Welcome to this webcast on the economics of childcare and early learning investments. I'm David Young, the President of the Committee for Economic Development, the Public Policy center of the Conference Board, and delighted to be serving as today's moderator of the conversation. The webcast that we'll have will address the supply and demand of the paid childcare market as well as its connection to regional economic growth and associated changes in labor force participation and income. The discussion will also include high level findings of CE DS new three-part report series which examines the current state of the paid childcare industry in the United States following unprecedented disruption during the COVID-19 public health pandemic. The series is an update to CE DS Signature 2019 and 2015 report editions. Today we'll consider a few key issues, including the implications for labor force participation based on findings from CE DS New Childcare in State Economies 2024 Report series, the importance of the public good role that the provision of childcare plays for working families and the economy, and also how employers can diversify their workforce by promoting childcare supports to meet employee needs. Today we're joined by a distinguished panel. I'm delighted to introduce Nicole Barcliff. She is a senior policy director, local Initiatives Support Corporation. We also have Quaalin Ellingrood, the McKinsey Global Institute director and also a senior partner and McKinsey and I'm delighted to say also ACED trustee. We have Mark Snead, the President of Region Track, Joe Kirchner, the CEO of Primrose Schools and also delighted to say ACED Trustee. And rounding us out, Cindy Cisneros, the Vice President of Education Programs here at the Committee for Economic Development. As a housekeeping item, if you need an attendance certificate for this webcast, click the icon shown at the end of the webcast to download your certificate. You can use that to claim continuing education credits if you hold a certification. So without further ado, let's kick off the conversation. And today we'll have 6 distinct chapters that we'll speak to. Firstly, how does childcare fit into the economy? Secondly, Covid's impact on childcare. We'll look at the childcare business factors. We'll look at federal and state level actions. We'll also look at the international approaches taking place and conclude with the role of business community and employers. So let's just jump right in and we'll start. We'll go quail in Joe and then to Nicole with this opening question that focuses on common misconceptions. What do you each think are some of the common misperceptions when we start thinking and talking about child care? Quaiden, could we start with you? Absolutely. I think some of the misperceptions are that it's just about the children in the child care. But child care is one of those so deeply interconnected topics in our economy. It's deeply correlated and connected to women's employment in the economy. As a result, it drives economic growth, not just the jobs for child care workers, but then the women who are freed up to then do not unpaid care, care work, but formal work in the economy. It also drives better outcomes when that childcare is high quality in terms of kind of near term, you know, nutrition, learning readiness, and then over the long term for those children themselves in terms of employer readiness and ability to contribute economically. We often talk about this correlation of you can predict prison populations by the 3rd grade breeding level. I would even backtrack that further of you can probably predict 3rd grade reading levels by childcare availability, access, affordability. And the more we can invest earlier on in that kind of life cycle of a child's life, we're setting them up for success in terms of learning, employability and long term contribution. Thank you, Quinn. Joe. So Krillin is true, there's been a lot of research on the return on investment in early education and the whole sector of early education and childcare has gone through a significant transformation post coded with the recognition that it's an essential economic driver. But a common misconception is that childcare should be A1 size fit all, fits all delivery model. We know that families have diverse needs and the early childhood and childcare landscape is a mix of providers and schools designated to meet those unique needs needs. Whether it's preschool, community based setting, public schools or family providers in our sector, we call that a mixed delivery system. And in any new discussions on childcare, it's really important we continue to ensure that policy and funding decisions don't unintentionally hurt this mixed delivery system as it sits today, and that it could inadvertently impact family's ability to choose the type of care they need. Thank you, Joe. Nicole, thoughts on common misconceptions? Thanks so much for the question. And so some of my answers are going to be rooted in my perspective as working for a community development, financial institution and financial intermediary. There's so many misconceptions, but I'll maybe hone in on my top three. The first is that child care providers must really make a lot of money and businesses must bring in a lot of revenue because the cost of care is so high. Huge miss and misperception. In fact, most home providers and many and some center based providers often forgo paying themselves and many operate at a loss because of the nature of the business model. The second one is that childcare businesses are really have access to a whole lot of different sources of business capital and supports from the public sector and traditional financial institutions. Also a myth because we know that given the very specific nature and nuanced nature and regulatory environment that faces child care, a lot of those traditional financial institutions don't understand the model. And as such, child care providers are kind of limited in terms of the resources that they can draw down. The third is that one that's near and dear to our hearts in the CDFI world is that you can expand access to effective, developmentally appropriate and culturally competent care without