Child care strains family budgets across the nation

Americans looking for an affordable, high-quality caregiver for their kids will be hard-pressed to find one in any U.S. state, according to one of the broadest studies of its kind.

Full-time care in a center for children ages 4 or younger costs more than average in-state college tuition, while an in-home caregiver costs 53 percent of U.S. median household income, according to a report Wednesday from New America, a Washington-based research organization.

The study used proprietary data from the online marketplace Care.com Inc., a survey of 15,000 households, and publicly available figures from the Census Bureau and Child Care Aware of America.

http://www.startribune.com/child-care-strains-family-budgets-across-the-nation/395171931/