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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone. Central to President Biden's build back better, or reconciliation plan as it's often called, is a new model and much more money for childcare in the United States. A look around the world shows what an outlier the US is. Each year the United States spends only about $500 per child on early childcare. That number in other wealthy countries on average is $14,000 per year. It's not just those Scandinavian countries people always point to as examples of governments that promote and prioritize the wellbeing of their citizens.

We're talking about countries like Slovenia, which spends 22 times more than the United States on early childhood care. Lithuania and Chile, which spends 16 to 17 times as much in the US the US on childcare according to recent reporting. As Congress negotiates the details of the reconciliation package proposals for increased childcare spending are likely to meet the chopping block. With me now to talk about the scarcity of childcare funding in this country is Bryce Covert, an independent journalist who covers the economy her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Nation and elsewhere.

Yes, this is the same Bryce Covert who tweeted yesterday, "Sure, a Pulitzer would be nice but I just got my two year-old to willingly and happily eat kale so that's basically the same thing." Bryce, congratulations on your faux Pulitzer for toddler tastes bud cultivation and welcome to WNYC.

Bryce Covert: Thank you so much and thanks for having me.

Brian: Listeners, we can take your calls on this topic, the cost of childcare and what childcare system you think would be best. We especially invite people with experience in other countries on the childcare systems there. What, if anything, the US can learn from there to adopt or avoid. Anyone? 646-435-7280 or tweet @brianlehrer. Bryce, $500 per year on early childcare according to the organization for economic cooperation and development, that international group and the Hamilton Project. In practice, what does that look like? Where does that place us in a global context?

Bryce: Sure. First, as you pointed out, it makes us a huge outlier. Particularly when you compare us to other developed countries. Like you said, it's not just Nordic countries, the ones that we think of as doing a really good job here in Norway, Denmark. It's all countries, like you said, Slovenia, Australia, Germany, places that have booming economies. We just do so little by comparison. What that looks like for the typical family, if you are a low income family you might be able to get childcare subsidies from the federal government or your state government. To be honest, though, those even don't reach that many people. They're hard to get. They're hard to hold onto. There's a lot of hoops you have to jump through.

There's also a head start, an early head start for low-income families. If you are above those income cutoffs, basically what you get is a tax credit once a year that's a tiny fraction of what you're likely paying if you have a child in either a childcare center or a preschool.

Brian: Just one local stat as a conversation starter, nj.com has an article over the weekend that says New Jersey families would save $27,000 a year on childcare under the Biden spending bill. That's the headline of that. Of course it's going to be different for different families, but in the context of your reporting how do you hear a stat like that from nj.com, which for those of you who don't know is the same, basically as the Star Ledger. $27,000 a year savings for the average New Jersey family. What does that mean? Who does that apply to? If you can put it in the context of what you see nationally?

Bryce: Well, it gets to the fact that if Congress passes something like what they've been discussing and the build back better bill or the reconciliation bill, it would just be a huge transformation of the way we go about this. The number's probably particularly high in a place like New Jersey, because the costs are probably pretty high there. The costs of childcare range quite a lot across the country, but they can very easily enter the tens of thousands of dollars a year. They often rival college costs, to give you a sense of what parents are facing. This plan, if it were to become reality for many families, not all families but many families, it would cap their costs at 7% of their income.

Then the impact that could have on those families that are eligible would just be pretty revolutionary. We just have not ever extended that kind of help for families trying to pay childcare costs in this country before.

Brian: Yes. For my context, there's another article from just over the weekend. This was in the New York Times with the headline, "When childcare costs twice as much as the mortgage." It's state lane, Greensboro, North Carolina, it says, "To understand the problems Democrats hope to solve with their super size plan to make childcare better and more affordable, consider this small southern city where many parents spend more for care than they do for mortgages yet teachers get paid like fast food workers and centers cannot hire enough staff." Wow. Bryce, that brings in another couple of elements, which is teacher pay and pay for other childcare workers who are not teachers per se and a worker shortage in this area. Yes?

