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Federal child care assistance: A growing middle‐class entitlement

Federal child care assistance: A growing middle‐class entitlement FEDERAL CHILD CARE ASSISTANCE: A GROWING MIDDLE-CLASS ENTITLEMENT Douglas J. Besharov and Paul N. Tramontozzi As Congress debates various child care proposals, the conventional wisdom is that the federal role in child care ceased when President Nixon vetoed the Child Development Act of 1971.’ Not so. Over the last 15 years, federal child care assistance has more than doubled. By our estimates, the costs of federal child care assistance-through income tax deductions and credits, child care and early education programs, and welfare and job training programs-rose from $1 billion in fiscal 1972 to about $6.2 billion in fiscal 1987. Accounting for inflation, that’s a real increase of 127%. By 1989, expenditures will approach $8 billion, another 24% rise in just two years. (See Figure 1 .) Poor and low-income families, however, have not benefited from this increased spending. Because the most significant child care subsidies are provided through the tax code and not through spending programs, these increases have largely benefited middle- and upper-income families, as Figure 1 shows. Lower-income families do not benefit because they hardly pay taxes in the first place, especially after the Tax Reform Act of 1986. The next two sections of this article http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Policy Analysis and Management Wiley

Federal child care assistance: A growing middle‐class entitlement

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Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management
ISSN
0276-8739
eISSN
1520-6688
DOI
10.2307/3323392
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

FEDERAL CHILD CARE ASSISTANCE: A GROWING MIDDLE-CLASS ENTITLEMENT Douglas J. Besharov and Paul N. Tramontozzi As Congress debates various child care proposals, the conventional wisdom is that the federal role in child care ceased when President Nixon vetoed the Child Development Act of 1971.’ Not so. Over the last 15 years, federal child care assistance has more than doubled. By our estimates, the costs of federal child care assistance-through income tax deductions and credits, child care and early education programs, and welfare and job training programs-rose from $1 billion in fiscal 1972 to about $6.2 billion in fiscal 1987. Accounting for inflation, that’s a real increase of 127%. By 1989, expenditures will approach $8 billion, another 24% rise in just two years. (See Figure 1 .) Poor and low-income families, however, have not benefited from this increased spending. Because the most significant child care subsidies are provided through the tax code and not through spending programs, these increases have largely benefited middle- and upper-income families, as Figure 1 shows. Lower-income families do not benefit because they hardly pay taxes in the first place, especially after the Tax Reform Act of 1986. The next two sections of this article

Journal

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management – Wiley

Published: Jan 1, 1989

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