Study: WA families spend third-highest percentage of income on child care

Washington residents spend the third-highest percentage of their income on child care in the nation, according to a WalletHub study.

The median married couple in Washington spends 12.61% of their family income on center-based child care. Just New York and New Mexico have a higher percentage of income dedicated to child care on average, with Oregon ranking No. 4 in the study.

“It costs a lot of money to take care of a child’s needs, and many parents are left with the dilemma of whether to forgo one salary to do their own child care for the first few years or to shell out a significant chunk of their income for child care services,” WalletHub Analyst Chip Lupo said.

South Dakota, South Carolina, and Mississippi ranked as the states with the lowest average percentage of income needed for child care.

A professor at Roosevelt University, Steven Meyers, Ph.D., claimed that the significant costs for child care are due to supply and demand, increasing facility costs, staffing shortages, inflation, and wage increases for child care workers.

“Child care has become more expensive over time,” Meyers said. “Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that the price of day care and preschool has increased more than 20% from 2020 to 2024. This increase is worsened by higher amounts of inflation that occurred for part of this period; this increased costs for families across the board.”

Single-parent households have it even tougher

For a single parent? The median one-parent family spends an average of 32.60% to 41.08% of their income on child care. Across the country, single-parent households spend 38.4% to 44.7% of the median income on child care.

“Part of the problem is that individual parents in Washington earn less than their married counterparts on a per-person basis,” WalletHub stated. “The state has the 12th-highest median income in the country, at $43,874 per year.”

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