The Crossroads Commentary

The stated philosophy of this blog—and, indeed, its namesake—is to observe those things both spiritual and political to see where they intersect in daily life.^[1] Despite this, I have not discussed the political much up to this point. Now I work to rectify this oversight.

To kick off this new era of the blog, I want to discuss childcare. More specifically, today I will address out-of-home childcare for children not yet old enough for the public school system. In other words, daycare. On its face, this hardly seems like a political issue at all. However, the cost of daycare in the modern United States is extraordinarily high; costing anywhere from $6,552 to $15,600 per year per child.^[2] The expensiveness of daycare has been cited as a significant barrier to having more children by almost half of women surveyed in one poll.^[3] It’s anecdotal, but my wife, a very successful mechanical engineer, decided to stay home full time after we discovered she was pregnant with our third child. This decision was partially driven by the overwhelming cost of daycare.

The question remains, though: how is this a political issue? Because the financial barrier to children modern daycare presents is not just a family planning hurdle—it is also an economic one, and when it comes to politics, “it’s the economy, stupid.” One indicator of economic development is population growth. Some of us may be familiar with the axiom among economists that a healthy society requires 2.1 children per woman.^[4] The reason for this is complex, but can be boiled down to simple supply and demand. 2.1 children born per woman is called a “replacement-level fertility rate” and ensures a stable population.^[5][6] Stable populations create stable supply in the form of labor, and stable demand in the form of consumerism, ultimately creating a stable economy. As one might imagine, a replacement number above 2.1 children can lead to both increased labor and demand, which in turn can help the economy grow faster.^[7]

The inverse is also true, though: a shrinking population can hurt a nation’s economic outlook. An article from the Cato Institute put it better than I could when the author explained the headwinds the Japanese government has begun to face in the last 30 years due to low fertility rates: “When your labour force shrinks by half a per cent annually, the arithmetic is brutal. It gets harder to service debts. There’s constant budget pressure as elderly welfare becomes harder to fund. The tax base narrows. And as societies age, there’s less appetite for risk, reform or experimentation.”^[8] As importantly, when the population shrinks, those of working age must now “pay up” to care for their elders, while also “paying down” for children. This can make life less affordable for working age adults, resulting in less children being born to off-set the costs, furthering the damaging economic cycle. Ultimately, the tax base continues to shrink and the economy suffers as governments must either print more money to pay debts and maintain welfare programs, creating inflation, or drastically cut programs and reduce the overall quality of life for their citizens. We can see this drama unfolding in real time in nations such as France, where the government is struggling to manage its debt crisis amid an ocean of unpopular options as the aging population burdens the welfare system as well as France’s working-age adults.^[9] As a member of the faculty of the French and Francophone Studies program at Beijing Foreign Studies University put it: 

The increasing aging of the population has not been accompanied by a significant increase in the employment rate of older people, which implies weak economic growth dynamics and a serious shortage of resources for public finances. As a result, the burden of old age will continue to grow and increasingly fall on the working population. And the working population itself will shrink as the birth rate declines. This burden is likely to become unsustainable, putting increasing pressure on the country’s economy.^[10]

Unfortunately for the United States, as in France, the replacement-level fertility rate has not been met in many years. In fact, the most recent data shows that number has fallen below 1.6.^[11]

We have established that a replacement-level fertility rate presents an economic, and thus an inherently political, issue. However, the birth rate, and factors that affect it, is also political on a more surface level: people want to have more children, but can’t afford them. According to one poll, 36% of women claimed they did not have the number of kids they ultimately desired due to the high costs associated with children.^[12] The political calculus for governments is more simple here than above: if people want something, and you have the ability to give it to them, give it. We are going to discuss the finances of daycare below, but rest assured for now it is expensive and no doubt a major barrier for women wanting to have more children.

Last of all, this issue is political not only because it affects the economics of the nation, nor because it touches upon something a large swathe of the electorate wants. It is also political because it hits upon the personal finances of much of the country. As mentioned in the paragraph above, daycare is an expensive enterprise. Therefore, daycare is also a financial issue, and as we saw in the most recent Presidential election, “kitchen table issues” which touch on the livelihoods of everyday Americans loom large for elected officials ahead of their Judgment Day.^[13] It would thus be prudent for them to take notice of such issues and work to address them.

