Families seeking child care in the United States face high costs, even when they can secure a place. Infant care averaged $3,200 per month in the US in 2024.
Nationally, families now devote a fifth of income to child care, almost three times the level the federal government considers affordable.
Close to a third of families are drawing on savings simply to retain a daycare place. Only 10 percent of childcare programmes nationwide are considered high-quality.
The shortfall carries costs beyond individual households. Limited access to childcare costs families, businesses and taxpayers an estimated $122 billion annually.
In Arizona, the Department of Economic Security, known as DES, has a child care subsidy waiting list approaching 9,000 families and more than 14,000 children. Southern states, Alaska and Hawaii have above-average rates of grandparent-headed households, while rates in the Northeast and Midwest are below the national average.
Grandparents are among those providing care within these arrangements. About 6.7 million people age 30 and older lived with their grandchildren in 2021, and roughly a third of grandparents in households with grandchildren were responsible for the child’s care.
The available figures do not show how many of these arrangements result from childcare costs or shortages. They also do not establish the duration of the average arrangement, whether financial pressure or the duties of caregiving account for health effects, or what state support is available to grandparent caregivers.
Census Bureau research found that health outcomes among grandparents living with and caring for grandchildren differed by race and by the length of care. The research identifies an association with mortality risk, rather than establishing that caregiving itself causes those outcomes.
Among White grandparents who lived with a grandchild, mortality risk was consistently higher than for White adults who neither lived with nor cared for a grandchild. Hispanic grandparents showed higher mortality risk specifically when they had been primary caregivers over a long period.
The differing findings indicate that the effects of shared households and caregiving cannot be treated as uniform across families.
The childcare shortage and its costs have placed connected pressures on families. Formal care remains expensive for many households, while grandparents provide care in a substantial number of households. The scale of any shift towards grandparent care, and the reasons families choose it over other options, remain unclear.
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