investing and the condition, quality and availability of facilities For other small businesses, their real estate is viewed as an asset and it's invested in in order to actually stabilize the business sector. It's really a blind spot for many childcare providers and there's no dedicated public sector resource to actually help them secure high quality spaces. Thank you. Thank you so much. We've heard a little bit about economic growth, return on investment connections and correlation derived from early childhood care. And Mark, I want to I want to turn it over to you here with a question that touches on a few of these. As an as an economist who studied the impact of childcare on the labor force, what do we know about the relationship between childcare and workforce participation and and who actually ends up benefiting? You know, I'm, I'm actually going to change your question a little bit because the misperceptions thing, you're listening to those 3 answers. I have to add that one of the, I think misperceptions is your question about childcare and workforce participation extends beyond the family. It actually becomes a broad regional state level or even a national issue. And I think that's one of the misconceptions that childcare is only relevant in the household. And in fact, you know, in our work, you know, a lot of people have studied childcare and labor force participation, and we've spent a lot of time in recent years working with CDs studying that issue. And, you know, we find my, my initial conclusion is it was a lot stronger than we anticipated. The links are deep and it's almost impossible. You know, what we found is it's impossible to, to pull one of them out and evaluate it without the other. And you know, your question about who benefits, the, the, the answer is that everyone benefits simply because, as I say, the, the misperception is, is that it's really a household decision, a household expenditure. It's just a transaction between a household and, and a child care provider and that's it. But the, the reality is, is that it spills over in a greater way. And not only that, the difference is at the state level are dramatic. We, you know, you've often heard there's no such thing as a childcare market. The reality is there are really 5051 if we include DC, but they're really 51 highly unique and different markets for childcare. And we find that people are using them in widely varying ratios. In fact, the labor force participation rate for women has about a 15% range across States and the share of children who are in paid care have about a 20% range across the state. So we're finding that that certain states are benefiting to a greater degree already than others. And, and that there's just widely varying usage rates and, and I think there's a widely varying difference in the understanding of that economic over, you know, spillover as well. So a lot of a lot of things you brought up, but in short the answer is everybody benefits. Yeah, interesting. Before we just jump on to the next topic, which is COVID impact on childcare, just open it up to the to the floor here to the panelists for any reflections. I see Quelin nodding to to marks Mark the answer there. Absolutely, David, I I would just add to what Mark described. I think everybody, the entire economy, the family, right, all of that benefits when childcare is more available and more affordable and higher quality, but disproportionately women enter the workforce at higher rates and in an environment in an economy where we have I would say pretty it's pretty significant labor shortages. I think we need all of the workers possible right in the economy. And if that's, you know if we can significantly increased female labor force participation, that is a huge deal for our economy and for businesses and growth. We'll talk a bit about COVID, but in COVID, right, women recovered in terms of workforce participation about 18 months after men did in terms of kind of participating in the workforce. And if we can kind of increase that further, that will do a lot for growth, especially as we think about demographic trends, aging, right, a higher dependency ratio with more retired people living longer but not necessarily working all that much longer. And then younger people, you know, more of those at the two barbells, supported by fewer workers in the denominator. We need more women in the workforce to drive that kind of productivity growth and economic growth. Thank you. Any other any other comments before we move on? Joe, I see you also nodding your head here if you want to. I was just thinking when, when he was discussing economic spillover and, and the complexity of different licensing in different States and even in different regions within states makes it very difficult for the independent operator, let alone a regional or national or a nonprofit, to maintain licensing regulations. That very often the people who are making them don't really understand the impact of decisions they make. And the, and the challenge it makes for people when, when you have a very slim margin in the business because of the ratios of the labor, it's, it's a, it's a complex business that really needs to be understood well before licensing regulations. Certainly health and safety of children. That's not, that's not negotiable, but there are other things that are. There are times when legislation, while it thinks it's helping at it, is actually hindering the infrastructure. Thank you, Joe. We'll move on to the second topic here, Covid's impact on childcare. Nicole, I want to bring you into the conversation from from your perspective when we look at the the public sector, how did the public sector move to stabilize the the child market after the COVID pandemic? Are we still seeing gaps there? And where do you see some of the opportunities? Absolutely. So first, it's really important to acknowledge that the pandemic exacerbated many of the long standing challenges that were facing the child care sector. The challenges are well documented and many of them have been outlined in the Child Care and State Economies report series, but they include insufficient operating revenues, data limitations and systemic challenges related to