Child care, education are critical infrastructure

A version of this column originally appeared in The Alpena News.

How to make Michigan more competitive has been all the buzz ever since a recent report demonstrated how Michigan has been losing ground over the past five decades — falling behind in population growth, jobs and earnings, health, and education.

The findings have forced a conversation around the social and economic drivers that contribute not just to the state’s competitiveness but also to the quality of life for the families who call Michigan home.

One of the biggest themes emerging from those discussions centers around the importance of investing in early child care and education. By one estimate, the child care crisis is costing Michigan $3 billion a year in losses to productivity, earnings, and tax revenue.

Policymakers and business leaders alike are beginning to take notice, recognizing both that our current workforce is being held back by a broken child care market and that our future workforce will be shaped by the investments we make in early care and education now.

The importance of child care to today’s families is explored in-depth in the recently-released national 2023 KIDS COUNT Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a 50-state report on child well-being. This year’s Data Book highlights the challenges families face in accessing quality care for their kids.

For example, it shows that, in Michigan, 90,000 young children — roughly 14% of kids younger than 5 — saw someone in their family quit a job, decline a job, or change jobs in the previous year because of child care problems. In Michigan, where two out of every three kids ages birth to 5 have all of the parents in their household in the labor force, secure child care is a necessity.

But, even for families that are able to find care that aligns with their work schedule and mode of transportation, the costs can be astronomical. At over $11,300 annually, families can expect to pay almost as much for a year of center-based toddler care as they do for a year of tuition at Michigan State University.

Despite the high costs for families, workers in that sector — predominantly women of color — are not earning a living wage.

In Michigan, child care workers earned a median hourly wage of just $12.96 an hour in 2022, meaning they could earn more by leaving the sector to work in customer service, retail, or food service. Unsurprisingly, the Data Book reports more than 60% of child care providers have difficulty paying their own food and utility bills.

Michigan needs to fund the true cost of child care — including a living wage for early childhood care workers — if we want to remain competitive and allow parents of young children to participate fully in the labor force.

In addition to supporting our existing workforce, early care and education is essential for preparing kids to succeed in school. But less than half of our 3- and 4-year-olds are attending school, and, by fourth grade, fewer than one in three kids is reading proficiently

Michigan has long fallen in the bottom half of states for education, but, in this year’s Data Book, we rank in the bottom 10. Our poor performance is being driven by the low number of fourth-graders proficient in reading and the high number of students who are not graduating on time.

If we want our kids to be college- and career-ready, then we need to be investing both in early childhood and in an equitable school funding formula that targets more money to schools serving at-risk students, those with disabilities, and English-language learners.

Furthermore, we need to stop taking from the School Aid Fund — intended for K-12 schools — to pay for our community colleges and universities. Higher educational institutions depend on a well-funded public school system to prepare students for postsecondary study, but, right now, seven in 10 Michigan students are not college ready.

We cannot begin to develop a high-skilled workforce for the future while actively disinvesting from our K-12 schools.

As policymakers continue to seek out opportunities for Michigan to become more competitive, we need to be prioritizing investments in our youngest residents and their families, because our care and education infrastructure are what keeps Michigan running.