A new research brief released today estimates there are potentially 4,454 children in the Omaha- Council Bluffs metro area who need child care but whose families can’t easily access it. Child care shortages could result in long-term economic losses of $221 million to $335 million, due to reduced labor participation, lower productivity, tax losses, and more.
The brief, from the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska, provides new data on the child care landscape in the City of Omaha and the surrounding counties in Nebraska and Iowa, including the number of children who potentially need care, the number of legally operating child care providers, and the gap between the two.
The findings are derived from a new distance-based methodology that quantifies the child care gap by factoring in the actual distance between existing child care spots and the homes of the children and families who need care.
