The United States loses an estimated 172 billion dollars a year in earnings, productivity and tax revenue because of gaps in child care, according to figures cited by Pablo Marcelo Barreiro, chairman and co founder of Fortec, a Miami based real estate developer focused on early childhood education facilities. In a recent commentary, Barreiro argued that the number gets treated mainly as evidence of an affordability problem, when the more basic issue is that there are not enough physical classrooms to meet demand.
Nearly half of young children in the United States live in communities without enough licensed child care supply to serve them, Barreiro wrote, a gap that persists even in places where families can afford care and are actively looking for it. He points to survey data showing that 59 percent of parents who are working part time or not at all said they would return to full time work if affordable, quality child care were available, and that 52 percent of voters reported missing shifts or cutting their hours because of child care problems.
Barreiro's argument is that private capital has been slow to treat early education as real estate infrastructure in the way it treats housing, logistics warehouses or data centers. Investors are more familiar with those asset classes and have deeper data on how they perform, he said, which leaves child care facilities undercapitalized relative to the demand for them. Fortec manages an investment fund built around that gap, developing and financing buildings meant specifically for early childhood programs.
His broader point is that child care should be planned for the way roads, water systems and other public infrastructure are planned for, rather than left to whichever operator can find and afford a suitable storefront or church basement. Without more classroom capacity, he argues, expanding access to child care will keep running into a physical ceiling no subsidy or tax credit can raise on its own.
The commentary lands alongside a broader national conversation about the cost of child care and its drag on labor force participation, particularly among mothers of young children. Barreiro's proposed fix puts real estate developers and investors at the center of that conversation, arguing that building more capacity is the precondition for making child care more affordable rather than a separate problem to solve later.