Bryce: Yes. Basically the whole system is broken, if you can even call it a system. This was true before the pandemic. Although, of course, we've really seen it highlighted in the pandemic during this crisis. Basically, we have a private system where parents are on the hook to find and cover the costs of childcare, but it's not the kind of business where there's a lot of cost efficiencies. It just costs a lot of money to provide quality care, to have enough teachers, to keep kids safe, to buy the food they need, to pay rent for a location. It's just a place where the costs are high.

If the government isn't stepping in the middle to make sure that quality is covered, that teachers are paid well, that there are good standards. It's just not working for either side of the equation. It doesn't work for the teachers and the providers. It doesn't work for the parents. That's the way it looks all the way across the country, for the most part, outside of places that have done universal preschool or heavy subsidies

Brian: Here's another news from the last few days, stat that exemplifies it when you say it doesn't work for parents, and it doesn't work for some parents more than it doesn't work for other parents. Last week's jobs report shows that while men gained 220,000 jobs in September nationwide women lost 26,000. Of course, women in this country bear the brunt of childcare. They make up the vast majority of staff members at daycares. Is that why many are calling this period that we're in a she-session?

Bryce: Yes, I think we don't quite know exactly what happened last month. It was one month of data, but it looks a lot like what happened last September when schools were not fully open and a lot of childcares are still closed. At the beginning of this year, about a third were still closed. Parents and families don't have options. When we say parents, you're right to point out often it's mothers who are feeling the effects of childcare scarcity and child care unaffordability. Again, this was true pre pandemic. We know that it has a huge impact on mothers' ability to work outside the home, if they are able to find and afford childcare. Right now it's even harder to do those things.

I think we are at risk of seeing more women drop out again, or at least cut back again to try to make this whole situation work.

Brian: With the uncertainty of kids going back to school in person this fall, but not knowing if they're going to be quarantined periods after exposures, some parent has to be ready to receive those kids. It looks like that's contributing to keeping a lot of women out or even pushing them out of the workforce from outside the home at this particular point in time, this fall. Let's take a phone call from someone who says she has raised kids in three different countries, and that is Karen in Summit, New Jersey. Karen you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Karen: Hi. Can you hear me?

Brian: I can hear you just fine.

Karen: Great. I raised, this was a while ago though. Some of this might be a little bit dated, but yes, I had my first in Paris then moved to London and then came into New York. I must say that the difference in the systems was amazing. London was more like here, weather it wasn't a lot of support. Subsidized daycare for a lot of the women were like the she-recession, dropping out of work. I had friends who were lawyers and doctors who had stepped out of work because childcare was so expensive. Then moved back to Paris where childcare is subsidized.

It's unbelievably high quality. You get a spot, it's a sliding scale so everybody can afford it. If you don't make as much as your neighbor, you can still afford it. Great care goes until 7:00 PM at night and you can pick up your kids after work. Then they also have universal nurseries, so your kids start school between the ages of two and a half and three. Again, they're in school, high quality, you never have to worry about it and it doesn't break the bank. Came to America and it was more like London. I think we were spending easily a quarter of my salary on childcare if not more, and it was not anywhere near as good quality as what I'd had in France. It goes until the age of five, until your child can get into kindergarten. If you're lucky enough to have kindergarten.

Brian: I don't expect you to be the ultimate analyst of French politics, Karen, but with your personal experience, was it your impression that it is almost universally popular in France to have that kind of childcare system? Or is it controversial and people argue that it's too costly for the quality or something like that?

Karen: Nobody argues that it's too costly. No. Women go back to work at much higher rates, like I said, than a lot of my friends in the UK or even here in the US, because it just doesn't make sense. I don't think any of my friends. I can't remember one friend who had to sit and say, "Does it make economic sense for me to go back to work? Will I pay more in substandard childcare than I will if I go back to work? Will my salary be worth it?" I never heard that. No, people do not complain about it.

