The Cost Of Childcare Vs. College Tuition In All 50 States, Visualized

The ballooning cost of college, and the unmanageable student debt it leaves in its wake, has gotten a lot of attention in recent years. Less attention has gone to the ballooning cost of childcare — but a recent study indicates that childcare affordability is even more of a crisis than higher-education affordability in many parts of the country. A new report from the nonprofit Child Aware of America compared the average annual cost of sending your infant to a daycare center with the average annual tuition (and associated fees) at public college. The results are bracing, as the following visualization of from HowMuch shows:

Childcare costs more than college tuition in a staggering 28 states. Massachusetts has the dubious distinction of being the state with the highest difference between daycare costs and college ($7,683). And these are low estimates of the true costs of childcare and college, when you consider the fact that many parents hire nannies and/or send their kids to private universities, which are pricier than center-based childcare and public universities, respectively. With the cost of raising and educating children so high, and with scant public assistance available for parents in need, it's honestly a miracle that anyone chooses to procreate at all.

[Read more at HowMuch]