the availability of childcare small businesses to access traditional financial products and and supports say nothing of the workforce challenges facing the sector right. The providers and the teachers and the programs are radically underpaid. So once we acknowledge that landscape and that COVID actually made things a little bit worse, you have the public sector reacting, I would say out in three buckets, 3 distinct ways, 1 short term capital infusions. So there was approximately $50 billion in funding targeted to child care via COVID relief bill. So the CARES Act, Carissa, the American Rescue Plan Act, there was an explicit call out for child care eligibility and relief funding targeted to local communities by a state and local fiscal recovery funds and community community development block grant resources. So those resources aren't childcare specific, but for one of the first times federally, you saw an explicit call out for integration of childcare in these systems. And then you saw resources allocated to small business supports and home ownership and housing assistance, also calling out childcare programs and providers as eligible entities. The second area that the federal government and a lot of States and localities follow suit on was is, I like to call it purposeful pivoting. So at the federal level there was there were purposeful directives to have multiple agencies, not just the Childcare Development Fund, administering agency share responsibility for expanding access to affordable, effective and developmentally appropriate care. So we saw in April 2023 a directive, an executive order from the Biden Harris administration asking agencies to basically figure out how their discretionary funding and program specific funds could be used for childcare and long term supportive care. You had the chips to be the Conductor Act and enacted with a specific childcare provision asking employers to figure out childcare for their workforce as a condition of receiving funds. The third level, and I know this isn't an exhaustive list and the other experts on here probably have other areas, is modernizing existing regulations. So at the federal level, this included releasing a new child care Development Fund rule that reforms payment practices, establishes parameters and presumptive eligibility to decrease burdensome requirements on providers. And in the case of actual physical infrastructure, it took a look at, you know, what counts as major renovation and try to free up additional resources to help providers meet the health and safety needs and also the supply building needs of the families and communities they were serving. And then also, I think many States and localities are reviewing and modernizing regulations with the lens of childcare as a critical infrastructure. So they're prioritizing regulations that address critical health and safety requirements and considering opportunities for improving program effectiveness. They're also repositioning regulatory agents to serve in support of our coaching roles with an identified goal of helping program meet the regulatory requirements and operate successfully instead of being punitive. So there's still gaps, There's a funding Cliff that everyone has talked about in terms of those short term capital resources. And we can't, you know, as a system return to pre pandemic funding landscape and expect magically to overcome the child care challenges. There's more work to be done on expanding the types of capital available to providers and there is that infrastructure issue, figuring out how we, you know, expand access to care on appropriate spaces. There's a lot of momentum and opportunity in what was done after the pandemic with states applying dollars in innovative ways and employer and other sector engagement is building on this like multi sector shared responsibility. The biggest one, and I'll say this because I think this is important, childcare is not a partisan issue. And I think that as we move forward in a new political environment at the federal level, it becomes very important to know that this is everyone's problem, the problems with the system. And it's an opportunity for everyone, regardless of their political affiliation, to improve outcomes for children and families in their communities. Nicole, thank you for that comprehensive answer. Mark, can we just turn to you? Just a quick question, Just the CED report series that we conducted was done to analyze the impact of the pandemic on on this industry that already has its challenges. What do you think of some of the most important changes as a result of the pandemic to the childcare market? Yeah, a lot of changes. You know, it's interesting. I think Nicole's answer, she did for me, she, she sort of described the severity of the problem. These were wild gyrations. Excuse me. These were very significant. When we go back and look at the data you could have, you could argue that it's the restaurant industry, the lodging sector and childcare. They were probably the three hardest hit immediately in the downturn and it triggered a lot of changes. And we're economists, so we try to break it into supply and demand. When I say demand. I mean the demand of parents to use childcare and the numbers drop sharply immediately. The data is not that that fine, we can't look at it on a month to month basis. But over the first year, you saw about a 20% drop in the number of kids in paid care. And any industry that's suffering, you know, a core 20% drop in demand is going to experience, you know, severe financial distress. And in the early months, you know, my guess is that probably matched the revenue of the child care sector initially. The child care sector lost the equivalent of a third of its revenue in the initial quarter. So our guess is that a third of the children probably pulled out of care at that point. That 1/3 decline in revenue in the sector is roughly 4 times as deep as it was in the rest of the services sectors. So really, really serious, you know, deep declines. And that's what spurred, you know, the discussion that Nicole just described went through the process of how deep the problems were. And then you know what the range of solutions, you know, what was