At the outset, it is not my intention to insist that women who do not want children should “suck it up” and start popping out progeny for the good of the state. This would be a bad idea for two reasons: first, and most obviously, that would be an infringement on the right of individuals to live the life they want within the confines of both moral and societal law, but; second, it is my opinion no one should ever have kids if they are uncertain about wanting them. From a humanistic perspective, nothing is sadder than a child who is unwanted and unloved by his or her parents. From a societal perspective, such children are less likely to grow into healthy, productive adults as a result of their dour upbringing and neglect. Therefore, I will never assert as a solution to our population decline that women be forced, coerced, or even over-incentivized, to have children, since these would not only infringe on their rights, but would lead to a generation of neglected, maladapted citizens.

What we can do, ethically and legally, is incentivize those who have already shown a proclivity or desire to have children to have more. In the abovementioned study wherein almost half of women polled stated daycare costs were prohibiting their having more children, all the women questioned were already mothers. They were not asking whether daycare costs were stopping them from having any children, only more children. Because these women have already shown a desire to have children, and in the poll stated they wanted more, the question is how to encourage them, and others like them, to do so. A relatively “easy” answer would be to offset the costs of daycare so that a major expense upwards of $15,000 per year, per child, is removed from the equation.

This idea is termed “universal daycare” and although it has merit, it likely cannot be implemented at the national level. Education is largely controlled by the states, and the states also control things like regulations governing childcare. Thus, a universal daycare program would need to be implemented by the individual states. One state, in fact, has already decided to enact a universal daycare: New Mexico. On November 1 of this year, it was announced that New Mexico was going to provide vouchers for public and private childcare fees.^[14] The funding for this program will largely come from the state’s oil and natural gas industry.^[15]

Because the New Mexico program is so new, we cannot use it as a case study just yet, but it will certainly serve longitudinally to help us see the peaks and valleys of such an idea. For now, though, because there is little to glean from this new program at this time, I will move forward in this post by proposing a potential way forward for my home state, Florida, to enact such a program. Before I begin, though, I must note that even the little we can learn from New Mexico’s excursion into the world of universal daycare is hampered for two major reasons. First, because we do not have a strong oil and natural gas industry to rely upon, our funding must draw upon other sources than New Mexico. Second, New Mexico, although geographically large, only has a population of 2.1 million, while Florida has a population of 23.8 million.^[16] This will cause issues to arise in Florida, and other populous states, that will not be the case in less populous ones.

With those caveats out of the way, let’s get started.

Florida ranks in the top 15 most expensive states for childcare in the US.^[17] Daycare costs average $800 per month, per child, for young children, and $1,000 per month, per infant.^[18] Either number puts Florida well over the national floor of $6,552 per year, per child. There are currently 2.1 million families with children under the age of 18 in Florida.^[19]Approximately 1.2 million of these children are four years old or younger, meaning they likely do not qualify for the limited universal pre-kindergarten the state provides.^[20] The Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that 66.5% of married couples have both parents working outside the home.^[21] We will assume that near 100% of single-parent households have a parent working outside the home (arguendo, as well as for the sake of my laziness re: research). 63.3% of family households with children under 18 in Florida have married parents, while 36.7% are single-parent households.^[22] We can use these numbers to estimate how many children, then, are currently in need of daycare in Florida.^[23]

63.3% of 1.2 million is approximately 760,000. That means approximately 760,000 children four and under in Florida belong to married households. That means the remaining 440,000 children under four-years-old in Florida belong to single-parent households. 66.5% of 760,000 is 505,400, meaning approximately 500,000 children of married couples in Florida have both parents working outside the home. Thus, approximately 940,000 Florida children aged four-years-old and younger are in need of daycare. For the sake of my lawyer brain, we will round this number up to an even one-million. 

The next question, then, is how much would it cost to cover the daycare expenses of these one-million children? The math here should be simple. We know, on average, daycare costs $800 per child, per month, for children between one and four-years-old. It costs on average $1,000, per child, per month, for infants. Again, for the sake of simplicity, we shall cut the baby in half (not quite literally) and say, then, that daycare costs an average of $900 per month, per child.^[24]

One-million children, at a cost of $900 per month, thus comes out to $900 million per month, or $10.8 billion per year. Again for simplicity, we will round this number up to $11 billion. While, as noted, it is likely this is an overestimate, we will stick with this number for both the purposes of prudence, as well as to account for downstream costs such a system will introduce that will not be tackled in this post.^[25] Such spending would represent a roughly 30% increase in educational spending by the state of Florida, compared to the current $32.38 billion currently spent.^[26]

Now that we know how much this program will cost, we need to figure out how to pay for it. The good news is Florida is reporting a budget surplus this coming year of $3.7 billion.^[27] The bad news is the state is on-track to not only lose that surplus in 2027, but go into a deficit the following years sans belt-tightening and increased revenues.^[28] The intricacies of state budgetary analysis will be left for another day, but what this means for our purposes is that the budget surplus, although great, cannot be counted upon to entirely cover the cost of universal daycare. At most, it could cover about a third of the cost, and that is assuming the state can maintain similar surplusage into the future; a feat all governments struggle to achieve.

