A child’s well-being is shaped by education, healthcare, housing, nutrition, childcare and family resources. Yet public policy often considers these systems independently, making it difficult to see where public investments reduce inequality and where families are left to fill the gaps on their own.
In a new opinion piece featured in The Hill, David Blazar, associate professor of education policy and economics at the University of Maryland College of Education, and his colleague Michel Boudreaux, associate professor of health policy and management, School of Public Health, examine how public and private investments shape children’s experiences from birth through age 18. Drawing on their recent research, they argue that policymakers need a more comprehensive view of childhood when making decisions about public spending.
Our recent study in Nature Communications points to a prior question: Do lawmakers know where public support already narrows inequality and where families are largely on their own?
We combined public spending, family expenditures and caregivers’ time to estimate what America invests in children from birth through age 18 across education, healthcare, nutrition, housing, childcare, transportation and clothing. The result is a kind of MRI of childhood, captured before the latest proposals take effect.
It shows that gaps open well before children reach public school. By age 5, the cumulative investment gap between children in the highest and lowest income families exceeds $40,000, out of roughly $500,000 a typical child receives across childhood.