Brian: Karen, thank you so much for your-

Karen: Like I said, it's great quality.

Brian: Thank you for your call. I really appreciate it. Anybody else out there who has experience with the childcare system in any other country, 646-435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer, or if you just want to talk about your childcare experience here and what you would like to see as an overhaul childcare system in the United States. The Biden Build Back Better bill is aiming for a real serious change in how this country does that. We'll get into some of the policy details of that with our guests. We're also trying to put human experience meat on these bones as we just don't talk abstract policy here. 646-435-7280, or a tweet @BrianLehrer for economics journalist, Bryce Covert.

Bryce, as you well know, there was a time when the United States funded universal childcare. In a piece you wrote for the New York Times, you give us a little historical overview of the Lanham Act, a World War Two era piece of legislation that funded the construction and maintenance of critical infrastructure. They use the word infrastructure and childcare in the same breath, I guess, at that time, which I didn't know. Of course, as President Biden is doing now, and it's controversial. Will you tell us about that?

Bryce: Absolutely. This is my fun party trick. Yes. During World War Two, basically, there was a shortage of people to go into the factories and work as all the men were shipped off to fight the war. They started with single women. Then they ran out of single women and mothers were trying to get in there and work but they had nowhere to bring their children. There were these awful stories proliferating in newspapers about children chained to trailers or left in movie theaters alone while women went into the factories to work. What they did was they took the Lanham Act, which was in wartime infrastructure bill, and said, "This is going to be infrastructure for the war."

The government built and staffed and ran a countrywide system of universal childcare centers. They were open to anyone. They had really long hours, and they were heavily subsidized. Mothers loved them. They got huge approval ratings. In fact, when the men started to come home at the end of the war, there was a huge fight to keep them. A lot of women staged protests, they sat in statehouses and said, "We want this to stick around." Unfortunately, they didn't win. It was ended shortly after the war came to an end. Some research has been done on them since as well to look at the kids who attended.

There has also been found huge benefits for those kids who went. Higher earnings later in life, higher educational attainment. It's also clear that it helped women work more outside the home. It was a great success, but a brief one.

Brian: What would the Biden agenda actually change with respect to child care in the United States? If there are many, many, many things, maybe it could give us a few of the big headline things beyond just spending. Listeners to this show know that I want to scream when other people just refer to it as the $3.5 trillion spending bill, rather than centering what the bill would do. Then, of course, we have to talk about how much it costs and how to pay for how much it's worth it and all of that stuff. There's not a spending bill. It's a childcare bill and an elder care bill and a climate change prevention bill. Then we can talk about the money. With respect to childcare, how much would it bring a revolution?

Bryce: I just have to say that we don't know for exact sure what it would do because that's all in flux a little bit. The plan that's passed out of the house committee, what basically looks like a plan that was put forward by Senators Patty Murray and Bobby Scott, which would cap the costs at 7% of income for families up to a certain threshold. They have it at twice a state's median income. Those families just would not pay more than that, and the government would step in and cover the rest of the costs. For families who are low income, the care would be totally free. That's for young kids. When the kids reach ages three and four, it would institute universal preschool. That would be free for all and open to all.

The plan also comes with money to make sure that providers are paid adequately, fairly, and also some money to help providers increase their quality because quality is a real issue across the country. There has been a fight inside the party as to whether to tax the subsidies or to make them universal. I don't know exactly where that's going to land. The plan put forward by a Senator Elizabeth Warren looks similar to this, but it would offer that 7% cap to all families. It would be a universally available subsidy. It would also be an entitlement, which means that if you qualify you get the money, which is a little bit different than how it works right now.

It would be a huge influx of money into this sector, into families' pockets to help cover this cost. It would try to at least prod along some improvements in the way that we do childcare and early education.