For the sake of argument, then, let’s assume that we can count on a budgetary surplus of roughly half this amount in the future that could be devoted to the purposes of universal daycare. That would give us $2 billion of the $11 billion we need. The remaining $9 billion would need to be scrounged up elsewhere. Obviously, there is no appetite for increased taxes by the people of Florida—understandably so, given the rampant inflation that has afflicted consumers nationwide since late 2021. Additionally, a cursory overview of the state’s budget does not show any obvious places where funds could be allocated to our purposes in this post without harming a significant number of Florida citizens relying on the state for other purposes. Finally, we will not look to the federal government for supporting funds in this post, although in reality that would be one of the first moves any sensible legislator would propose. Here, though, we will assume the federal government has denied such an appeal.

Given the above, one potential remaining source for funding of our program would likely be the state lottery. For the last 22 consecutive years, the Florida Lottery (hereinafter “the lottery”) has transferred amounts exceeding $1 billion to Florida’s Education Enhancement Trust Fund (EETF), per the lottery’s annual comprehensive financial report.^[29] In the last two years, it has transferred $2.39 billion and $2.45 billion, respectively.^[30] Again, in the spirit of conservative estimates, we will assume these funds are already being efficiently allocated and thus cannot be touched for the purposes of universal daycare. The question, then, is can the lottery afford to expend any additional funds in transfers to the EETF? Yes.

According to the lottery website’s education page, 68.15% of its revenues go toward prizes paid, while 23.65% go toward education.^[31] $6.2 billion thus goes to prizes on an annual basis.^[32] It is obviously important that a large portion of the revenues go toward prizes, to ensure the continued financial solvency of the lottery itself. However, if $2 billion were taken from the $6.2 billion currently going to prizes, that would reduce the prize money by a little under a third, while bringing the funding for universal daycare up to $4 billion total. This $2 billion could be set aside in a separate account of the EETF solely dedicated to the purposes of maintaining a universal daycare system. Thus, while we cannot fully fund universal daycare through the lottery, we can chip away at the cost through it.

The final—and greatest—source of funding to be tapped for this program can come from already existing property taxes. As noted earlier, we do not want to introduce new taxes, or increase current ones to fund our proposed universal daycare initiative, since it is likely any such movement would receive pushback from the electorate and be political anathema to the legislature. However, the state governor recently announced an initiative to eliminate property taxes in the state, in an effort to provide relief for state citizens.^[33] In a future post, I intend to breakdown this announcement and elaborate further upon my hesitation to endorse it.^[34] However, for now it is sufficient to say that since the state believes it can do without the tax and maintain a balanced ledger under current expenses, leaving the tax intact would mean at least part of the revenue could be diverted to our program without affecting other government services.^[35]

State universal daycare programs are a good idea. They are a good idea economically because a population reproducing below the replacement-level fertility rate leads to economic decline. They are a good idea prima facie politically because demographics are destiny, and those who benefit from such programs will be indebted to those who usher them in. They are a good idea financially because kitchen table issues dominate political discourse in an age of rampant inflation. Universal daycare programs would touch on each of these: (1) they encourage people who want more children to have them; (2) they give those same people the larger families they desire, and; (3) they remove a major financial burden from those families. As such, states should work to implement such programs expeditiously, utilizing whatever revenue methods best accommodate their respective strengths and expertise.

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^[1] I have been informed that the use of em dashes is now considered a telltale sign of AI use in written projects. The truth is I have heavily relied upon em dashes for over six years now—starting from my first year of law school when I realized their usefulness in portraying a tangent thought within the context of a sentence without having to create a new one—and have grown so reliant on them I have my own special shortcut in Word to produce them faster. Thus, I will not stop using them to make my writing appear more authentic. Rather, being the humble man I am, I demand the world bow to my idiosyncrasies.

^[2] https://blog.dol.gov/2024/11/19/new-data-childcare-costs-remain-an-almost-prohibitive-expense

^[3] https://www.babycenter.com/family/working-or-staying-home/daycare-cost-family-planning_41001740

^[4] https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/fertility-rates.html#:~:text=It%20is%20calculated%20by%20totalling,ensures%20a%20broadly%20stable%20population.

^[5] Id.

