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Middle class calculator11/7/2023 ![]() By quantifying the large and largely hidden opportunity costs of our child care crisis, this calculator will help policymakers understand how so-called free child care can be a huge long-term financial burden for families without the means to choose the option that best fits their families. Affordable, high-quality child care is both a great investment in our next generation and an underappreciated tool to raise family incomes and grow the economy.” ![]() “Many American households have both parents in the workforce and are still strained by child care’s high costs. “As an economist who recently became a father for the second time, I was frustrated and surprised that there was no tool to help families find the true opportunity costs in choosing child care arrangements,” said Madowitz. ![]() An example user of the calculator-a 30-year-old woman making $50,000 annually-can use the tool to see that that three years of leave for child care would cost her not only $150,000 in lost income, but an additional $140,000 in lost wage growth over a career and $125,000 in retirement assets and benefits that would have been gained over a lifetime. The tool is fully adjustable by gender, current salary, current age, age caregiving leave starts, and years on leave. The calculator, designed by CAP Economist Michael Madowitz, illustrates the true opportunity costs of leaving the workforce because the cost of child care takes up too much of their income. CAP’s calculator shows that such financial losses are typically three to four times greater than yearly income loss alone. child care system and highlights the true financial costs-measured in lost income growth and lost retirement assets and benefits-when parents cannot access affordable child care. For many prospective parents, taking time off from work for child care is a financial decision that means weighing the skyrocketing cost of child care against lost income while caregiving-a cost that is difficult to quantify and much larger than many families may guess. A new interactive calculator launched today by the Center for American Progress reveals the hidden lifetime costs of the broken U.S.
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