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Minnesota's child-care advocates are putting a new spin on their plea for more public and private support and policy changes. Rather than looking at child care merely as a social function, they have quantified its impact on the Minnesota economy and are touting it as a major industry.
Their report, to be released today by the Minnesota Child Care Resource and Referral Network, finds that child care in Minnesota generates $962 million annually. That amount is 77 percent the size of the corn industry, for which the state ranks third nationwide in crop production.
The licensed child-care industry has the capacity to serve 265,700 children at any one time -- 30 percent of all children in Minnesota and 40 percent of those with working parents, the report said.
"While the profile offered in the report shows that the child-care industry is large, because there are children who are on the waiting lists for subsidized child care, it is not large enough," said Rob Grunewald, a regional economic analyst for the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis who reviewed the report.
The report was prepared by the National Economic Development and Law Center in partnership with the Minnesota Child Care network and an advisory committee of government, child care and economic development leaders.
"One thing we were trying to do in this report is talk about how important it is to have a strong child-care system in the future and yet there were so many actions taken in the 2003 legislative session that were undermining that system," McCulley said.
Facing a bleak state budget outlook last session, the Minnesota Legislature cut benefits and eligibility for state-subsidized health care and day care programs. Cuts to child-care services amounted to more than $86 million.
- reprinted from Knight Ridder Tribune