Poverty Solutions for Child Care

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almost half of my child care subsidized by state assistance. After I was given a small raise at my job my child care assistance was revoked completely. While I did receive more gross wages, I was left with a lot less money after I had to pay child care in full. I assume that this situation is common and has happened to many others who are needing child care. Not only does the current benefit cause a sudden increase in financial stress but also it also discourages people from earning higher income. I found myself wanting to decline the raise at my job because it was only diminishing my financial situation. I believe that if we were to open the eligibility requirements and create an assistances level by need it would be more efficient and we would avoid the discouragement in advancement of employees. Instead of offering a large subsidy to only low income parents, we should offer a fair subsidy based on need that could decrease in percentage as the parent becomes more financially capable. This way people will be encouraged to find higher paying jobs and better their careers but they would also be getting a fair subsidy amount if needed. If this solution was to be implemented, assistance will be offered to a larger number of people but the overall amount of subsidy would decrease over time as people will seek higher paying jobs ("Employment Support Child Care.").

Flexible spending accounts are also a good start in helping to solve the issue of poverty in people who must pay child care costs. Fortunately, many employers are starting to offer a flexible spending account to help with dependent child care costs. A flexible spending account enables an employer to hold pretax monies from their payroll to cover child care costs ("Dependent Care FSA Guidelines."). I personally use a flexible savings account for child care and have found it to be very rewarding. Although this is a great benefit, I do not believe that it is implemented enough or available to many employees in society. If more employers were to establish this benefit I think that we would see a decline to those in poverty who currently have to pay child care without the flexible savings account benefit. Although this does not completely solve the poverty issue, I believe it is a good start in the right direction.

Poverty in people who have to pay for childcare has become a major contributor to the overall poverty problem. The need of income has forced many women into the workforce making child care a necessity for most families. If more employers offered a funded child care center onsite child care cost could be completely eliminated, however most employers find that the benefits do not outweigh the potential disadvantages. The problem could also be solved by reorganizing the structure of assistance by curving the benefit to better fit the need and offering assistance to more families. Lastly, the implementation of flexible spending accounts by employers has helped those who can take advantage of them but the benefit seems to be scarce among the working community. If flexible spending accounts were more prevalent there may be a bigger difference in poverty. The child care expense problem in poverty could possibly be decreased in abundance with any of the above solutions. Then our overall poverty burden may be slightly diminished.