Safety Nets

This report highlights numerous examples of how American Recovery and Reinvestments Act funds have made an important difference for children and families by enabling access to child care assistance, as well as investments in the quality of care. Most notably, ARRA child care funds are helping to prevent families from losing the assistance they need, and expanding this important support to families who have been waiting for much-needed help.

Despite the ARRA funds, states are facing serious budget shortfalls and several have made cuts that negatively impact the availability, affordability, and quality of child care.  With ARRA funds expected to expire at the end of 2010, and a grim outlook for states’ budgets, child care still hangs in balance.

Spouse or family Social Security benefits are important for women because many women do not earn sufficient credits throughout their working career to be eligible for their own benefits due to caregiving for children or other family members. A recent analysis shows that 30 percent of women workers spent 4 or more years out of paid work during a 15-year period, compared with only 4 percent of men.  A larger percentage of women than men become eligible for Social Security benefits as spouses, caregivers of minor children, widows, surviving dependent parents, and so forth.

To close the gender pay gap, we must address the root causes of women’s lower wages, which includes the segregation of men and women into different kinds of jobs and the inflexibility of the workplace to women’s greater responsibilities for family care. There could not be a more important time to address the issue of gender pay equity. Women are now half of all workers on U.S. payrolls and two-thirds of mothers are bringing home at least a quarter of their family’s earnings. This means the gender pay gap is not just a woman’s issue, it is a family issue that affects the millions of young, old, and middle-aged Americans who rely on a woman breadwinner or co-breadwinner in their family.