In recent years, much attention in West Virginia and around the country has focused on the need for quality, affordable care for families with young children. As advocates have long emphasized, child care (and care work more broadly) makes all other work possible. As such, public investments in child care could be considered to have a greater spillover economic impact than investments in other industries, given that they support jobs both in the child care sector and for the families who are able to work in other industries as a result.
Read the full issue brief.
Even so, the United States has long underinvested in its child care system compared to other affluent countries; however, pandemic-era federal dollars helped stabilize the industry by providing additional funding that families used to help afford the cost of care and child care centers used to increase worker wages and benefits and improve facilities. As these federal dollars expire, West Virginia faces a child care cliff, with centers closing and families at risk of losing their child care subsidies if the state does not increase its investment. Broadly, policymakers agree that child care provides economic and child development benefits but have not been able to get additional funding across the finish line.
One question that repeatedly arises is why the free market hasn’t “solved” the child care crisis. This brief dives into the child care landscape in West Virginia, as well as the market failures and challenges that impact the industry.
