JD Vance’s plan to deal with high child care costs may not take into account the looming retirement crisis facing millions of older Americans.
During a discussion with Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative organization Turning Point Action, Vance, vice president of former President Donald Trump, addressed the issue of high child care costs in the United States.
It’s a problem many parents and families face: A recent Bank of America report found that the average American couple spends more than 30% of their combined salary on childcare costs.
When Kirk asked how Vance planned to address the problem, Vance suggested that extended family members step in to ease the financial burden on parents.
“One of the ways you can take some of the pressure off the people who are paying so much for daycare is, maybe grandma or grandpa wants to help out a little bit more, or maybe there’s an aunt or uncle who wants to help out a little bit. more,” Vance told Kirk. “If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources we’re spending on daycare.”
Vance clarified his comments in a post on X on Thursday following criticism of his original comments. He said in the post that “parents or grandparents may not be able to help, but they can i want for, and for those families, federal policy shouldn’t be mandating a particular family model.” She also stressed that there should be more accessible educational pathways for people to enter the child care field.
A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Vance previously spoke about how his mother-in-law took a sabbatical from her job as a biology teacher in California to live with Vance and his wife to care for their newborn son. Vance noted that his son was born just seven weeks before his wife, who is an attorney, started a law firm. In that conversation, Vance agreed with her interviewer that taking care of grandchildren is “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal woman.”
But for many, helping to raise grandchildren or a niece or nephew just isn’t feasible. For one thing, many older Americans are battling economic headwinds as they approach retirement, leaving many of them without the time and financial resources to help with childcare needs. The Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey found that more than half of respondents age 65 and older had incomes below $30,000 in 2022, relying primarily on Social Security. For many Americans BI spoke to, that’s not enough, leaving some to go back to work.
At the same time, some millennial and Gen Z parents have left family “villages” behind in search of cheaper housing. Changing labor market demographics may also mean that those family members are already employed. Linda, a 64-year-old retiree, moves in with one of her children, but not so that she can help take care of anyone else. Instead, her children are part of her safety net; she knows she will be taken care of.
“I see myself working for the next 20 years, if I have that many years left. Whatever years I have left, I won’t be enjoying retirement life in Florida,” Linda said.
Reduce the cost of childcare
In his response to Kirk’s question, Vance also argued that daycare would be more affordable if states didn’t require daycare workers to get a “ridiculous certification that has nothing to do with child care.” He added: “What we need to do is really empower people to train in the skills they need for the 21st century.”
Not many states require child care workers to have college degrees or certifications. But he may have been referring to a new law in the nation’s capital that requires many child care workers to have a two-year associate’s degree, among other training. Republicans in Congress have questioned the D.C. law, and Sens. Katie Britt of Alabama and Mike Lee of Utah introduced a bill this summer that would repeal parts of it.
The costs are not only prohibitive for parents; they are also very high for childcare providers, who operate on minuscule margins and struggle to pay their workers a living wage. Burdensome government regulations, including land use laws, are part of the reason child care services are so expensive to operate. But in addition to removing some of these rules, childcare providers say they need the government to reduce the cost of starting and operating a business.
“In our ideal world, it would cost nothing for providers to go into business — background checks, training, licensing would be free,” Laurie Furstenfeld, an attorney at the Child Care Law Center in Berkeley, California. , he told Business Insider last year. “The cost to parents would be heavily subsidized or publicly funded.”
Child care centers have already faced their own funding precipice as pandemic-era funds ran out, with several telling BI they could not raise tuition further but still had to try to pay their teachers a salary worthy with fewer resources.
Although Vance has expressed support for an expansion of the child tax credit, which would help parents pay the rising costs, a recent vote on a Senate bill to expand the credit was skipped. The bill failed after Republicans voted against it. Vance condemned universal child care, calling it a subsidy for the rich and “class warfare against ordinary people.”
“We’re trying to force or at least subsidize a model on every family in this country,” Vance wrote in his clarification on X. “And if you open up kinship and other options for families, you’ll relieve some of the pressure on the child care system in this country.”
Are you dealing with difficult decisions about childcare, elder care or retirement? Share your story with these reporters at asheffey@businessinsider.com, jkaplan@businessinsider.come erelman@businessinsider.com.