Quality child care is unaffordable for many parents in the United States and barely affordable for many more. The average cost of center-based child care is over $12,000 a year. Daycare centers, however, aren’t getting rich, and they are usually non-profits or small businesses with razor-thin profit margins. Child care workers’ pay, on average, is low enough to fuel increasing controversy in its own right. Providers are regulated to the hilt, which increases costs and strains daycare centers, families, and workers alike.
We might expect to find one or more interest groups guarding economic and political power while everyone else in