^[6] The number is 2.1, rather than 2, to account for the fact that not all girls born will live to adulthood or have children. http://papp.iussp.org/sessions/papp101_s04/PAPP101_s04_080_150.html

^[7] For one example of correlation between these factors, see economic growth following the post-World War II baby boom. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1031678/gdp-and-real-gdp-united-states-1930-2019/; http://demographia.com/db-uspop1900.htm.

^[8] https://www.cato.org/commentary/weve-gone-baby-boom-bust-theres-no-easy-way-back

^[9]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/387449792_The_Impact_of_Population_Aging_on_the_French_Economy

^[10] Id.

^[11] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-birth-rate-all-time-low-cdc-data/

^[12] https://ifstudies.org/blog/women-want-more-children-than-theyre-having-america-can-do-more-to-help#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20May%20to%20June%202024,toward%20careerism%20*%20Marriage%2D%20and%20money%2Drelated%20factors

^[13] https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/17/slotkin-gallego-harris-battleground-states-democrats-00190048

^[14] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-first-new-mexico-launches-free-child-care-rcna241516

^[15] Id.

^[16] https://worldpopulationreview.com/states

^[17] https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/2025/07/14/florida-daycare-how-much-free-child-care-eligibility/84530205007/

^[18] Id.

^[19] https://statisticalatlas.com/state/Florida/Household-Types#google_vignette

^[20] https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/585-population-age-0-to-4#detailed/2/any/false/2545,1095,2048,574,1729,37,871,870,573,869/any/1379

^[21] https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/2025/07/14/florida-daycare-how-much-free-child-care-eligibility/84530205007/

^[22] https://statisticalatlas.com/state/Florida/Household-Types#google_vignette

^[23] I fully understand the limits of the methodology being employed here. There is no proof that the percentage of married versus single households is constant for children of infant age to 18-years-old. If this program were to be implemented, a more rigorous study would need to first be done. However, I believe by holding these percentages constant for all children, we actually are overestimating how many children are currently in need of daycare in Florida, because it is more likely that young children’s parents will still be together, than older children and teenagers, simply due to the passage of time and the familial frictions which naturally arise. As noted, only 66.5% of married households utilize daycare, so by assuming more daycare-aged children belong to single-parent households, we are assuming more children need daycare in Florida than actually do. Still, there are other variables that must be accounted for, such as the fact that indigent households tend to have more children than wealthier ones. For the sake of brevity (what little there is of it left) we will assume these variable are fixed at this time.

^[24] This again likely overestimates, rather than underestimates, the situation, since it is likely there are more children aged one to four-years-old in Florida, than infants. All the better.

^[25] Downstream costs such as construction of new facilities and hiring of new faculty to cushion the blow of new students who would undoubtedly be introduced into daycare upon the implementation of such a program.

^[26] https://www.floridapolicy.org/posts/florida-fy-2024-25-budget-introduction-and-revenue-overview

^[27] https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2025/09/new-florida-budget-outlook-has-positive-outlook-for-2026-but-not-beyond-that-00545489

^[28] Id.

^[29] https://floridalottery.com/content/dam/flalottery-web/files/annual-reports/2024-annual-comprehensive-financial-report.pdf

^[30] Id.

^[31] https://floridalottery.com/education/supporting-education

^[32] https://floridalottery.com/content/dam/flalottery-web/files/annual-reports/2024-annual-comprehensive-financial-report.pdf

^[33] https://cbs12.com/news/cbs12-news-i-team/waste-watch-property-taxes-in-fl-could-go-away-florida-news-property-taxes-waste-watch-i-team-investigates-investigation-november-3-2025

^[34] I object to this move not out of partisan disagreement, but rather from concerns regarding both the economic impact to the state, as well as the adverse incentives I believe it will lead to among property investors.

^[35] Of note, if the governor were determined to alleviate homeowners’ pressing economic concerns by doing away with residential real estate property taxes, our program could still be funded through taxation of non-residential real estate. Property taxes brought in revenue exceeding $55 billion in 2024. https://www.lakelandchamber.com/uploads/1/4/2/1/142142136/2025_florida_chamber_property_tax_white_paper.pdf. Of that amount, 24.5% of the real estate taxed belonged to businesses, rather than homeowners. Id. 24.5% of $55 billion is $13.5 billion. If only the property tax levied against businesses was to remain, thereby providing economic relief to homeowners while continuing to bring in revenue, we would still have almost double what we need to fund the $7 billion shortfall in a universal daycare program. Because the property tax is an already existing tax whose revenue is apparently not needed for the balancing of the state budget, then, I propose it be at least kept partially intact for the funding of a universal daycare program in the state of Florida.