needed to address something that severe and very, you know, you've, we've seen the labor force recovery, it was the recession was very short. The recovery has been very steady since then. But but that's the job market. On the child care side, the child care recovery has lagged. Fewer parents are using paid child care after the pandemic than prior to. So there is a shift in that market, a clear shift. And, and overall you would say just a weak rebound on the demand side. And if you go to the supply side, the only choice they had was to cut weight, you know, cut workers or cut worker hours, which is essentially cutting wages. You know, it's essentially the same thing. The one thing we've seen, though, is an industry that's, you know, somewhat struggling to get back to the size it was personnel wise. Revenue is recovered. You know, the industry's bounced back today. It's probably $75 billion in revenue on an annual basis, but slow to recover. One of the positive changes you asked, you know, what are, what are some of the important changes? At least workers benefited to a greater degree wage wise than the inflation surge we saw. So a real net increase in the number of childcare workers, even though the industry you know, has has shrunk in the sense of the number of children it's caring for. So I would say a overall a good recovery. But on the demand side, we're still we still aren't seeing households using childcare at the same rates. Mark, thank you. I want to move from the impact of COVID to child care and, and business factors and participants feel free to revert back to anything that has been previously said. If you want to add, add, add your thoughts. But Joe, let's start with you on, on this question. What would you say from your perspective are are some of the biggest barriers to creating a strong and highly effective child care business industry? There are several challenges that rank range from economic issues we've talked about the thin margin especially for the small independent operator that doesn't serve as many children. In fact, one of the fragility issues of childcare coming out of this sector has been that a lot of the small independent operators just went out of business, which as the workforce is coming back as creating demands in areas where there's not access, social factors and then regulatory complexities, including the workforce shortages, the licensing challenges that we've touched on and and access to funding and investment. So all of these are impacting barriers for people to get into this business and to create a healthy, thriving infrastructure. There's absolutely no doubt, given the complexity of the mixed delivery system, that if we are going to have to have coordinated efforts from federal and state governments, business leaders and community organizations to improve conditions for both the providers and the families, that high quality early education and care accessibility for all is critical and it will have an impact on the economic future of our country if we don't address it. Thank you, Joe Quelen. And then Mark thoughts on on this topic of the biggest barriers to to making improvements. I think it's really scale and we started to talk about this with the fragmentation and all the different types of providers. When we look across industries at the very low productivity industries, it's typically the ones that struggle with scale. You see this in healthcare, you see this in education, you see this in construction. So I think kind of scale consistency, maybe over time evolution in some of the ratios and the regulations that we were talking about before could really help accelerate both kind of access and availability of childcare as well as improve the affordability. Thank you Mark. Any any thoughts reflections on from the economic point of view to some of these the major barriers? This, this is a really interesting question for us. You know, Quaylin just mentioned low productivity industries. You know, we're, I'm sitting here in the state of Oklahoma with an oil and gas industry that pays, you know, the average oil and gas worker in Oklahoma makes about $135,000 a year. And the question is, you know, why do certain industries like childcare average some real small fraction of that versus, you know, other industries like oil and gas that pay such wages? And, and the answer is, it is, it is productivity. But productivity it's a little, I think it's a little different. It's, it's the revenue generated per worker and it puts us, it puts the childcare industry in a really precarious. It's, it's a conundrum really. We all want higher wages for childcare workers, but we want low prices for childcare. And generally you can't have both. And so how do you, how do you come up with a funding mechanism that will allow you to pay childcare workers more despite the fact that you can't bring in more revenue to pay them? You know, Joe talked about that a little bit, that the struggle with actually funding, you know, finding the funding to pay for these things and it's a, it's a real conundrum. So for US, you know, one of the hurdles is how do you solve that basic productivity issue? There's also the question of how do you use government intervention and inject federal or state funding into the system without doing anything more than just raising prices and cost to families. That's a, that's a challenge in any sector where you have government, you know, spending and subsidies trying to, you know, to solve an access problem. And I'll throw in one more and that is we are looking and spending a lot of time thinking about the population of children that it's arguably shrinking, especially at childcare ages. And how do you right size this industry? It's easier to change an industry when it's growing and you can incrementally change the shape of it as it grows. But if you have a childcare industry that eventually transitions into shrinking slowly, how do you implement changes in a sector in that case? And so for us, some of the biggest barriers are that, you know, that fundamental problem of the industry may never care for more kids than it is right now. And, and some of these funding issues. How do you how do you actually try to solve the