U.S. Government's Main Source of Funding to Help Low-income Families Pay for Childcare, Serves Over 1.6 Million Children in a Typical Month

A student plays with interlocking toys at the Connecticut State University Early Learning Center in New Britain, Ct. on March 12, 2025. Mark Mirko/Connecticut Public via hide caption. For low-income working families in the United States, the federal government offers financial aid to help pay for childcare.

That is, if families can get off the waitlist for it. In the second half of last year, there were an estimated 400,000 children on waitlists for childcare assistance programs across the U.S., according to a report by the National Women's Law Center released in May. That's nearly the size of the population of Minneapolis.

That figure has more than tripled over the past two years. Around 118,800 kids were on waitlists in early 2024, the group found. But there has not been nearly enough money available for caregivers looking for financial help, especially recently as childcare costs have ballooned nationwide.

Valentina Sosa of Cypress, Texas, first applied for childcare assistance for her 18-month-old daughter, Ameea, in March. She's still on a waiting list. Sosa's wages as a part-time real estate assistant aren't enough to cover the cost of local daycare.

While the family waits, Ameea mostly stays at home with Sosa while she works, which she often does remotely. "I know she needs the development that she's not getting, the engagement that she's not getting here with me, because if I'm working, I can only do so much, said Sosa, who is a single mother. But I do what I can.

Childcare advocates blame the expanding waitlists in part on a failure by Congress to appropriate enough money for the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), the federal government's main source of funding to help families pay for childcare. The program serves over 1.6 million children across the U.S. in a typical month. "We have public funding for our schools because we recognize it as a public good that is important for our economy, for the well-being and future success of young people, said Karen Schulman, senior director of state childcare policy at the National Women's Law Center.

"We don't fund our childcare system like that. Other forces have compounded in recent years to make waitlists even longer. More low-income families are applying for assistance, advocates say, and federal COVID-19 relief money that temporarily helped boost U.S. childcare programs ran out.

It's forced many caregivers balancing their jobs with their childcare responsibilities to wait and see if their number on the waitlist will be called. Seventeen states currently have waitlists for childcare assistance or have stopped taking new applications, according to the NWLC report. (In states where county governments run the childcare assistance program, waitlists may exist in some counties but not others.) In the past, the number of states with waitlists has been higher, but Schulman said she doesn't remember a time when this many children were in line for assistance.

For example, 21 states had waitlists in 2001, encompassing a total of around 202,900 children — roughly half of the current total. A big reason for the queue is a lack of funding for subsidized childcare. Federal stimulus dollars had buoyed the childcare sector during the pandemic, Schulman said; now, that money is gone.

Roughly $39 billion from the American Rescue Plan went toward childcare, but states had to use the money by September 2024. She added that CCDF funding has been "stalling in recent years. Furthermore, childcare assistance programs are operated by states, which have different eligibility requirements for families and subsidy rates for providers.