Driving Growth: The Economic Value of Child Care in Cleveland & Cuyahoga County
Child care is more than just a service for working parents; it is an essential component of our economy. Access to affordable, high-quality child care allows parents to enter and remain in the workforce, contributing to the productivity and growth of our local businesses.
Released in the summer of 2024, Driving Growth presents the results of a large survey of local families with children under the age of five and calculates the economic impact of inaccessible child care options in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. The report found that a staggering 78% of parents identified child care accessibility as a barrier to work, with a significant portion either unemployed or not participating in the labor force due to child care constraints.
$411M
When Child Care Doesn’t Work for Parents, Everyone Pays the Price
Parents annually miss out on
from fewer hours worked, lower wages, time spent searching for a job that fits their existing child care arrangements, and diminished future earnings due to less training and less experience.
$121M
Businesses annually miss out on
from a workforce with lower productivity and shorter tenure. In addition to this loss, over time businesses also must pay for recruitment and hiring as their workforce changes; and there are added operational and managerial costs. Over time, the workforce is not optimally trained and has less experience.
$114M
NEO annually misses out on
in tax revenue from lower economic output impacting tax revenues at the local, state, and federal levels.
Report Resources
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Authored by Clive R. Belfield, Professor of Economics at Queens College, City University of New York and Principal Economist at the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education at the University of Pennsylvania.
This analysis is the first of its kind for the City of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, and models the economic impacts of inadequate child care, including lost tax revenue, lower workforce participation, and slower economic growth.
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Press Releases & Media
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A new study by Early Matters NEO says that when parents can’t get quality child care they miss work, leading to families losing income and businesses having lower productivity.