funding problem without creating more problems? Nicole connected a little bit to what Mark has has spoken about with regards to kind of productivity here. How would you describe the business capacity of childcare business owners in there in this ecosystem? It's an interesting thing. So from people who are observers, we would look at childcare programs and say providers or small businesses or really micro enterprises, right? Because across the sector, the majority of providers tend to be sole site operators or sole proprietors, single side operators. And then there are various other types like larger centers and franchises. But it's, it's really getting getting to that mixed delivery piece. It's a mixed bag. And then most providers started their programs not because they necessarily wanted to go into business and start a business and make a huge profit, but because they saw a need in their communities and they wanted to provide safe and loving care for children. They may not even actually self identify as small businesses, which leads to why many tend to struggle with and face financial challenges that interfere with their ability to provide quality care. And so most providers aren't financial experts, they are care experts. And as such, you know their business model where the cost of care rarely covers the actual cost of operations. They struggle to access financial supports that are readily available to other types of small businesses. And so it's a struggle to generate revenue to be sustainable while keeping quality care affordable for families, especially in this is exacerbated and under resourced communities and rural communities. The childcare workforce is another aspect of this. In terms of business model, if you think about the employees tend to be underpaid and often quite frankly undervalued despite the critical and crucial nature of their work and supporting growth and learning and development of young children and quite honestly, the stabilization of local communities and local economies. And the majority of educators and business owners are predominantly and disproportionately women and women of color who have struggled to maintain access to traditional financial sector support that's been well documented outside of the child care sector. On the flip side, this all isn't a child care problem and a child care provider problem. While providers are the experts in care in the business model, many business development organizations and those charged with helping folks improve their revenues and working relationships with financial institutions, they're not childcare system experts. And so if a provider or a small business goes into a traditional business development organization, they often leave frustrated because the solutions being offered they to increase revenues really don't align with the complex child care regulatory environment. So you can't just serve an additional 20 to 40 children to bring in more dollars to make your balance sheet look well. So it's a complicated thing, but it's not in an intractable situation and it's not unsolvable. I think there's a 2 prong approach that needs to occur. One, we need to train the trainers. So business development organizations and coaches and other financial entities need to develop a prioritization or a specialization in childcare. And on the flip side, we need to invest in the capacity and business capacity of childcare providers themselves. Thank you, Nicole. Moving from the childcare business factors to I want to move to the federal and state level action and, and Joe kind of mentioned this earlier in terms of coordinated efforts at at every, at every level of of government. So Quelen, just an opening question on, on this topic for you. The the federal government provided an unprecedented level of funding to this industry during the during the pandemic. What improvements in the US have we seen as a result of that funding in childcare at either the federal or the state level? Yeah. I think that's a good example of, of great support during a a very challenging time. As we talked about earlier, I think another great kind of federal action was actually with the infrastructure bill requiring recipients of significant funding in infrastructure to provide childcare support for their employees. And these kinds of kind of procurement requirements on big federal grants or contracts can really move the needle right at scale. Because if you compare the US globally, we're, we're really at the bottom, frankly, on, on childcare availability, access, in some cases, quality in pockets. So any action at this federal level is, is really important. I think right now it's something like 9 States and and then plus DC offer paid family leave but just inconsistent provision of of child care and support to make it affordable for low income and middle middle income families. Great. Thank you. Before I turn to to Joe and around one of the questions, we've obviously got a new administration coming in. So Joe, I want to turn to you just momentarily just to get your thoughts with regards to the new administration and the new Congress coming in terms of some of their priorities. But just going back to to Nicole from a community development lens, Nicole, what can be done at the the federal, state and local levels to support, to support childcare market stabilization? How much time do we have? No, I'm kidding there. There are several things I think that could be done. First, let's level the playing field. Ensure that there's no wrong door for childcare businesses seeking capital supports. That means developing expertise at relevant agencies when appropriate, creating prioritizations and competitive grant funding opportunities, and establishing technical assistance and capacity building supports for providers. The second is let's not recreate the wheel. We can leverage existing infrastructure that's available and help those entities better serve the childcare sector. So, for example, community development, financial institutions and other intermediaries. They can help expand and leverage the impact of public funding. The next is just resist the tendency to isolate childcare supports and solution. They need to be integrated