Pandemic has worsened rural child-care crisis; researchers who looked at two N.C. counties propose solutions

Daily Yonder map shows two counties studied.

A study of two North Carolina counties puts a spotlight on how the pandemic has exacerbated the rural childcare crisis. In 2020, the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust challenged the professional schools at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to do a "deep dive" on Edgecombe and Robeson counties, where rural-urban disparities—including childcare availability—have hurt the local economies, James H. Johnson Jr. and Jeanne Milliken Bonds report for The Daily Yonder. Johnson and Bonds co-lead the Whole Community Health Initiative at UNC-Chapel Hill with support from the trust, an initiative that seeks to improve childcare access in those counties using the results of their study.

Decent, affordable childcare is critical for millions of families. Without it, a parent (almost always the mother) must stay home, hurting families' budgets and local economies. Rural areas have long faced childcare shortages, but the pandemic has exacerbated it, as the researchers found in those North Carolina counties. "The mandatory shutdown of the U.S. economy idled many workers with young children, eliminating in the process their need for childcare services," Johnson and Bonds report. "This in turn forced some childcare facilities to furlough workers and close; and others to lay-off workers and close permanently. In our rural counties, low vaccination rates combined with the closures has eliminated more than 90% of the available childcare providers."

Most permanent childcare closures have been small, in-home businesses, mostly in low-income areas. The vast majority didn't apply for Paycheck Protection Program loans because the paperwork was overwhelming, or they worried they'd have to pay it back. The remaining facilities must figure out how to remain open and pay workers while dealing with enhanced health and safety protocols and lower teacher-child ratios that improve childcare quality but reduce revenue, Johnson and Bonds report. Parents struggling with poverty themselves can't pay more for childcare, especially since the expanded Child Tax Credit has lapsed. 

Essentially, daycares have nowhere to cut the fat, budget-wise, and most childcare workers live on poverty wages as it is. A recent poll found that, of the nearly 1 million childcare workers in the U.S., just over 31% reported being food-insecure in 2020, which is 8 to 20 points higher than the national average, Colin Page McGinnis reports for The Conversation.

Daycare facilities that remain open also take a financial hit from mandatory quarantines when children or staff become infected with the coronavirus. "About 1 in 6 parents told pollsters they had experienced either a school or a day care shutdown in the past few weeks, in a national poll from Axios and Ipsos released on Jan. 11," Anya Kamenetz reports for NPR.

The quarantines hurt working parents, too. "Even as schools and daycares have attempted to return to in-person learning, working women have found it difficult to either return to work or maintain employment because any randomly occurring infection outbreak in a school requires mandated at-home quarantine for all exposed children," Johnson and Bonds report. "And a child in quarantine requires adult supervision, which makes maintaining a job very difficult, if not impossible, for women who are the sole or primary caregiver." Some women are able to parlay experience into home-based businesses, but broadband disparities mean rural women are less likely to be able to do so.

State and federal funding can help childcare facilities stay open, but the U.S. spends far less on childcare than most other developed nations and even some developing countries. "Because of inadequate investments, far too many American youth enter elementary school ill-prepared to learn—a situation that, unfortunately, has long-term negative consequences for their overall health and wellbeing," Johnson and Bonds report. "Nowhere is this more evident than in rural counties where funding for services is jeopardized by population loss and an aging population on fixed incomes unable to pay for improvements."

The American Rescue Plan Act authorized $39 billion for childcare, but that money expires in 2024, and childcare providers and advocates warn that such infusions "won’t solve the industry’s fundamental, long-term challenge: how to provide quality services and pay workers a competitive wage while keeping prices affordable," Sophie Quinton reports for Stateline.

Johnson and Bonds recommend a raft of policy changes to address the rural childcare crisis, based on their study. Those include:

• Encourage family-friendly business policies that support employees with children.
• At all levels of government and the economy, frame childcare as a "business imperative."
• Lobby the federal government to guarantee universal preschool.
• Invest in childcare entrepreneurs. 
• Call for more and better continuing education for childcare workers, which will help them provide better care to children.
• Advocate for childcare workers to receive a living wage.

Through their Whole Community Health Initiative, Johnson and Bonds are implementing interventions in Edgecombe and Robeson counties: "The three-pronged strategy includes a Child Care Business Accelerator to equip existing and aspiring childcare entrepreneurs with business acumen and skills; a Childhood Equity Fellows Program to train childcare workers in the best “whole community health” child development practices; and a Child Care Wage Accelerator that will use cash transfers as a means of compensating childcare workers and addressing the low wage conundrum." If it proves successful, they'll try to scale it up and roll it out statewide.