CACFP: A Critical Support for Child Care
July 23, 2025
Child care is the backbone of the American economy. Having affordable, high-quality child care allows parents to enter and remain in the workforce while ensuring their children are being cared for in a safe environment. However, child care businesses in the United States have been struggling to keep costs affordable for families while still maintaining quality and providing living wages for child care staff. The USDA Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) not only provides nutritious meal and snacks for children, but also serves as critical support for child care.
In 2023, more than 2 million parents reported quitting their job, not accepting a job offer, or changing their job due to problems with accessing child care.[i] In 2024, the national average price of child care in the United States was estimated to be $13,128 annually – representing up to 10% of a married couple's income or 35% of a single parent’s income.[ii] To remain in business and keep care affordable for families, child care providers must look for ways to reduced costs. As staff wages represent a large percentage of a child care’s budget, providers often have to pay their staff low wages in order to reduce costs to families.[iii] Â
Early childhood educators remain some of the lowest paid workers in the United States. Child care workers make on average $33,140 a year or $15.93 an hour, meaning that 97% of other occupations are paid more than early educators.[i] As a result, more than 13% of child care workers live in poverty and 43% rely on public safety net programs (e.g. SNAP or Medicaid).[ii] In addition, child care workers themselves cannot afford care for their own children – with child care costs amounting to 44% to 100% of their average annual wage depending on the state.[iii] For this reason, less individuals are entering into the child care workforce or leaving to find a job with better pay.
There continues to be conflict between keeping costs low for families and providing living wages for child care workers. Â In an attempt to address the current challenges with providing high-quality, affordable care without reducing wages for early childhood educators, NC Child did an analysis of child care budgets. They found that the main revenue sources for child care businesses were private tuition, payments from a subsidy program, the CACFP and other grants. For a nonprofit child care center, the CACFP contributes towards 2.9% of their revenue and for a family child care home it contributes towards 18.1% of revenue.[iv]
Through participation in the CACFP, child care businesses are able to reallocate tuition and other funding towards improving program quality or providing higher wages to their staff, or they can use the money saved on food costs to reduce tuition fees to families. Investments in federal programs, like the Child and Adult Care Food Program, help to offset child care costs for families and assist child care businesses in maintaining program quality and providing fair wages to their staff.
[i] The Center for American Progress. Data on Child Care and Early Learning in the United States.
[ii] Child Care Aware of America (2025). Child Care in America: 2024 Prices & Supply.
[iii] Prenatal-To-3 Policy Impact Center (2025). Child Care Workforce Retention Incentives.
[i] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2024). Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
[ii] Prenatal-To-3 Policy Impact Center (2025). Child Care Workforce Retention Incentives.
[iii] Child Care Aware of America (2025). Child Care in America: 2024 Prices & Supply.
[iv] Bell, Liz (2025). Cracking Open Child Care Budgets at Gov. Stein’s Early Childhood Task Force.