Child care and early education are essential for children’s growth and development and parents’ opportunities to work or obtain education and training. By supporting the current and future workforce, child care and early education are also crucial to the nation’s economic well-being.1 Yet, despite its dual role in fostering economic growth and nurturing the next generation, child care has long been vastly underfunded. The strain on the child care sector has been exacerbated by the expiration of the temporary federal pandemic relief funding for child care provided under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA)—including $24 billion in stabilization grants for child care programs and $15 billion to supplement the existing federal Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program, which provides funds to states to help low- and moderate-income families afford child care and invest in the supply and quality of child care.

As a result of insufficient child care funding, families are struggling to find and afford the child care they want for their children and early educators are receiving very low wages that make it challenging to support themselves and their families—or even stay in the field.

Many states worked to address these gaps in child care and early education in their 2024 legislative sessions, as shown in the state-by-state summaries in this report.2 States made great strides in their policies and investments—increasing funding for child care assistance, improving early educators’ compensation through wage supplements or other efforts, creating initiatives to increase the supply of child care, expanding access to prekindergarten and early intervention programs, implementing new or improving existing child care tax credits, and/or adopting other strategies.

States’ actions this legislative season are noteworthy and indicate an increasing recognition of the critical role that child care and early childhood education play in supporting families, children, and the nation’s economy. Yet, ensuring a strong, stable child care sector that offers access to affordable care to all families and fair compensation and good working conditions to all early educators across the country will require that state efforts be accompanied by sustained, significant federal investments.