Brian: Is anybody looking at New York City as an example or talking about it? I don't know where you're based, but here in New York-- Maybe you're here too, I don't know?

Bryce: Yes, I'm from Brooklyn.

Brian: You are. Tell me if you disagree with the premise. Mayor de Blasio, who is not that popular these days, the thing that everybody seems to agree on is that his universal pre-K and universal 3K plan is a great thing and a huge advance. Both for income inequality for those parents who are now able to work with their kids at younger ages, as people who make more money were able to do because they could afford childcare, as well as potentially for the children themselves as they start with the same educational advantages as wealthier families who could put their kids in some school as early as age three. Are people talking about, "Hey, New York City, look over there?"

Bryce: Absolutely. New York City is absolutely a model that people are examining, both for lessons learned for what works and what's difficult about this, because the city, like the rest of the country would have to do, when it instituted universal preschool was doing it on top of the existing privatized, fragmented system. There were some bumps along the road in terms of getting enough capacity and which providers were in and which were out. I do think people see it as de Blasio's real solid achievement of his time in office. It has been a success. It shows that you can do it. It's not super easy, necessarily.

The one other thing I think we've learned, though, is that for childcare providers in the city, it's been complicated because the costs are such that it's a lot cheaper to provide care to older kids than it is younger ones. Universal pre-K siphoned off those older kids, understandably so. It's made it more expensive and hard to run a childcare center in this city. Part of why I think it's important that the Biden administration and democrats in congress want to do both at once, both childcare and preschool, is that they complement each other. If you only do one, you're at risk of losing a lot of childcare providers.

Brian: Jill in Jersey City has a story from Iceland, I think. Jill, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Jill: Hi, thanks for taking my call. When my son, who's now 12, was two, we moved to Iceland for six months. You had to get the social security number before he could register, there was a six month waiting list. We were only there for six months. He wasn't able to get into childcare, but people were shocked that he was not in daycare because it's considered a social good for toddlers to socialize together and learn developmentally together. We were considered bad parents because he was not in daycare at two years old.

Brian: Do you happen to know the funding system over there or anything about it?

Jill: Yes. They had recently passed, they both provide parental leave for both parents, but they also pay for childcare. It's publicly paid for at two years old until they start school at six.

Brian: Jill, despite you being a bad parent-- Kidding. Thank you very much for sharing that story about your experience in Iceland. Evie, or is it Evie in Orlando? You're on WNYC. Hello from New York.

Evie: Hi, Brian. Good to talk to you.

Brian: You have a story from Bulgaria?

Evie: Yes, I was born in Bulgaria and lived there until I was six. My folks and I immigrated with my younger sister who was one at the time. I started going to kindergarten there at three years old. Maternity leave, even in a formerly Eastern block country, was really pretty good at the time. I was there until I was six. When we moved and immigrated here to the United States, I was six. My sister was one. My parents had to take alternating shifts because they couldn't afford childcare. My mom would work during the day. My dad would work evening shifts for years until she could finally start kindergarten.

Brian: What do you think is the lesson for the United States in terms of what can be adapted? I think some of our listeners may be hearing your story and think, "Geez, even Bulgaria," which might reflect a stereotype about Bulgaria, but certainly, it's not as wealthy a country as the United States.

Evie: Definitely not. It just a matter of principles. Now as an adult starting my own family, I would love to see some priority be given to early childhood education and what it takes to afford even now, especially now I guess, what it takes to be able to afford to put a child through childcare is absolutely bonkers.

Brian: Absolutely. Evie, thank you so much. Let's keep going around the world with Medhi in Nutley, New Jersey next. Medhi you are on WNYC. Thank you for calling in. Hi there.

Medhi: Hi. How are you?

Brian: Good. What you got?

