“The pandemic has shined a harsh light on what has been a long-festering problem. The world’s largest economy notoriously lags other industrialized countries in investing in child care and early education: The U.S. spends less than 1% of gross domestic product, putting it ahead of only Turkey and Ireland among the member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. ‘Almost all developed countries have things like subsidized child care, paid family leave, universal health care,’ says Sandra Black, an economist at Columbia University. ‘The economics make sense.’ ”

“The lack of family-focused policies isn’t just inconvenient for working parents, it’s become increasingly clear it’s holding women—and by extension the country—back. According to a report from S&P Global Inc., the U.S. could add $1.6 trillion to GDP if women entered and stayed in the workforce at a rate similar to Norway’s, which has government-subsidized day care.

“One estimate found that if American mothers continued to cut back on work at the same rate as during the first wave of Covid in April, the accumulated loss in wages would amount to $64.5 billion annually. This reality may finally be sinking in for policymakers. ‘We’re in the mainstream discussion of economics,’ says Khara Jabola-Carolus, executive director of the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women. ‘We were fully excluded before.’ ”

— “The U.S. Child-Care Crisis Is Torturing Parents and the Economy,” by Cynthia Koons, Bloomberg Businessweek, December 10, 2020