Make Childcare Cheaper, Not More Complicated
5th July 2023
In England, it costs over 40 percent of the average person’s take-home pay to put a one-year-old child in daycare. In London, where nursery schools can cost upwards of £20,000 per year per child, that figure is even higher. These costs are not just steep: for many, they are literally impossible to manage. Even selling a kidney — something the most desperate person can only do once — might not cover a year’s fees for one child.
This has predictable consequences. Many young couples take it as read that they will have to leave London if they want to have children; either that or they just don’t do it at all. Birth rates in the UK, which have been below replacement levels for the last half-century, reach new record lows every year, with fertility in the capital even lower than the rest of the country. Many specifically cite the impossibility of paying for childcare as the reason they are not reproducing.
Allowing costs to remain this high is a form of slow-motion national suicide. But most discussion of this issue seems to focus on subsidising this enormous cost, rather than wondering why it is so high in the first place. In the latest budget, the Conservatives announced a plan to pour more money into the system with a radical new expansion of subsidies to much younger children, an approach which Labour seem likely to mimic in their manifesto for the next general election.