Ending Hunger in America, 2014 Hunger Report Full Report | Page 81

CHAPTER 2
for Our Parents. “Not only does that reduce their current standard of living, it also jeopardizes
their own retirement. It means they have less to put away in savings and fewer Social Security
benefits. Over their lifetime, caregivers give up hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential
income.”66 Gleckman, who publishes an influential blog with the same name as his book,
says, “Even as Congress talks about the importance of caregiver support, it does little. The
40 to 50 million family caregivers need real help but the system they rely on for support is
failing them.”67

Child and Adult Care Workers: The Other Side of the Equation
The Department of Labor reports that caregiving is one of the nation’s fastest growing
occupations,68 with demand fed by the increasing demands on workers and the rise in the
share of the population that is elderly.
A person’s quality of life from birth to death is
shaped by the quality of care available to him or her.
As important as professional caregiving is to the functioning of the U.S. economy today, it ought to pay better
than poverty-level wages. Improving the quality of care
starts with improving the quality of caregiving jobs.

The United States is
unique among peer
nations in not providing
universal public access
to preschool.

Raising the Floor on Child Care
The choice is ours as a society: the person caring for
young children can have minimal qualifications and
earn less than a worker in a fast food restaurant, or be
a well-trained professional in child development and
earn enough to meet a family’s needs. How childcare
workers are seen and treated speaks volumes about our
priorities.
Child care must first provide a safe and nurturing
environment—criteria that not all childcare situations
meet, particularly those that low-wage workers can
afford. Second, child care must provide educational
enrichment; this is not an optional luxury, since highquality child care can have a lasting impact on child
development and is linked to school readiness. The
science of brain development tells us to start children’s
education before kindergarten. Not only do children
and their parents benefit, so does society. Nobel Prizewinning economist James Heckman of the University
of Chicago has shown that a dollar invested in the
education of children under age 3 leads to $8 to $9 in
later productivity gains.69 Parents don’t think about
productivity gains when they drop off their child with
a care provider. They do think about giving their child
the best chance of success in life.
www.bread.org/institute?

Richard Lord

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