New York Times Article quotes Kearney in discussion of child care and opening the economy
One-quarter of American workers have at least one child under the age of 13 at home.
Jim Tankersley and Ben Casselman recently wrote in the New York Times that with the resurgence of the COVID-19 the economy continues to be threatened. Faculty Associate Melissa Kearney pointed out that "There are millions of workers that can't go back to work if their kids don't have a safe place to be, most days a week. This is not, get schools open or don't get schools open. We need to figure out a way to get schools open safely." Only 16 percent of all workers with a young child have a nonworking spouse at home who could plausibly care for children who are not in school.
See the complete article in the New York Times.
The authors provided a follow up story that again quoted Dr. Kearney. This story discusses the impacts of being half open and half shutdown on the economy. Dr. Kearney illustrates what it would take for schools to be able to open safely so that working parents can return to work themselves. “Schools are going to need a lot more resources to get open safely, given we haven’t gotten the virus under control in a lot of places,” says Dr. Kearney. “The less control we have over this virus, the more expensive it’s going to be. State and local governments, reeling from plummeting tax revenues, don’t have the resources for such changes. But the federal government does. And it could be money well spent: Allowing schools to reopen safely would free up adults for work and allow other economic activity to resume."