If your family looks a bit like Ivanka Trump’s, you might just have a shot at benefiting from the national child care proposal she’s shopping around Congress. But if you’re one of the millions of low- and middle-income parents hoping to catch a break? Don’t count on it.

The New York Times reported that the first daughter has been holding meetings “quietly” (she has no formal role in her father’s administration) to push her trademark issue of boosting opportunities for working women through child care and paid family leave policies. But a study released late last month shows that her father’s campaign promise to ease the burden of child care costs could end up mainly benefiting wealthy families.

Seventy percent of the total child-related tax benefits would go to families making more than $100,000, according to the paper by the Tax Policy Center. The child care proposal itself would cost about $115 billion over a decade, 2 percent of Trump’s overall $6.1 trillion tax plan. Neither the White House nor Ivanka Trump’s team has offered any additional specifics of the child care plan since the election, so the TPC’s study relies on details outlined during Trump’s campaign.

Trump’s most recent tax plan looks at first like it gives parents a tax break by allowing them to take a larger standard deduction, but other changes to the tax code — eliminating personal exemptions and repealing head of household filing status — end up more than offsetting that. (Vox’s Dylan Matthews has a more thorough look at potential middle-class tax increases here.)

Combined with those potential losses, families with an income between $20,000 and $50,000 actually face tax hikes, while families making between $50,000 and $75,000 would see an average increase of after-tax income of only 0.1 percent — virtually nothing.

The high cost of child care is a significant barrier for working Americans. This is especially true for a single parent, whose child care cost for one child age 4 or younger can be 20 to 60 percent of median income in all 50 states and reaches nearly 90 percent of median income in Washington, DC.

For married couples with young children, 4 to 13 percent of a state’s median income is spent on child care costs. If their combined income is too low, the cost of child care might compel a lower-paid parent to leave the workforce or deter a stay-at-home parent from rejoining it.

And of course these statistics don’t reflect the large numbers of families that rely on relatives who provide unpaid labor to watch over their children.

How Trump’s plan benefits high-income families

While the idea of getting a tax cut to pay for child care sounds beneficial to parents, Trump’s actual proposal delivers little tangible benefit to the families that need it the most.

His plan relies on three changes to the tax code: a refundable credit for low-income parents, an above-the-line deduction for child care costs, and a tax-preferred dependent care savings account.

The refundable credit applies to the two kinds of low-income families with child care expenses for up to four children under the age of 13:

• Single parents in the labor force who makes under $31,200
• Couples with both parents in the labor force making under $62,400 total

A refundable credit can allow a family to receive a refund, so if a family owes $1,000 in taxes and receive a refundable credit of $1,500, they’d get a $500 refund. In contrast, if the $1,500 were a nonrefundable credit — such as the existing child and dependent care tax credit — then the family wouldn’t owe any taxes but would have to forfeit the excess $500.

The refundable credit is, notably, not offered to low-income couples with one stay-at-home parent. Some conservatives have endorsed child tax credits, a benefit that parents would get whether or not they work outside the home, possibly encouraging them to stay home with their kids. But Trump’s credit would only apply to parents who need and pay for child care while they’re working. Qualifying families can claim the lesser of 7.65 percent of their child care expenses or 3.825 percent of the single parent’s income or the lesser-earning spouse’s income, capped at the average cost of child care per state.

Wealthy families obviously won’t benefit from this credit, but there’s not much for lower-income families to work with either. The authors of the study provided several examples of families with one 4-year-old child based in Michigan, where toddler care costs are close to the national median. A single mother who works full time could enroll her 4-year-old child in center-based care at the average cost of $8,328 a year. If she works at minimum wage and earns $15,000 a year, then child care would be about 55 percent of her income. She’d get a $574 credit from Trump’s plan, reducing her child care expenses to 51 percent — a measly 4 percentage points.

And the reality is that low-income families like hers typically pay much less than average statewide, meaning they benefit even less than the above example shows. In the case that a relative watched her child for free, a common arrangement, she wouldn’t get anything.

The above-the-line deduction is also capped at the average cost of child care for the child’s age in the state. Low-income parents who qualify for the credit could, theoretically, take the deduction, but they typically earn too little money to benefit.

The deduction includes the following kinds of families with child care expenses for up to four children under the age of 13:

• Single parents who make under $250,000
• Couples with two incomes under $500,000
• Couples with one income under $500,000

The first two groups would deduct their actual child care expenses up to the state average cost of care, while the third could deduct the full amount of the state average, despite incurring no actual child care expenses.

Unlike the refundable credit for lower-income families, who qualify only if every parent in the household works outside the home, couples with a stay-at-home parent would still benefit from the deduction. It’s “a belated recognition by the federal government of the economic value of the work provided by stay-at-home parents,” Trump’s plan says — but doesn’t clarify why the government doesn’t assign similar value in the form of a credit to stay-at-home parents in families that earn less.

