Almost every child’s brain does something that is hard to understand around the time of their second birthday. Every second, more than a million new neural connections are made. This has been proven scientifically for years. But in the US, policymakers have dealt with it like a footnote—as something that was tucked into social spending bills and family benefit packages, and mostly talked about in terms of gender equality and the economy of the workforce. Now, researchers at the Baker Institute are making a stronger case: early childhood education isn’t just about social policy. It’s about health policy. And the difference is more important than most people think.
There are a lot of numbers to back up this claim. More than 17 million U.S. homes had kids younger than six years old in 2022. Almost one-third of parents with young children said they didn’t work that year, but not because they didn’t have child care lined up. The Department of Labor says that this causes an annual loss of more than $775 billion in economic output. That picture stops people in their tracks, as it should. It’s even more shocking when you look at the health side of the crisis.
It affects more than just a child’s schoolwork when they can’t get good early care and education during those first few years. The Administration for Children and Families points to research that shows effects on cognitive development, executive functioning, and social skills that can be measured. These effects last through elementary school and, in some cases, well into adulthood. The CDC has found a link between good early childhood education and higher earnings, better health as an adult, and more education. These are not guesses or predictions. They are patterns that have been seen in decades of data.
Take a moment to think about what that really means. If a child doesn’t have access to good early education, they are behind in more than just reading. They might be at a disadvantage for the rest of their lives, in terms of their health, their wealth, and their ability to make stable relationships. By any reasonable measure, that’s a health outcome. The Baker Institute’s way of talking about this link is clear in a way that most policy discussions have been slow to adopt.
The caregivers also have to deal with it. The CDC’s own data during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that one in four unpaid caregivers said their mental health got worse. Something quietly devastating about that number—not because it’s a surprise, but because it backs up what many parents already knew but were too tired to say. Caring for someone else, especially when you don’t have any support systems in place, is hard on your mental health. The argument goes that that cost could be directly cut by providing good early childhood education. It’s still not clear if policymakers are ready to think about it that way.
If you leave the market alone, it hasn’t solved this problem. There is a lot more demand than supply for early care slots. Child care workers don’t get paid enough and quit a lot. The pandemic made it very clear that the business models that most care centers depend on are weak and can’t handle any kind of economic downturn. As part of the American Rescue Plan, the federal government’s Child Care Stabilization Act gave about $24 billion in subsidies to the industry. This helped over 225,000 providers serve up to 10 million children, which is a clear sign that the industry was stabilized. But the program ended at the end of 2023, and providers have been missing it ever since.
A reframe that has real policy weight is what the Baker Institute and other research groups are pushing for. If early childhood education is seen as an investment in health, not just a social good or a way to make things easier for workers, it needs to be done faster. It should be talked about when talking about budgets for public health, not just for education. Some of the suggested ways to move forward are practical. For example, increasing the Child Tax Credit for kids under six to $3,600 and bringing back stabilization funding are both good ideas. Is there political will to see them as health investments instead of social spending? That’s still an open question. Things aren’t as easy to dismiss as they used to be, though.
