Child day care costs disproportionately burden middle-class residents in D.C., says report

The District’s child day care market disproportionately burdens middle-class residents, who pay the highest rates per income level and are more likely to face waiting lists, a new report says.

A D.C. startup firm named Maternie, which provides information for pregnant women and parents, reports that day care providers in D.C. ZIP codes where the average annual income is from $70,000 to $90,000 charge almost as much as their counterparts in ZIP codes with average six-figure incomes.

Child care for 3- and 4-year-olds is free in the District, but the annual cost of day care for toddlers and infants averages out to $22,658, according to a 2016 study by the nonprofit Child Care Aware of America.

The cost is so high that some couples discuss planning their families to avoid having two children of day care age, said Northwest resident Ashley Arabasadi, who became a mother about seven months ago.

“Pre-K starts at 3, and I know a lot of people wait until their child is 2 to have another one,” said Ms. Arabasadi, 39, who works as a policy adviser for the No More Epidemics campaign.

“I’m an older mother, so to wait two years isn’t good for us,” she said. “But I don’t know how we will be able to do it with two kids in day care at the rate it will cost.”

Ms. Arabasadi pays $800 a month for infant day care three days a week.

“This is the most expensive bill that most parents probably pay every month,” said Maternie CEO and founder Meghan McCarthy, mother of a 2-year-old.

Her firm found that day care costs for a one child can vary from less than $200 to more than $500 a week.

“I was genuinely surprised to find this kind of variation because I didn’t have the time to look for it in December 2016, when I was looking for child care,” said Ms. McCarthy.

Maternie, however, found costs do not increase proportionally to income: Middle-income parents appear to be paying 3 percent less for child care than higher-income folks, despite making 35 percent less money.

“I do think this shows a squeeze on those middle-income ZIP codes because there are fewer, lower-cost providers available there,” Ms. McCarthy said. “There are fewer in-home providers in higher-income areas. These in home providers are where you can find savings.”

Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Maternie found that among the District’s lowest-earning ZIP codes, households with an average annual income of $50,000 paid about $17,368 a year for child care. Among the District’s middle-earning ZIP codes, households with an annual income of $81,000 paid $22,932 for child care, among the highest-earning ZIP codes, household averaging $125,000 annually paid $23,660 a year for child care.

What’s more, middle-class households cannot take part in the District’s child care subsidy program, which cuts payment to households exceeding 250 percent of the federal poverty level — about $50,725 for a two-person household.

Affording child care also is likely to be a special burden to millennial parents, who carry an average of $22,135 in student loan debt, according to the Federal Reserve.

“Thankfully, we don’t have any student debt, because if we did, forget it,” said Northeast resident Tatiana Laborde, a mother of two who pays $2,200 a month for infant child care.

Middle-income families in the District also are more likely to be placed on a waiting list for day care. Maternie found that 76 percent of day care centers in middle-income ZIP codes had waiting lists, compared to 61 percent in low-income areas and 56 percent in high-income areas.

Some D.C. parents said they signed up for day care months in advance of their delivery date, just to get on a facility’s waiting list in hopes of an opening when needed.

Ms. Laborde, 33, said “it was a nightmare” trying to find bilingual day care for her first child in 2014 after a nanny she’d hired walked out.

“So as soon as I got my positive preg test [for my second child], I put my name on the list,” she told The Times.

But despite the early planning, Ms. Laborde said she did not find an affordable day care in time for her youngest child to be born, and had to leave her job as a project manager with a development bank to become a stay-at-home parent.