See also: Trump’s Child Care Plan Doesn’t Help the Families that Won Him the Election by Rasheed Malik, Katie Hamm, and Harry Stein
A new analysis from the Center for American Progress calculates how much President Donald Trump’s child care plan will mean for Trump swing voters. Using county-level election results, the research identifies Trump swing counties as those in which the vote margin swung at least 15 percentage points toward the Republican candidate from 2012 to 2016. These communities are more likely to be found in the Midwest, northern Plains, and Appalachia.
Nationwide, the typical family with two young children in Trump swing counties would only net $5.55 under Trump’s plan, even after spending thousands of dollars on child care. Meanwhile, the typical family of four with two young children in Trump’s former Upper East Side neighborhood would get a $7,329 tax break from the Trump child care plan.
This fact sheet features seven state-level estimates of the meager benefit that families in Trump swing counties will receive under the Trump child care plan.
Methodology
This analysis assumes no changes to the current 2017 tax brackets and uses the design of President Trump’s child care proposal as laid out in September 2016. The author uses county-level election results to identify Trump swing counties and the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey microdata to estimate the median income of families with young children in these counties. Child care spending is estimated using the National Survey of Early Care and Education and has been inflated to 2017 dollars.
For more detail on the methods the author used, see the methodology memo here.
Rasheed Malik is a Policy Analyst on the Early Childhood Policy team at the Center for American Progress.