The high cost of child care is making mothers rethink having kids

The fertility rate for the United States has long been on a downward trend and is currently at a historic low. The price of child care, meanwhile, has been steadily rising; it grew 29% between 2020 and 2024, easily outpacing inflation, according to Child Care Aware of America. Could those two trends be related? New research and surveys indicate yes. In a recent research paper, Boston University economics Ph.D. candidate Abigail Dow finds that when child care prices increase, some American families decide to put off having more children, and many don't have more children at all. Dow looked at child care prices across the country in a dataset compiled and published by the Women's Bureau at the Department of Labor with data from 2010 to 2022. She then isolated a "shock" to child care prices -- an event, unrelated to something like a recession or a spike in inflation, that made the cost of care go either up or down. The shock she identified was that when states mandate smaller group sizes and/or lower child to staff ratios, child care prices rise, so she studied what happened to fertility decisions when states passed such regulations. "My key takeaway is that child care costs are...

Source: https://www.salon.com/2026/01/25/the-high-cost-of-child-care-is-making-mothers-rethink-having-kids-partner/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ogshare&utm_content=og