Photo by Tim Brown
D.C. may be one of the best places for dating, but not for raising a family—unless you’ve got a lot of money to spare.
The District has the highest cost of child care compared to all 50 states, according to this year’s Parents and the High Cost of Child Care report that was released yesterday by Child Care Aware of America.
The annual cost for infants’ center-based care is $22,631, while the average cost for home-based care is $16,006. Comparatively, Maryland’s cost for an infant in a center-based facility is $13,932 a year, and $9,466 for a home-based center. In Virginia, those numbers decrease to $10,458 and $8,139.
If you have two kids in the District, let’s say an infant and a 4-year-old, you’re paying about $40,473 for a center-based facility and $29,674 for home-based.
At $7,422 a year, the cost of enrolling your child in a public college is 3 times less than sending your little one to a childcare center.
This data was first reported by WTOP, and the report cautions that it is “difficult to draw comparisons between the 100 percent urban District of Columbia and the 50 states.”
Courtesy of Child Care Aware of America
The report also looks at D.C.’s income disparity between two-parent and single-parent households. Two-parent families make a median yearly income of over $157,000, while single parents only make a fraction of that at $25,582 per year.
That means a single-parent mother who earns the median income for her demographic could spend nearly her entire yearly salary on childcare.
Child Care Aware of America also offers a toolkit for parents and ways to take action against increasing childcare costs.