into community and economic development, funding planning in sectors such as housing, transportation, small business, etcetera. And lastly, but definitely not least, there needs to be a shared commitment to robustly funding the existing child care system, the subsidized system. I think that would be a nice start. Thank you. Next question, just with regards to the new administration, we'll, we'll start with the question going to to Joe here. But I definitely want to open it up to, to all panelists for their thoughts because I think it's such an important question. We obviously have a new administration that will begin next week. Joe, what can we expect regarding federal policy and anticipated legislation in the upcoming year and even look beyond the year to the next four years? Next couple years, sure. Obviously we have an an unusual situation in 2025. In fact, next week we move into a Republican trifecta, right. But with other priorities that are going on within the country, as much as we've raised awareness of the importance of childcare infrastructure, it's really unlikely to be a primary focus of the administration or the congressional Republicans. But the good news is child care does continue to be a bipartisan support topic and I don't think it will go away if those of us that are working on public advocacy for it. And so at Primrose, we just continue to advocate for early childhood priorities through 2 main vehicles, tax and appropriation. However, we're not doing it alone. We're, we're doing it through partnerships and trade associations and as much as we can, raising awareness. In addition, a continuous focus on affordability. So it's critical to ensure we don't lose sight of the quality of early learning and care in our country. There's, it's absolutely true, our country is not competitive globally. And I mentioned earlier, it's going to have an economic growth impact on us if we don't solve this. So conversations about affordability of childcare has to go hand in hand with ensuring the quality of childcare. Research has shown again and again, and everyone in on this probably knows that the investment in high quality early learning impacts 2 generations increased kindergarten readiness for children and of course the workforce, the parents being able to get go back to work or get to work and at per as we use a research informed early learning curriculum and lower teachers to child ratios national normed assessments and all of our schools are nationally accredited by Cognia. All are indicators of high quality early learning environment leads to kindergarten readiness. But the issue is to do that requires premium tuition and the majority of the families in this country cannot afford that. We're, we're absolutely committed as, as the panelists are talking here, that we have to be part of the solution and engaged in how do we address the complexities we're talking about and not let it be pushed aside because it is a critical, essential aspect of both the workforce today, as we've talked about, and preparing the workforce for tomorrow. Any other reflections from the panelists around expectations on on the childcare industry from the incoming administration? OK, Moving on to the next topic, looking just internationally and quit and I want to turn turn to you on this from from a couple. I've got a few questions on this for you. What do you see globally on the relationship between childcare services and the economy? And are there best practices in different countries that we're identifying and, and why and lessons learned that we can, we can adopt from, from other countries to what's happening in the US? And Joe and other other panelists, please jump in on this topic because I think you all have tremendous insight to add. Absolutely. I think there's a lot to learn from the US as we look globally, as I mentioned earlier, we look at a couple of different dimensions when we kind of compare countries around the world. We look at access to child care, we look at the quality of that child care kind of ratios, the quality of the workers in the industry and then we look at affordability, particularly for low income and middle income families. We also look at related policies like leave, family parental leave, maternity leave, paternity leave, for instance. And CED is deeply focused on kind of US childcare. As we look more globally, the World Bank, UNICEF, others have kind of looked at this and compared different countries. And basically the US is at the bottom. We're basically neck and neck with Slovakia and Cyprus in terms of our childcare provisions, in terms of access, quality, affordability. Those that are at the other end of the spectrum, those that are sort of leaders in in childcare are probably who you might expect. So Sweden, a lot of the European countries, Sweden, Luxembourg, Iceland also there. And those are leaders across access, quality and affordability as well as kind of correlated leave, parental leave support. So I think a lot, a lot to learn. And most of these are countries that can do this at the federal level consistently as opposed to sort of state by state, but a pretty big gap between the United States and those that are at the top end of that spectrum. Joe, are you, are you seeing the US leverage insights and lessons learned as as much as we should be from other countries to improving the childcare industry in the US? I think it's just beginning post COVID, as we're coming out of COVID, the impact of COVID and and there's more public private partnership, more attention to research like CED is doing. But of course, when you talk about countries like Sweden and Luxembourg and Iceland, those are small countries. They're not out of scale like we are or you know, as many different federal and state complexities that come into play here. I, I do think that we are right. We probably are at the bottom because we are rare in the size that we have and the structure that we have as a country when it comes to education and early education is the same. So we have to rethink, we just have to rethink the intent to the continual or the continuum in education from birth all the way through post secondary education and and we're not moving fast enough