Medhi: I have an experience with service in the Gulf area, Saudi Arabia, and Emirate to be specific before the years back. What they've done, they actually gave tax exempt to all childcare providers, facilities, and also they gave tax credit to parents. In addition to that, they have free meals to all children, regardless if they are in private childcare facility or if they are in kindergarten. This allowed the system to flourish. Also for the private childcare providers to hire qualified teachers, some of them have PhDs and master degrees for childcare provider.

Brian: Medhi. Thank you very much. I'll throw one more in here before we get a thought from our guest, economics reporter Bryce Covert. In Denmark, from what I've read, kids are guaranteed a spot in childcare until age 10. Now, obviously they're going to school before that, but this has to do with after school because at 10 they start after-school youth programs. Even if parents choose to hire a nanny instead, families receive help from the government to pay for that. That's what I've read about part of Denmark's program. Bryce, you're hearing these stories from around the world.

It's something that a lot of Americans don't know about, where we fit in internationally with respect to childcare because we don't always hear the news from other countries.

Bryce: I also think American families or Americans might not even know what our country does or doesn't do. I think there might be an assumption that we do more than is available. Take paid family leave for example, which is part of this puzzle. Most people, I think, think that there's some guarantee after you have a child that you'll get paid leave, but there isn't. People don't know how much it costs. People also don't know how little providers are paid until you are hit with it personally. Then you realize how much you're on the hook and how hard it is to find and how low the quality is in a lot of places.

Then you hear these stories from around the world and it just is so clear that it operates completely differently in so many other countries that are our peers.

Brian: Here's another aspect that I've read about the childcare system here compared to other countries, is that it's such a patchwork system that leaves so many gaps for individuals and for whole communities, like that many low-income Americans in urban and rural parts of the country live in what you might call childcare deserts. To your knowledge, is that a uniquely American phenomenon among wealthier nations?

Bryce: Certainly compared to the countries that are prioritizing care and spending money on care, it's very different. There are a bunch of places in this country that are considered childcare deserts where you just can't get a spot. Either it doesn't exist or there are too many kids competing for the same spots. You just have to go ahead and find a place. Then you may not know if it's good quality or bad. There's a lot of work put on American parents to try to figure this out on their own. It's really hard. They don't have the information necessarily. They don't necessarily know what they're getting for their money.

This is why it's not just about the cost, although it is. It's obviously very expensive and very hard to afford but it's also about the way the system operates and how hard it is for parents to navigate it. If you have more government spending on it and even more public options, then it's just easier. In France, you know where your kid's going to go, they're going to go to the creche or you're going to hire a nanny and you're going to get support for either. It's much easier to navigate as a family.

Brian: We've been taking calls with stories from around the world. Here's a corner we haven't gone to yet. Caroline, who has a story from Queens. Caroline, you are on WNYC. Hi.

Caroline: Hi. Can you hear me?

Brian: Can you hear just fine.

Caroline: Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm originally from Germany and a big factor of living in New York with my husband of having a second child was de Blasio's administration of rolling out the 3K program. I just thought it was just crazy that we would have to think about having a second child or affording a second child. Whereas I just felt like just picking up my family and just going to Germany and raising our family there, because there's a program where the government helps families pay. They receive a small subsidized spending regardless of your income. I just wanted to point out that that was a major factor of having 3K, is having a second child. I just wanted to share that.

Brian: Thank you so much. If mayor de Blasio happens to be listening, you just made him smile. Caroline, thank you. She mentioned how it's irrespective of income in Germany, Bryce. I think one of Joe Manchin's objections, of course democratic Senator from West Virginia, is at this point one of the main stumbling blocks in getting this through Congress. One of his main objections is that the bill the Democrats are considering should be means-tested more than it is. You certainly could understand from an income inequality standpoint and a pay their fair share standpoint, why you wouldn't want to provide a government childcare subsidy to people who are wealthy.

Is that your understanding of how it's done in not just Germany, but other countries in the world? Is that in the Biden bill?

