Child Care Costs More Than College
Better start saving for college. You hear that a lot when you have a new baby. But a new report shows that you may actually need to start saving for child care.
According to the report produced by Child Care Aware, child care for an infant now costs more than public university tuition. In California, the average cost of full-time infant care in a center is nearly $12,000. Average college tuition is $9,022. California ranks seventh in the country for having the least affordable infant care.
Considering that many parents have two children under age five, annual child care costs can easily reach $16,000. That’s a huge chunk for a two-parent family (state median income is $80,766) and likely out of reach for a single mother (state median is $27,534).