as a country in my opinion. But I what I do see is we are seeing business leaders more than ever before get engaged, meaning the corporations in America recognize there's a workforce challenge and economic growth in this country is going to require the business leaders to engage in this issue. And there's multiple ways they can. But thinking through strategic approaches to infrastructure do does require looking at what are these smaller countries doing, but then how are we going to do it at scale with the infrastructure that we have? Yeah, I want to come to this role of of business leaders momentarily. Just back to quail in on, on one quick point. The McKinsey Global Institute just published new research on the demographics and the consequences of declining fertility rates globally. Just wondering from your perspective being involved obviously with McKinsey Global Institute, like what are some of the implications here and how does childcare factor in? Absolutely. I think the demographic trends are that, you know, the majority of us live in countries where the fertility rate is below replacement value, right? So to get to replacement, every woman would need to have roughly 2.1 children for themselves if they have a spouse and then a little bit of buffer there. And we're not seeing that in most developed countries, not even across Asia. Japan has been this way for a while, South Korea, China, most parts of Europe has been have been this way for a while. And so this gets back to what we were discussing earlier of kind of the childcare industry has probably peak demands now in terms of children that actually need the care. And that's going to be kind of dwindling over time. It also affects us because we know where the workforce of the next decade will be, right? Those children are already born. They just need to kind of grow up. And the workforce of the next decade will be in India and it will be in Africa. And that is challenging because in India, right, some infrastructure challenges in Africa, kind of lower density in terms of kind of not people concentrated in large, large cities with great infrastructure. And so harnessing the power of the workforce of this next decade will be more challenging. But from a child kind of childcare perspective, I think this falling fertility rate in most developed countries will be a real challenge for for the sector. Thank you, Joe. I want to come back to your role as we move on to the final topic, which is the role of the the business community and employers in helping to improve this this industry. But Joe, from your perspective, which stakeholders need to be involved in addressing the provision of childcare for working families? So public private partnerships, obviously in a crisis, you're driven to make them happen. But what I, what I've been pleased to see is the work that was done post pandemic has caused people to take a different look and a different approach to this. And it's going to take all parties. So the the government, federal and state, of course, families themselves, employers and all types of providers, the for profits, the nonprofits, the research, the major, major research, early childhood education research areas of the country that are that that's happening in universities and groups like McKenzie and Boston Consulting Group. There's a lot of discussion and focus on this. And one step that the federal government could take today would be to strengthen care. That would be an incentive for public private partnerships through modernizing the tax code. That's a short term, potentially achievable approach. And so an example of what I'm talking about, public private partnership. There were 150 national, state and local organizations early this summer, including Primrose, that signed a letter urging lawmakers to update 3 specific tax provisions to push short term impact on making childcare high and high quality early learning more accessible and more affordable for families. So just quickly, the childcare development tax credits, CDTCCDCDTC, the Dependability Assistance program, DECAP, DCIP, and the employer provided childcare tax credits. All of them have been designed to help families and employers with more affordable childcare solutions. The CDCTC and the DECAP are supporting the financial burden of childcare expenses for families, and the 45 Edge F legislation help support employers who want to be part of the solution. All three are outdated. However, they have not kept up with the pace of the actual cost of childcare. And modernizing these provisions would allow solutions to reach more families quicker who really need them. And there are several bipartisan proposals we've been called to both the Republican side and the Democratic side. I say we, the Early Care and Education Trade Association, to look at bipartisan proposals on both sides. So the key to it is public advocacy to keep this at the forefront. So as they're looking at cutting federal, federal debt and where they can get more economy of, of investment in the country where it needs to be, we have to be we have to be diligent to keep the public private partnerships at the forefront of pushing these type of short term legislations while we determine what we're going to do in in best practices and and innovative ideas to address the total mixed delivery model in the country. Yeah. Thank you, Joe. Nicole, can we just flip over to you on this topic of public private partnerships and just the role be interesting to get your reflections on how these public public private partnerships can help expand access and availability for families? Absolutely. So we often say that there is a multi sector shared responsibility for expanding care, access and availability to families and local communities, philanthropy, employers, the corporate sector, actually they can all each dig into their individual areas of expertise and competencies to help advance the sector. So that means whether you're funding innovations that the public sector is not yet comfortable with or building supports into employee compensation packages in order to kind of create that data to move policy at a higher level. Or including high quality spaces and making them available for