Will the Stimulus Plan Help Working Mothers?

Last month, President Biden revealed an economic stimulus package that was praised — even by conservative-leaning businesses and economists — for its size and scope.

But perhaps what was most notable was its specific focus on the economic burdens carried by women.

The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, as it is known, goes big on elements that have not traditionally been large parts of stimulus plans: public health, with funding to ramp up Covid-19 vaccine distribution and testing, and child care, all of which might help reverse the trend of women being pushed out of the work force.

“For six to nine months, progressive academics have been lighting their hair on fire, saying, ‘You have to do this and this and this,’” said Michael Madowitz, an economist at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, who has been studying the effects of the pandemic on parents. “It seems like a vast majority of those ideas are actually in this package in some form.”

Despite a pared down $618 billion counter-proposal from the Republican Party, the Senate on Friday passed Mr. Biden’s stimulus package, with votes for the resolution falling along party lines, leaving much of the plan more or less intact. The resolution will now move to the House. Here’s a closer look at how the package is designed to help women and families in particular.

Economic Recovery

The recovery package contains several proposals that may help families that are barely scraping by: expanding unemployment insurance programs, extending paid leave and continuing a moratorium on evictions, all of which would provide an extra cushion in case people continue having trouble getting back into the work force.

These proposals, taken together, are expected to cut child poverty rates in half, according to an analysis by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, bringing it down from 13.4 percent to 6.6 percent.

Mr. Biden’s plan also includes a direct $1,400 one-time check and an amendment adopted in the Senate restricts those checks to low-income earners. It’s still unclear what the threshold is, but lawmakers are discussing targeting those checks for individuals earning up to $50,000 a year and couples earning up to $100,000 a year.

Child Care

The plan would work to reopen kindergarten-to-eighth-grade schools within the first 100 days of the new administration, with $130 billion earmarked for resources to make it happen — from new ventilation systems to additional teaching programs that can help “make up lost learning time this year,” underscoring the fact that remote learning may have set back many children from lower-income families.

The plan also dedicates about $40 billion to child care, a significant increase in funding from the $10 billion that was included in the last stimulus package that Congress passed in December. More than half of the funding for child care in Mr. Biden’s plan — $25 billion — would help bail out providers, which were barely profitable before the pandemic and have been hanging on by a thread ever since.

An additional $15 billion would go to helping low-income families afford child care and expand tax credits to help parents cover the cost of care for children under the age of 13.

The proposal is “about children and parents, but it’s also about the teachers and the caregivers and making sure that they have safe workplaces,” Heather Boushey, one of the top economic advisers in the Biden administration, said in a call with journalists. “The package looks at both sides of that equation.”

Raising Minimum Wage

The plan also proposes raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour from $7.25 and ending tipped minimum wage, which would have a direct effect on women, particularly Black and Hispanic women.

In 2019, 68 percent of minimum wage workers and 66 percent of workers earning below minimum wage were women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the long run, the increased hourly rate might also help close the gender pay gap, particularly in the lowest-paying jobs, Mr. Madowitz said — although academic studies on this issue have been mixed.

This part of the package was dropped out by the Senate on Friday because it was seen as presenting small businesses with a heavy burden.

But Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, who has been a leading proponent of raising the minimum wage, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi both noted that they are seeking alternative ways to raise the wage, possibly even outside the stimulus package.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect the Senate’s passage of Mr. Biden’s proposal.