Key findings
- Licensed childcare in New York has room for only about 20.5% of children in the age groups it serves.
- Of 234 Erie County providers who answered a survey of all 499 licensed programs, more than 80% of those serving subsidized children said they cannot earn enough to provide the care they want to.
- Because care is priced and supplied as a commodity, the issue argues for transformation rather than reform: expanding the New York Health Act into a broader New York Care Act, with near-term steps along the way.
Childcare is widely described as a broken system: too expensive for families, too scarce, and too poorly paid for the people who provide it. This special triple issue argues the opposite. The system works as a commodified market is designed to, and that design produces the shortages and inequities families and workers live with.
Drawing on public data and the Co-Lab's survey of licensed providers in Erie County, it measures the undersupply of care, the gap between childcare workers' pay and the cost of living, and the gap between the true cost of care and the public subsidies for low-income families.
Related
- WNY Child Care Mapping and Data Resources · Maps, the True Cost of Child Care report and a capacity dashboard
Cite this issue
Weaver, Russell. 2022. “Crisis of Care.” High Road Policy 3(1–3). Buffalo, NY: Cornell University ILR School, Buffalo Co-Lab. https://hdl.handle.net/1813/111868.