care, not only on the employer part to your employees, but maybe to local communities that your employees are a part of. There are multiple ways that each sector can kind of contribute to trying to expand access to care. I think that what is often lost on folks is that legislative action and policy change often happens after there's been a groundswell of innovation and tested ideas and supports at in local communities and in states. And so in order to support policy development for what works, we really do need sectors leaning in on the implementation side and on the ground to their competencies to help advance this issue. Great. Thank you, Nicole. Pardon me as we approach the end of the of the webcast, we're approaching the top of the hour. I want to conclude by inviting Cindy to the floor here just to share some top line insights from the Child Care and State Economies 2024 report series. Thank you, David. This has been a great panel. Thank you, Nicole, Mark, Quelen and Joe. I also want to thank the WK Kellogg Foundation. CED has been really fortunate to receive several grants from the foundation. The most recent grant funded our three-part series Childcare and State Economies 2024 across states. The most frequent questions we receive about childcare and state economies are what does the data show for my state? What's the economic impact of the child care industry? What is the labor force participation of mothers, particularly by child age? Is that an increase or decrease compared to the pre COVID years? What do the data show for child care employment and wages within the child care field? What does the data show about the use of paid care and how does that vary by family income? These are questions that are answered in our report cities. Our report series, Excuse me. In addition to the state information, our report series covers the national narrative about the data. Both sets of data are important to understand. Many states could be above or below the national average. So we are pleased to be able to share the latest data through AUS as well as state lens. As we head into 2025, there are several challenges mentioned in our report series that stand out and that our distinguished panel speakers have have touched on. For many families, the labor force participation of mothers is related to access to childcare. Yet, although the labor force participation rate of mothers for children of all age groups, children underage 5 and school age children is higher than before the pandemic, the use of paid care continues to be lower than pre COVID levels. Why is this the case? It could be related to supply. Many communities lack a sufficient supply of childcare which impacts parent choices. It could be related to affordability. Childcare is expensive. The average annual income of households with children underage 5 using paid care was $164,147 in 2022. For families with children underage 5 not using paid care, their average income was 100. Eleven $107,000 This means that those families using paid care had an average income that was about $53,000 higher than families using paid care. Could also be personal preference families making other choices on behalf of their children like shifting off care between spouses or asking grandparents to provide care. Or it could be that families just can't afford market based care after paying other household bills. We just do not know from the data. But the gap is large and suggests that affordability does play a role. Another challenge is related to the childcare workforce. Part 2 of our report series reviews trends in the child care workforce across States and nationally. Child care wages have increased by an average of 25.3% since 2019. At the same time, wages remain low, about $14.60 per hour in 2023. With today's job market, those who are working in child care and those who otherwise might want to work in child care can go just about anywhere else in the community and obtain a higher paying job within the service sector. This has made recruitment and retention in the child care field difficult. Child care wages increase through a significant infusion of federal money to states to help stabilize the child care industry when the pandemic hit. The funding is now ended and next steps are unclear. When programs cannot hire and retain staff, they cannot enroll children up to their license capacity. This impacts parents choices. It also impacts employers who depend on working parents. The childcare workforce literally supports all other workforces, which makes strategies to address recruitment and retention important so that childcare is available within communities. I encourage you to visit education.ced.org and select Early Education to view our report series web page. Here you can view the full series, Part 1 about paid care, Part 2 about the early educator workforce, and Part 3 about the economic impact of the childcare industry at both the regional national levels. We also have executive summaries, fact sheets, infographics, and data visualizations where viewers can select their own state for the most recent data. Thank you for your attention. Please do not hesitate to contact CED should you have any questions about the report series. Davy, back to you. Thank you. Thank you, Cindy. Well, time flies sadly and we approach the top of the hour here. So a couple closing comments. Firstly and most importantly, sincerest thanks Cindy, Nicole, Joe, Quail and Mark. Thank you so much for your participation and valuable insights in today's conversation. Again, as Cindy said, Many thanks to the WK Kellogg Foundation for their support. It is a privilege working in partnership with them to closing things to to mention is to upcoming Policy Watch webinars that we have. The 1st is America in Perspective, the 1st 100 days of the New administration, January 2020, third at 12 Eastern Time. And also another Policy Watch webinar here, Reforming the Broken Federal Budget process, February 20th again at 12:00 PM Eastern Time. So with that said, Many thanks again to our panelists. Many thanks for tuning in and from all of us at the Committee for Economic Development, we wish you a wonderful year ahead. Take care. Thank you. Thank you. _1737172953324