couple decades back. So the reliance on paid care is much higher now. Finally, we’ve normalized dual income families. Increasing the supply of workers this way hasn’t helped us - since obviously supply of labor pushes down wages and in the end you don’t come out ahead. But it does mean there isn’t someone at home to take care of the kids. I don’t think there is a great fix. On the one hand you could subsidize child care heavily in order to ensure a thriving population, but I also think there is truth to the financial cost being a good filter for those who are in a good position to be a parent and those who aren’t. This doesn’t stop people in a bad position from having kids though, so the question is if it is fair to take away from some parents (through taxes) to help other parents’ kids instead? I think that’s a difficult thing for people to accept.

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
> Another factor is urbanization - there are more people living in places with high cost of living, and the childcare businesses simply have more expenses. Unless those people are living outside the city and sending their kids to daycare in the city (unlikely) that would be reflected in the rent price (the denominator).
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  I think that assumes the market can react quickly enough that everything works like some magically balancing algorithm. In practice that isn’t the case. For example if there is room for more supply of caretakers, potential caretakers need to know the demand exists, they need to be willing to relocate to those areas (which has a cost but also is a personal decision in many other ways), they need to find a good location, they need to go through permitting processes to open businesses, etc. I feel like the signals are less visible than supply and demand for housing, and the barriers are more complicated than me making a rental decision. But this is just my speculation, not a scientific take. Another aspect to consider is that both rents and business costs are changing in other ways in the background. Like for example many cities on the west coast have minimum wage laws that have been enacted in recent times, which changes the patterns of childcare costs relative to rental costs.

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago

> Another factor is urbanization - there are more people living in places with high cost of living, and the childcare businesses simply have more expenses. Unless those people are living outside the city and sending their kids to daycare in the city (unlikely) that would be reflected in the rent price (the denominator).

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
I think that assumes the market can react quickly enough that everything works like some magically balancing algorithm. In practice that isn’t the case. For example if there is room for more supply of caretakers, potential caretakers need to know the demand exists, they need to be willing to relocate to those areas (which has a cost but also is a personal decision in many other ways), they need to find a good location, they need to go through permitting processes to open businesses, etc. I feel like the signals are less visible than supply and demand for housing, and the barriers are more complicated than me making a rental decision. But this is just my speculation, not a scientific take. Another aspect to consider is that both rents and business costs are changing in other ways in the background. Like for example many cities on the west coast have minimum wage laws that have been enacted in recent times, which changes the patterns of childcare costs relative to rental costs.