The burden of childcare costs on Ohio families

According to MIT, childcare is the single largest expense a household incurs, unless an adult parent or caregiver devotes themselves to the task full time. In Cuyahoga County, the average cost of childcare in 2025 for a single child is over $15,000 a year. That’s more expensive than a household can expect to pay on average for housing, medical bills, or transportation costs for the year.

Childcare costs are unsustainable for many households

The Department of Labor estimates that childcare for a single child can cost upwards of 19.3 percent of a households’ income in the United States. Now imagine if you had more than one child that needed childcare. This is the reality for the 29 percent of households in the country with a child under the age of six that have a second child in this age range.

Roughly one in ten households in Ohio are actively planning childcare for their young children.

In Ohio, over half a million (about 519,300) households are raising at least one child under the age of six. This means roughly one in ten households in Ohio are actively planning childcare for their young children.

There are federal and state programs that help families who meet financial eligibility restrictions with these exorbitant costs. However, citing unsubstantiated allegations of widespread fraud, the federal government has sought to immediately freeze around ten billion dollars in “certain federal child care and family assistance funds for California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York.” Health and Human Services also plans to implement “additional levels of verification and administrative data before [all states] receive more funding from the Child Care and Development Fund”, though it’s unclear exactly what this verification process will entail. These actions, if they go into effect, are expected to have a harmful effect on the “beleaguered childcare industry” and the families who rely on it.

We cannot fully predict the consequences of freezing and/or making it hard to access childcare assistance will have on families in Ohio. We can, however, draw some inferences from a comprehensive dataset that Community Solutions developed with The Women’s Fund of Central Ohio (WFCO) in 2024. These data can offer unique insights into the ways Ohioans will be affected by these changes.

Families often sacrifice basic necessities to cover the cost of childcare

For most households, the cost of raising young children and paying for childcare will prompt important budgeting decisions and making necessary sacrifices. For lower income households, these decisions may involve sacrificing basic necessities. Amongst the 250 households in Central Ohio from the WFCO sample earning less than $50,000 annually, the households with young children (ages 0-4) were significantly less likely to always have their basic household needs met.

These significant differences cannot be definitively pinned to the costs of childcare. However, what is clear is that most lower income households with young children in Central Ohio are already unable to consistently cover their most basic household needs. Introducing any more financial burden/insecurity into their daily lives will only make raising young families even more difficult.

Childcare costs are a barrier to employment

If access to childcare assistance becomes more difficult, it is likely that even more parents and caregivers will exit the workforce. It is already the case that 35 percent of unemployed parents & caregivers of young children (ages 0-4) in the U.S. are unable to work because they need to care for their children. And overwhelmingly, this burden to prioritize childcare over a career falls to women.

Only 13 percent of parents who were not working to provide childcare are men, though some estimates put this number at 18 percent. It comes as little surprise that 80 percent of the women with children under the age of five in the WFCO sample, who also worked full or part time, reported having to balance taking care of their children with work, as a barrier to their employment.

Of the 139 women in the WFCO sample who were parents of children under the age of five, 44 percent relied on childcare centers/in home daycare to watch their children during the day.

However, if you disaggregate the sample by women who are working full time, well over half of those women reported using childcare centers to watch their children.

Taking options away from families struggling to afford childcare will only make things more difficult for families raising the next generation.

Aspirational (and unrealistic) ways to manage childcare costs

An article published in 2024 earnestly offered Thirteen ways to Afford the High Cost of Childcare. The first four tips amounted to: work from home more; stop working entirely; ask your relatives to do it; and a personal favorite, don’t have too many kids too quickly. The final tip was to start your own in-home day care.

These tips are not realistic for many families, but that reflects seeking solutions to a difficult but common situation. Taking options away from families struggling to afford childcare will only make things more difficult for families raising the next generation.