The benefits across income range vary wildly under the deduction plan. For a two-parent family making $65,000, the $8,328 cost of enrolling a 4-year-old at a child care center for a year represents 12 percent of their income, qualifying them for the refundable credit. A similar couple making $250,000 only spends 3 percent of their income on the same child care. Both families could receive $600 from the existing CDCTC that typically helps middle- and higher-income families.

Since higher-income families pay higher marginal tax rates, a richer family will get a larger dollar value from the deduction. In this case, the lower-income family will get an additional tax break of $629 from the credit, but the family making $250,000 will get a $1,460 break from the deduction. That reduces the share of child care costs from 3 percent to 2 percent of their income, as opposed to the 11 percent of the lower-income family’s costs — though changes to the tax brackets could end up increasing the wealthier family’s taxes overall.

The dependent care savings account offers tax-free contributions and withdrawals for up to $2,000 per child per year, for all families with children. The funds must be applied to child care, after-school programs, private school tuition, or higher education. Low-income families — the limits are not specified in Trump’s plan — would receive a 50 percent match on their first $1,000 in contributions.

But DCSAs don’t tend to help low-income families for several reasons:

• There are low adoption rates of savings accounts like DCSAs among low-income families, even when offered assistance to open one.
• Lower-income families that did manage to save would likely spend the funds faster, and so would not benefit from any possible tax savings.
• No-tax savings is of no benefit to the lowest-income families, who don’t owe federal taxes.

Meanwhile, wealthy families can stow away thousands of dollars per child annually to be spent anytime in the future, and not just for standard child care: Music lessons and private school tuition, among other child-related costs, can be paid for with DCSA funds too.

For families living paycheck to paycheck, a child care plan advanced through changes in the tax code means that a break could only ever come once a year, and dependent care is needed year-around. Without the time or money to navigate through the various options, they’re also more likely to miss opportunities to save. And an overall tax reform package that costs $6 trillion over a decade could hack away at social services, thus hurting low- and middle-income families even more over time.

Winter Storm Stella battered the East Coast overnight, dropping more than a foot of snow in some parts of the Northeast by this morning, according to the National Weather Service. The storm also blanketed parts of the Midwest and Plains, with an average of 8 inches of snow accumulation near Milwaukee.

We created a map using the NWS’s National Snowfall Analysis to visualize the average snow accumulation in the contiguous United States. The map will update throughout the day as the analysis updates. Check out your location here.

The analysis shows an estimated average of 24 hours of snow accumulation in a given area around 6 square miles that includes data points from around 95 miles of that area — about the distance from Philadelphia to New York City. Measurements are taken around 8 am local time during daylight saving, and the analysis updates twice an hour as results come in.

Because the analysis deals with averages, the snow totals on the map might not match up with the depth of snow you observe in your backyard or front porch. That snow could have been affected by melting, compression, or drift. Similarly, the map won’t typically show areas with as much snow accumulation as the highest reported measurements from individual stations.

US rank in women’s government dropped 9 spots in the past year

And that’s a problem. Women and girls currently make up more than half the population in the US, but they’re represented by a Congress made up of 80 percent men. This isn’t just an issue in terms of equal representation — the proportion of women in government profoundly affects how all of society views women.

Other countries do it better

How did 103 nations outpace the US in women’s representation over the past 20 years? A mix of constitutional amendments or legislation for some countries and voluntary party quotas for others. Today, around half of the nations in the world use some kind of gender quota in government, according to the Global Database of Quotas for Women.

Take, for example, Bolivia. Twenty years ago, it ranked 98th for women’s representation, and as recently as 2008, only 16.9 percent of its representatives were women. But in 2009, the country passed a constitutional amendment requiring equal gender representation in government. The Bolivian legislature is now 53.1 percent women and ranks second in the world.

Percentage of women in lower or single house

But legislation isn’t necessary to put more women into office. Consider Sweden: In 1971, 14 percent of the country’s legislators were women. The next year, Sweden’s Liberal Party set a quota: 40 percent of its candidates would be women going forward. Other parties followed in the 1970s and ’80s, setting their own quotas for women candidates. Now Sweden’s government is 43.6 percent women, ranking sixth in the world.

The system didn’t require any change on the part of the government; no constitutional amendments were required. Rather, all that had to happen was for the parties to decide that gender representation was a priority.

Why American women are being left out of the political system

It’s not that the US hasn’t made any progress in equal representation. In fact, the percentage of women in Congress has risen steadily at about 1 to 2 percent every election. But the number of congresswomen in the past election didn’t budge at all, remaining at 104. (In one small sign of progress, women of color quadrupled in the Senate, from one senator to four.)

Number of women in Congress by congressional session since 1917

Beyond the lack of any kind of gender quota, incumbency is the biggest reason American women are being left out of the political system. On average, about 89 percent of House members run for reelection — and around 97 percent are reelected. This means that every election cycle, about 86 percent of the seats are already taken.

Legislators have started to serve longer too. In the 20th century, the average Congress member served about four years. Now the average House member spends 10.3 years in office and the average senator serves 9.7 years. This, again, creates less opportunity for new politicians to serve.

