A survey on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2023 zeros in on one segment of the population – the parents of children under 18, and the decline in their sense of financial security. 

Survey results from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System saw the percentage of parents who feel financially secure decline from 69% in 2022 to 64% in 2023. That’s a steep drop from the high of 75% in 2021, and the lowest level of financial security since 2015.

One clear problem: The monthly cost of child care, which is now almost as high as the cost of rent for some families. Several contributing reasons cited in the report are the end of pandemic-era child care tax credits and diminished financial support for child-care organizations.

We learned about the May 2024 report from the California Research Bureau’s “Studies in the News”, which comes out every Wednesday. We first wrote about this useful guide to government surveys, reports and studies several weeks ago in the B&G Weekly Selection of management news (May 21 edition). 

The most recent version of “Studies in the News”, which came out on June 19, included six studies covering the economy, education, general government, health, and human services. It also includes a report from KPMG Economics, which shows that childcare costs over the last thirty plus years have been rising at almost twice the rate of inflation.

In addition, this most recent “Studies in the News” compilation also contained several paragraphs about an interesting intergovernmental scandal that erupted more than 80 years ago between the California governor at the time and the legislature. This intriguing bit of history comes courtesy of Alex Vassar, communications manager of the California State Library. As he explains, a legislator discovered a microphone in his room in 1940 and a subsequent legislative investigation found that the “responsible party” for wiretapping was Governor Culbert Olson, who was voted out of office in 1942.

We have not found an easy way to access “Studies in the News” through a single URL, so we can’t provide one here. But the California Research Bureau provides a link for subscribing to this and its other newsletters. 

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