Ballooning Childcare Costs Make U.S. the New Hardship Posting

By Michelle Jamrisko
January 13, 2016 — 12:00 AM EST

Kacee Ballew, who’s lived with her husband in Pakistan, New Zealand and now Jamaica, sees one big obstacle to her family’s return to the U.S.: prohibitive childcare costs.

“The only thing that’s preventing us from going home is that we have two kids in preschool,” Ballew said by phone. “As soon as they’re in public school and we can just not have to worry about that cost, we’d be back in the States, or in a few years.”

Ballew, 36, represents a growing trend among young workers who are more likely to jump at the opportunity to work abroad. While the Obama administration and presidential candidates from both parties have shone a light on paid parental leave and the costs of overseeing infants, living overseas has become even more attractive as childcare bills take up a larger portion of U.S. household budgets.

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department judges affordable childcare would amount to about 10 percent of a family’s income, but the average cost of full-time care for one infant at a center tops 14 percent of a married couple’s median earnings in some of the most populous states, according to a December report from Arlington, Virginia-based Child Care Aware. In most areas of the country, childcare costs exceed that of rent and college tuition.

With 3-year-old and 16-month-old girls, Ballew said she and her husband had “pretty much ruled out the U.S. completely” as their next stop in order to save the estimated $40,000 a year they’d be spending on childcare in Washington, D.C. That money probably will go toward purchasing a home when they do return, she said.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-13/ballooning-childcare-costs-make-u-s-the-new-hardship-posting