But it turns out that women are also less likely to run for office in the first place. A study by Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox has shown that women consistently underestimated their qualifications and perceived themselves differently than men who had nearly identical credentials. Women were also more likely to perceive campaigning as harder and were less likely to have anyone — whether a friend or a party official — encourage them to pursue political office.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from Lawless and Fox’s study is this: Potential women candidates were 15 times more likely than men to be responsible for the majority of child care, and six times more likely to manage most housework. With those kinds of obligations, who has the time to run for office?

More women in government affects how society thinks of all women

One reason we might care about increasing women’s representation in government is if we think they will govern differently — if we think different laws will get passed or certain topics will get discussed at greater length.

There is research that shows this to be true. Georgetown professor Michele Swers’s study of women’s policy impact in government shows that women consistently co-sponsor more bills related to women’s health than their male counterparts, regardless of liberal or conservative ideology. 

But more importantly, having more women in government changes how society thinks about all women — and how young women think about themselves.

Christina Wolbrecht, a political scientist at Notre Dame University, has found that adolescent girls are more likely to indicate an interest in running for office during years when there is lots of media coverage of women in politics.

Another one of her studies looked at 23 developed countries with varied levels of women in government. It found that in the countries with more female legislators, young women were more likely to participate in politics and have political discussions, and that young women expressed a greater interest in becoming politically active in the future.

Or consider an influential 2012 study in the journal Science, which looked at what happened when India randomly assigned some political positions to women. In villages assigned to have female “pradhans” — essentially city council chiefs — parents became more aspirational in what they expected of their daughters.

The fraction of parents who believed that a daughter’s occupation (but not a son’s) should be determined by her in-laws declined from 76 percent to 65 percent. Adolescent girls in those areas also became less likely to want to be housewives — and the gap in educational attainment between young boys and young girls completely closed.

All of this research shows that it can matter hugely when we see someone like ourselves in a position of power. It shows: You can do this too. But right now, too many women and girls in the US aren’t getting this message.

Read more about the lack of women in Congress here.

President Donald Trump used a new word in his first major address to Congress: parents.

Trump called for bipartisan support of two of the big campaign promises he pitched to appeal to women and middle-class families — a national child care plan and paid family leave.

“My administration wants to work with members of both parties to make child care accessible and affordable,” he said, “to help ensure new parents that they have paid family leave.”

The key phrase is “new parents.” It reflects a rumored tweak to his campaign promise, which pledged to provide six weeks of maternity leave to birth mothers only, excluding birth fathers, adoptive parents, and LGBTQ parents who didn’t give birth. “New parents” is arguably more inclusive.

The political reality to any proposal on paid family leave (mom, dad, or otherwise) faces huge obstacles in the Republican-controlled Congress, though the Atlantic reports that there’s at least some interest on both sides of the aisle.

Still, Trump’s calls of support were essentially a blip in an hour-long speech aimed at laying out a number of his legislative priorities on health care, immigration, border security, and infrastructure.

Any advancement of these policy issues has generally been credited to first daughter Ivanka Trump, who, despite having no official White House role, has made “women who work” her central policy issue in her father’s administration (as well as her professional marketing strategy). During a pre-election interview with Cosmopolitan and the ensuing fallout, she faced tough criticism over gender exclusions and the possibility of her plan being unconstitutional.

Trump’s child care and elder care plan — released September 2016 on his campaign website — involves tax deductions for a maximum of four dependents, the creation of dependent care savings accounts, and a larger earned income tax credit for lower-income families. Companies would also be required to give six weeks of paid maternity leave for birth mothers, paid for through existing unemployment insurance programs. 

According to the Tax Foundation, a conservative think tank on tax policies, the child care deductions in Trump’s plan alone would cost an estimated $500 billion over 10 years, a cost likely to deter Republican legislators. Democrats wouldn’t find too much to like about the plan, either. The child care deductions won’t help families who earn too little income to pay taxes, and the proposed credit rebates are too low to adequately cover child care. 

To offset his plan’s high costs, Trump has proposed altering the cutoff for the lowest income tax rate, cutting deductions for married couples, and eliminating personal exemptions and head-of-household filing status. An analysis by NYU Law’s Lily Batchelder shows that such plans would actually end up raising taxes for about 20 percent of households with minor children, including more than half of all single-parent households.

Before his inauguration, Trump had directed House members to include child care tax write-offs in forthcoming tax legislation, with paid maternity leave “likely …. pursued separately,” according to Politico. More recently, Ivanka Trump and Dina Powell, Trump’s senior counselor on economic issues, met with lawmakers to push proposals for both the child care plan and paid maternity leave.

Kevin Brady, the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee and the architect of the House GOP’s tax reform efforts, told Vox’s Jim Tankersley in an interview this week that his staff has talked about child care issues with Ivanka Trump’s staff.

While Trump indicated in his address on Tuesday that child care affordability and paid parental leave continue to be priorities for his administration, he’ll face a difficult path persuading a Republican-led Congress to pass tax code rewrites to support family-friendly policies, especially with Obamacare repeal and replace still on the table.