In these cities, housing and childcare eat up the vast majority of household income

Paying for housing and childcare can eat up more than half of the median U.S. family’s income, according to a report released by housing marketplace Redfin and childcare marketplace Winnie.

Largely, in most places, the cost of childcare mirrors the cost of everything else in a city.

“So in [Los Angeles], housing is going to be more expensive, childcare is going to be more expensive. I mean, burritos will be more expensive,” says Chen Zhao, head of economics research at Redfin. “But the correlation isn't perfect because childcare just doesn't vary in the same way. “

In the least affordable metro areas, housing can cost three times as much as childcare or even more. In the most affordable, housing is roughly twice the cost of childcare. Then there are the outliers, where childcare is nearly the same cost as housing, including Detroit, Michigan; Rochester, New York; and Gary, Indiana.

“There's some places where childcare just doesn't really exist for the most part. Like there's not a lot of availability,” said Sara Mauskopf, CEO and co-founder of Winnie.

Mauskopf calls those places childcare deserts. She said traditionally, those deserts have been rural, or poor, because those places don’t have enough children or dollars to make a childcare center viable.

“Now, it also can be places where it could just be really expensive to have real estate and open a childcare center,” Mauskopf says.

Meanwhile, all the costs that have gone up in the past few years, like utilities, real estate and fruit snacks, also have gotten more expensive for childcare providers. So the cost of childcare has been rising faster than the rate of inflation.

“One of the problems, though, is that the wages of childcare providers are not going up as much as the wages of other sectors, like retail and food service,” said Julie Kashen, who has more than two decades of experience studying and advocating for childcare policy.

That incentivizes childcare providers to leave and get jobs in those other sectors.

“So then your supply shrinks, your prices go up even more, fewer people can afford it,” Kashen says.

The spiraling cost of childcare is hardest on parents with young kids, because they require more labor.

“You can effectively deliver education to 100 college freshmen with one adult. You cannot do that with infants and toddlers,” said Taryn Morrissey, a professor of public policy at American University.

Morrissey advocates for public childcare before kindergarten. It’s already happening in California, New Mexico, and in Washington, D.C., where Morrissey’s kids entered public schools when they were 3 years old.