So What, Who Cares (vol 1, issue 54) When 1% refers to childcare salaries, not income brackets

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(I hope you like holiday movies, because we'll be talking about them a lot in a scant ten days. I heroically restrained myself from making a "Brace Yourself"-style meme with Ned Stark. You're welcome.)

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Childcare providers’ wages only grew one percent (1%) between 1997 and 2013, according to the National Child Care Staffing Study.

This is not a perfect apples-to-apples comparison, but in the 2000-2010 period, the average price of a gallon of gas rose 85%, medical care-related costs rose 49%, and housing costs went bonkers. (See the graph at right to get an idea for how the cost of living in the U.S. has surged in the past decade.

And remember, wages are not rising for many, many people. [vol 1, issue 48])

So what? It would be one thing to point out that childcare workers aren't making much, often do not have basic insurance, and are twice as likely to be in a household on public assistance compared to non-childcare workers.

But as wages have stayed flat, the fees parents pay have not:

Stagnating wages and scarce benefits have occurred among the childcare workforce even as costs for parents soar. The study finds that average weekly payments doubled between 1997 and 2011. It now costs as much as $28,606 a year to put an infant and four-year-old in a daycare center, more than what the average family spends on rent, food, or even four-year college tuition in 31 states.

Where the money is going is not readily apparent. What is apparent is that it's not going toward compensating the people who take care of our smallest Americans.

Who cares? There's a strong link between childcare provider compensation and the quality of the care provided (vol 1, issue 18). There is also a strong link between childcare affordability and a family's financial situation over time -- and thanks to chronic underfunding, only one in six children eligible for childcare subsidies get them. And -- on a policy-type level, economists argue that investing in early childcare is good for a country in the long run:

James Heckman, the Nobel-winning economist, has calculated that, in the best early childhood programs, every dollar that society invests yields between $7 and $12 in benefits. When children grow up to become productive members of the workforce, they feed more money into the economy and pay more taxes. They also cost the state less—for trips to the E.R., special education, incarceration, unemployment benefits, and other expenses that have been linked to inadequate nurturing in the earliest years of life. Two Fed economists concluded in a report that “the most efficient means to boost the productivity of the workforce 15 to 20 years down the road is to invest in today’s youngest children” and that such spending would yield “a much higher return than most government-funded economic development initiatives.”

Extra reading: Round-the-clock daycare has become a necessity in modern American life, thanks in part to a one-two punch of a 24/7 workforce and employers who only schedule their workers for 29 hours a week -- one less than the minimum for benefits, thus requiring a lot of these folks to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet. (vol 1, issue 24). The Washington Post ran a great profile on Happy Faces Day Care back in 2012, and this month, the Pacific Standard looks at the complex brew of factors that created this market -- and what life is like for kids who only see their parents for a few minutes between shift changes.

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WNYC is hiring seven new media professionals to staff a health desk and cover three beats: healthy living and wellness, healthcare economics and policy, and medical science and discovery. This runs counter to a general trend of contracting science media coverage in the mainstream media.

So what? The Columbia Journalism Review notes that, "Without sustained coverage from qualified reporters, today’s major stories—from Ebola to climate change to food policy—are vulnerable to fear-mongering, errors, or being overlooked altogether." (NPR's Joe Palca has asserted there's been a rise in grasroots science writing. It will be interesting to see if this is what's replacing the science desk at the local paper.)

Who cares? Scientific and technological literacy is perceived to be a foundational skill in a competitive global economy, so the fact that U.S. students ranked 17th out of 34 nations surveyed in the Program for International Student Assessment is of mild concern to people who are big into international competitiveness.

Also having a stake in the revival of science media: environmentalists, mostly because a recent Pew science survey showed that 18-to-29 year olds did not know a whole lot about either fracking or global warming.

It will be interesting to see if new public-radio science content -- debuting months after NPR stalwart Robert Krulwich's science journalism is ushered off the Web -- can catch the ears of the younger-skewing podcast audience (vol 1, issue 49).

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Your pop culture note of the day: Ursula K. Le Guin is getting a lot of ink for her speech at the National Book Awards ceremony, presumably because nobody who covers the genteel world of literature is aware that few things on this planet are as formidable as a fearless old woman. (See also: The Notorious RBG.)

Anyway, if you're not familiar with her elegant, morally rigorous work, get a taste for it with the short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." I would guess anyone who's read it was not surprised that LeGuin used her fancy book-award speech to point out that capitalism, like the divine right of kings, exists only through consensual participation.

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Did you miss an issue of So What, Who Cares? The archive is here. Also, there is now a topic index that tells you what was in each issue. If you're like, "When did she send out a picture of Brandon Routh snuggling a kitty cat?" -- well, now you can find it. (It was November 11, 2014, btw.)

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