by Molly Parker, Capitol News Illinois

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Capitol News Illinois. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Sixty percent of rural Americans live in child care deserts — regions with too few licensed slots for children. In rural Illinois, that number rises to nearly 70%.

Over the past decade, Illinois has experienced a 33% decline in licensed child care providers, losing nearly 4,300 facilities and about 38,000 licensed slots for children. This loss, driven by years of budget cuts, has outpaced the shrinking child population and hit rural areas the hardest. In 2019, during his first year in office, Gov. JB Pritzker acknowledged that rural providers were closing at an “alarming rate” and vowed to make Illinois the “best state in the nation for families raising young children.”

While the state has increased payments to providers in recent years, it hasn’t been enough to reverse the damage caused by years of budget cuts. The COVID-19 pandemic further destabilized the already fragile system. Despite additional state and federal funding, Illinois has lost about 1,300 providers since Pritzker took office.

But opening new facilities is hard, and the government itself makes things harder. Here are five reasons it’s difficult to open and operate new child care centers in Illinois:

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