Food Insecurity Is Surging Among Child Care Providers
Stanford researchers find that a growing number of child care providers can’t afford food, raising concerns about workforce stability and care quality. // Emily Tate Sullivan
Hunger is on the rise for the early care and education workforce, according to recent research from the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, and signs suggest the challenge is unlikely to improve in the short term.
In June, 58% of early care and education providers surveyed by the RAPID Survey Project at Stanford said they were experiencing hunger, which researchers measured using six questions about food insecurity developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These providers, who span a variety of roles and settings, are not just dealing with sticker shock at the grocery store; they are skipping meals, eating smaller portions to stretch food supplies further, and going hungry because they’ve run out of money to purchase food.
The RAPID Survey Project measured hunger using six food security criteria developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture:
The food that we bought just didn’t last, and we didn’t have money to get more.
We couldn’t afford to eat balanced meals.
Did you or other adults in your household ever cut the size of your meal or skip meals because there wasn’t enough money for food?
If yes, how often did this happen?
Did you ever eat less than you felt you should because there wasn’t enough money for food?
Were you ever hungry but didn’t eat because there wasn’t enough money for food?
RAPID has charted provider food insecurity for the past four years. Rates of hunger held steady between 20% and 30% from summer 2021 until early 2024, then began rising precipitously.
Phil Fisher, director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, said the status quo rates of provider hunger were “unacceptable to begin with,” but that this recent spike is both “alarming” and “concerning.”
“The early care and education workforce is incredibly vulnerable to economic trends,” Fisher said, explaining the rise. “Part of it is just how close to abject poverty many [educators] are.”
Indeed, early educators earn a median wage of $13.07 per hour, making it one of the lowest-paid professions in the United States. An estimated 43% of the workforce relies on public benefits, such as Medicaid and food stamps, to get by.
So when prices go up, early educators are among the first to feel the effects, and lately, food prices have done nothing but climb. The cost of groceries has increased almost 30% since February 2020.
“Food is very expensive,” said Isabel Blair, a home-based child care provider of almost 20 years who recently decided to close her program in Michigan. “It’s hard for families earning minimum wage to cover their basic needs — housing, child care and food.”
Blair has noticed price inflation among eggs and produce, in particular. Both are staples in an early education program.
“You go to the grocery store, and the fresh vegetables are very expensive. For a tomato, you pay like three bucks. Or a dozen eggs, you play close to $4 now,” she said. “Feeding the children, you have to provide breakfast, a snack and lunch. Some programs offer dinner. Add those up, and it’s very costly.”
In the RAPID survey, providers shared written responses to open-ended questions, and some highlighted how high grocery prices are affecting their own families.
“We’re skipping meals so the kids can eat,” a teacher in Colorado said. “Grocery prices are through the roof.”
“Grocery bills continue to rise and we are having to cut back on what we buy and redo our menu at home to be able to afford the same amount of food we were buying just months ago…” wrote a center director in Washington.
“[My biggest concern right now is that] we don’t go hungry in the street someday,” a teacher at a center-based program in Georgia wrote.
A center director in Indiana said the “cost of groceries is going up and I can’t afford enough food … to last the entire month. We have to skimp on meals or bring leftovers from work home for the kids to eat.”
“Keeping food in the house and meeting our nutritional needs as a family [are my biggest concerns],” wrote a home-based provider in Ohio.
Cristi Carman, director of the RAPID Survey Project, said the difficult choices providers must make, between buying more groceries or paying off a bill, is “really, really devastating.” Carman and Fisher separately noted that it becomes harder for caregivers to provide a nurturing, high-quality environment for kids when their stomachs are growling and they’re worried about how to put food on the tables for their own families before their next paycheck hits.
“That’s not humane circumstances for individuals in any role, especially when they’re caring for the youngest children,” Carman said. “They’re not operating under the best set of circumstances. They’re operating at reduced need.”
What’s more, Fisher said, is that early care and education providers often aren’t just buying groceries for themselves, but for the kids in their programs as well. (Rising costs have hit unlicensed family, friend and neighbor providers who care for millions of children from birth to age 5 in the U.S. especially hard, because while they are technically eligible, many remain excluded from the federal food program for child care providers.) So when providers are going hungry, it usually means the kids they’re serving are affected too. Maybe fresh fruits and vegetables are replaced with canned items, or proteins are replaced with carbs. Corner-cutting becomes unavoidable.
Despite the severity of food insecurity among providers, grocery prices are not expected to stabilize anytime soon, with the Trump administration’s tariffs forcing up the cost of imported foods. Meanwhile, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps low-income households offset the cost of food, was disrupted during the government shutdown this fall, leaving many recipients without benefits for weeks. RAPID researchers have not yet finished analyzing survey data from that period, but Fisher acknowledged it may only show a worsening situation.
“We’re not expecting these things to get better in the short term,” Fisher said. “If anything it will either reach a ceiling or continue to spiral.”
Teachers and children suffer because of this.
Oh yeah, Baby. We’ve been in that bread line shoulder go shoulder as colleagues for a long time. Even in programs offering unionization where contracts are negotiated to provide payscales with “prevailing wages” we are still the working poor. Most of my co-workers either have two income households or move into admin or adult Ed to increase their earning power. Very few of us are able to own a home. We live month to month.
We usually have side hustles. One unfortunate backlash of the Affordable Care Act was watching employers increase their margins by refusing to offer full time positions so they could avoid offering insurance to teachers, which is sad because it decreases continuity in the environment. That’s when a lot of us had to get a second or third job to eat. In states where ACA offered expanded Medicaid, many childcare workers were able to establish care.
Schools try to offset costs by raising tuition, but it really all hinges upon making teachers the working poor. Butts in seats mentality puts undue stress upon both kids and teachers because high ratios lower our capacity as educators to be present with our attention. We don’t get to slow down when we’re putting out fires all day focusing on logistics.
The answer is subsidized child care. And excellent benefits packages that support teachers to experience a quality of life that avoids burnout and high turnover. There is a saying, “Parents can’t afford to pay, teachers can’t afford to stay.”
Subsidized child care is part of infrastructure in many European countries. We draw a lot of inspiration from their models.
Working as teachers in classrooms with young children isn’t respected in America. But we can respect ourselves by using the language of professionalism to describe our work, which is often a calling and a labor of love.
Some of my colleagues were educated at Stanford. Yale. Purdue. Lining up at the food bank with a Master’s. And we created innovative programs with emergent curriculum. We consider ourselves to be teachers as researchers and lifelong learners. And we had adequate benefits packages with minimum of 6 weeks paid leave to use at our own discretion. Stating whether time off was a sick day or a mental health day, vacation, or bereavement was not mandatory. A robust sub list is always a challenge, but again, when teachers are compensated, we can regenerate consistently.