Joe Biden’s Nominee for Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen Has A Long History of Supporting Early Childhood Education and Care

Recently,  Joe Biden announced he would nominate Janet Yellen who previously served as the leader of the Fed to be his Treasury Secretary

In 2017 she told a conference ““Ensuring that all of our kids have ‘strong foundations’ will help build a similarly strong foundation for the U.S. economy,”

In another speech in the same year she said “At least partially because of a lack of early childhood education and the sometimes lower quality of schools, children in these neighborhoods score substantially lower on standardized tests and drop out of high school at higher rates. Thus, a starting point is to improve access to quality education in early childhood and improve the quality of primary and secondary schooling.”

The New York Times wrote and article highlighting Yellen’s belief how child care is tied to women’s economic opportunities writing “Bringing more women into the work force with policies like expanding the availability of paid leave, affordable childcare and flexible work schedules, she said, could help to lift the American economy from a long stretch of slow growth.

“Evidence suggests that many women remain unable to achieve their goals,” Ms. Yellen said in a speech at Brown University. “If these obstacles persist, we will squander the potential of many of our citizens and incur a substantial loss to the productive capacity of our economy at a time when the aging of the population and weak productivity growth are already weighing on economic growth.”

Forbes speculates that Yellen will play an important role hammering out Biden’s overall economic plans including trying to “Make the child care tax credit temporarily refundable, increase it to $3,000 and allocate an additional $600 credit for children under six”

It should not be suprising that Yellen understands the importance of child care. When she was younger, she and her husband put out an add looking for child care.

It will be interesting to monitor if Yellen finds ways to support early education and care when she is confirmed as Treasury Secretary.