Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s universal child care proposal comes as American families are feeling more financially pressured than ever by child-care costs.

Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, has said she wants to use a “wealth tax” to fund subsidies that would cover the entire cost of child care for families who make below 200% of federal poverty-level income (about $51,200 for a family of four). The proposal would also pay for care for families who earn more, capping the cost at 7% of a family’s income.

Families shouldn’t spend more than 7% of their income on child care, according to a 2016 recommendation by the Department of Health and Human Services, but there’s no state in the country where parents can follow that recommendation, a 2018 analysis by Child Care Aware of America found.

Parents across the country spent $9,000 to $9,600 annually for one child’s day care in 2017, up roughly 7.5% on the year, according to Child Care Aware of America’s study of national average costs. “No matter how you look at the statistics, child care is unaffordable for families across the country,” it said.

The clamp on household budgets is getting tighter. A married couple making the national median income ($87,757) will have to devote 10.6% of their money for child care, up from 10.2% the year before.

“ ‘Parents are in crisis.’ ” — — Dionne Dobbins, senior director of research at Child Care Aware of America

Child-care costs smack single parents even harder. Child-care costs can eat up 37% of a single parent’s household income.

“Parents are in crisis,” Dionne Dobbins, senior director of research at Child Care Aware of America, told MarketWatch. “Unaffordability has remained the same from year to year. We know wages have pretty much remained stagnant.”

Child Care Aware cautioned that national averages are a blunt assessment of costs and noted there are all sorts of variables that differentiate many child-care bills. In every region, however, child-care costs are roughly double the price of a year’s tuition to an in-state public university. Child-care costs for one infant and a 4-year-old are cheapest in the South ($17,193 on average) and most expensive in the Northeast ($24,815).

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Child-care workers are paid an average of just $11.42 per hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but care centers face many other costs, including rent/mortgage, building and liability insurance, security, staff training, toys and other materials, and utilities. Plus, companies typically keep a low ratio of care giver to children.

Concerns over child-care costs appear to be one unifier in a politically polarized America. The First Five Years Fund, an early childhood advocacy group, found that 80% of people who supported Donald Trump and 79% of Hillary Clinton supporters wanted federal lawmakers to work on early childhood education with the Trump Administration.

The federal budget signed in February 2018 earmarked $5.8 billion for the government’s Child Care Development Block Grant; the grant, among other things, subsidizes certain child care. The 2017 budget allotted $4.8 billion, according to the organization.

That was a “step in the right direction,” but more needs to be done to reduce child-care costs, especially at the federal level, Dobbins said. For instance, funding for the Child Care Access Means Parents in School program, which supports low-income student parents, shrank from $25 million to $15 million between 2001 and 2017, the report said.

Companies lose $4.4 billion because of child care-related absenteeism, Child Care Aware of America said, adjusting a 2004 study for inflation.

Some companies have improved their child-care policies. In 2018 Starbucks SBUX, +1.51% said it would offer 10 subsidized back-up child care days annually to workers, meant to help staffers who find themselves in a jam when care arrangements fall apart. The company is teaming up with Care.com so that workers can pay a dollar an hour for backup care, or $5 for a day’s stay at in-center child care.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an executive recruiting firm, said the perk one example of companies pitching in on child-care and family-leave issues to attract and keep workers in a tight labor market.

This story was updated on March 8, 2019.