A newly released national survey of parents with kids under 18 shows that Michigan parents are reporting higher rates of hardship than their counterparts across the country.
“It found that Michigan parents consistently report higher rates of debt, housing instability, and scheduling volatility than parents nationwide,” said Elliot Haspel, family policy expert and senior fellow at Capita, at a virtual press briefing on the survey results held on May 27, at this year’s Mackinac Policy Conference.
The survey gathered responses from a nationally representative group of 1,800 parents, 200 of which were from Michigan. It was carried out by public opinion polling firm YouGov on behalf of Capita, a nonpartisan think tank focused on children and families, via online survey.
Released at the beginning of May, the survey represents the second in an ongoing series spearheaded by Capita that will continue on a quarterly basis with the purpose of tracking the wellbeing of families with kids in the U.S. over an extended period of time.
Financial pressure, instability at work and feeling uncertain
Michigan parents of kids under 18 who were surveyed differed from their peers in a few significant ways, according to the Quarterly Insights from America’s Families study.
They felt higher rates of financial pressure, with 41% of Michigan parents of young kids saying in the last 12 months, they’d borrowed money, took on debt, or used payday in advance products to cover basic needs, as compared to the national average of 29%, said Haspel. [The margin of error for Michigan data is 7%, which report authors said was statistically normal for the smaller sample size. For the national survey, it’s 3.5%.]
That financial pressure bled into schedule stability, with 42% of Michigan parents agreeing that in the last 12 months, they’d felt forced to take on additional hours of work either by financial necessity or work pressure, as compared with only 30% of parents nationally who said the same.
And as a result, more Michigan parents – 56% of them – said that over the last two weeks they were bothered by feeling down, depressed, or hopeless at least once, which compares to the 49% of parents nationally who said the same.
“That means that more than half of Michigan families, in other words, woke up in the last two weeks feeling like things might not get better,” said Haspel.
While survey results show parent overwhelm across the United States is common, the results of Capita’s most recent survey shows that Michigan parents are more likely to report feeling overwhelmed.
“That gap is worth exploring further,” Haspel said.
Where Michigan parents align with others nationwide
Throughout other portions of the survey, Michigan parents more closely aligned with parents across the country around what they were experiencing.
Consistent with national data, over 30% of Michigan parents said that within the last month, they’d had work shifts canceled, shortened or extended with less than 24 hours’ notice, an issue causing predictability problems within family schedules.
“Kids don’t experience scheduling unpredictability as just a workplace problem, for them it looks like missing a recital or a game, inconsistent bedtimes, or parents arriving home distracted or stressed,” said Haspel.
Also consistent with national numbers, over 40% of Michigan parents said they’d delayed getting healthcare for themselves in the past year, 22% of which noted the reason being that they couldn’t get childcare.
“Parents are missing their own medical and dental appointments because they have nowhere to bring their children and no one to watch them,” the survey reads.
Online sports betting comes up as concern impacting families
The survey also found that online sports betting, which became legal in Michigan in 2021, is an increasingly common facet of daily life having an impact on families and household finances.
Consistent with national data, 34% of parents with minor children said that in the past 12 months, their household had reduced spending on essentials to place sports bets or cover sports betting losses.
While nearly half of Michigan parents said they think sports betting should be legal, 38% of parents said they were concerned that sports betting posed a financial risk to families like theirs.
“A family lens has largely been absent from the sports betting debate, but this data makes a compelling case that it belongs there,” the survey reads.
No silver bullet, state leaders call for coalition to address parent needs
State business and early education leaders speaking at the Mackinac policy conference press briefing spoke on the need for businesses, government and philanthropy to come together to address the myriad issues impacting Michigan parents brought up in the survey results from childcare and healthcare inaccessibility to economic instability.
They cited programs like Tri-Share – the Michigan-founded model that splits childcare costs among the individual, their company, and state government – and the Childcare SPARK childcare business accelerator program which started in Marquette county as examples of these kinds of coalitions working together across different sectors in service of families.
State policy leaders like Monique Stanton, president & CEO of the Michigan League for Public Policy, a policy institute focused on economic opportunity, also advocated for the expansion of existing programs that lessen the financial burden on families with young kids, like RX Kids, a cash payment program to families during pregnancy and between six to 12 months postpartum which currently exists in over 40 communities across Michigan. And for the creation of policies, like a fully refundable child tax credit, that give money back to families with children through tax refunds.
“We need solutions that build up Michigan families,” Stanton said.
Beki San Martin is a fellow at the Detroit Free Press who covers childcare, early childhood education and other issues that affect the lives of children ages 5 and under and their families in metro Detroit and across Michigan. Contact her at rsanmartin@freepress.com.
This fellowship is supported by the Bainum Family Foundation. The Free Press retains editorial control of this work.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: New survey shows what’s driving Michigan parents to overwhelm
Reporting by Beki San Martin, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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