Bryce: It is. The way it's done in a lot of places, I mentioned France, there's a universal program in Quebec, Canada that's gotten a lot of attention. Other places as well, Denmark. They tend to be open to all people of all incomes. This is a real debate, a live debate among Democrats. Do you means test it and reserve the funding for people who potentially need it most or do you make it open to all? I don't know where they're going to land. Like you said, Senator Manchin is saying he's already skeptical of childcare and he wants to further means test a lot of these programs.

It's not just the progressive caucus in the house that's pushing to make it universal. It's people like Mikie Cheryl in New Jersey who represents a wealthy district. She wants to be able to go back to her constituents and say, "This is for you too." When you offer something universally, there are some other benefits that sometimes get ignored. One is that it builds political support when it's available to everyone. Everyone feels like they have a piece of this program, that it's for them too. There aren't these dividing lines that can create jealousy. The other is that it's tends to be just administratively easier to get it out to people and you're not making people jump through lots of hoops and fill out lots of paperwork to prove that they are eligible if it's just assumed that you probably are because of is open to everyone.

We'll see where Democrats land. certainly childcare may not end up in the bill at all. We're really in the midst of all of it, but I hope that Democrats have a really good debate about the merits of potentially making it universal.

Brian: What about the way childcare workers are paid in other countries? If you're familiar, we had a segment recently about the elder care part of the build back better bill, and one of the provisions there is better pay for chronically low paid home health aids. I see that among the rich countries who outspend America on childcare funding in general, well, the wages in the US tend to be about $12 an hour. Not even a living wage. At least that stat is in one of the articles that I read. How about pay for childcare providers, especially for young children elsewhere? Are you familiar?

Bryce: It's a good question and I'm not super familiar with every country. I would guess that it probably varies quite a lot, but there are definitely some systems I point back to France, I believe is an example, where they're basically treated like teachers. I think that's really the dividing line for us. We in this country really separate out childcare and school, when they're very similar. If you go into childcare or even preschool as a provider or a teacher, you can expect to be paid far less than a kindergarten teacher or up. One of the things that Democrats have been talking about wanting to do with this bill is to try to create more parity because really you're working just as hard if you're taking care of a four year old as a five year old, but that's just not the way the system works right now.

It's part of, you mentioned the employment scarcity issues, the workforce issues for providers that are particularly acute right now. It's really hard to hold on to people, particularly qualified people, if they're paid so little and then they can look to the school system them and say, "Well, I can get so much more money doing something very similar there. A lot of people leave this sector and head to the school system, which makes it really hard when you're trying to give quality care to little kids.

Brian: I guess if there's an alternative to childcare provided in some way or made affordable in some way for most families, it seems it would have to be paid family leave. The US doesn't offer that either and that's also in the build back better bill. There are nine American states, from what I've read, that have established statewide paid family leave programs. New York offers up to 12 weeks for example, but many countries in Europe offer 14 months. I don't know what to say, except there's part of the balancing act that I guess the Democrats are debating right now, right?

Bryce: Absolutely. This is part of the whole puzzle is whether you do paid leave as well and what that looks like. Democrats are talking about 12 weeks of leave as a minimum in their bill but, as you pointed out, most countries go far beyond that. That's part of this system. If parents can be home for, let's say the first year of their child's life, then they're not even thinking about Childcare and preschool until their kid is older and you're not trying to figure out where that kid should go and how it should be financed and how it should be made high quality.

If we're doing 12 weeks that's a huge step because we've never guaranteed paid family leave in this country before, but 12 weeks is also a pretty short window. Putting a three month old and daycare is complicated so it's all part of the same continuum, the same system,

Brian: We will have to leave it there from now, listeners. Maybe now a little more about where the United States fits in globally with respect to childcare. Thanks for your calls with stories from all over. My guest has been Bryce Covert, an independent journalist who covers the economy. She's a contributor at The Nation and her work has also appeared in the New York Times among other places. Bryce, thank you so much.

Bryce: Thank you.

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