For students attending Glynn County schools, this Friday marks the beginning of summer break! As a child I always enjoyed school, but I also approached summer with relief and excitement. Two whole months of play, vacationing, relaxing, summer camps, etc.—two whole months of just living the dream.
Now, as the parent of a school-aged child, summer break still brings an air of excitement, but it is far less carefree than it seemed as a child.
I realize now what a privileged childhood I had, with a two-parent household, and a full-time working dad who made enough money to allow my mom to stay home with my sisters and me full-time. My son certainly enjoys many privileges that come with my reduced summer work schedule, but summer break for the child of a single, working mom looks a lot different than my summer breaks did. We look forward to the beach days, the pool days, and summer travel, but like many children of working parents, my child also will spend many summer days in some form of childcare, often rebranded as “summer camp.”
Summer camp is big business! One local website lists 34 different organizations offering summer camp opportunities this year in the Golden Isles. Summer camps vary widely in price and depend on the length of camp, whether camp is day-only or overnight, and the types of activities campers will participate in. The American Camp Association says camp fees vary from less than $100 to over $1500 per week. In my experience shopping for day camps in the Golden Isles, average day camps around here are around here are $150-$250 per week.
The American Camp Association is currently collecting data for a national study on the economic impact of summer camps. Their website, though, cites a 2021 study of 348 day and overnight camps (600,000+ campers) in Wisconsin. The study finds a $717 million economic impact on the state from summer camps. A similar study in the Northeastern U.S. in 2017 found a $3.2 billion impact of summer camps in that region. But, these two studies include only the operating expenditures and employment of the camps.
If you read my last article for this column, you already can identify some major shortcomings of this measure of economic impact. If summer camps did not exist, these employees would not necessarily be unemployed, and the money spent on camp would not necessarily go unspent. Thus, this measure may be useful in some contexts, but it does not truly represent what is gained in the state’s economy through the existence of summer camps.
The true impact of summer camp is in the service it provides. The American Camp Association article mentions, but does not include in the economic impact calculation, the benefits to children of the physical, educational, and social activities camp offers. Camps not only offer enriching activities that add to what students learn throughout the school year, but they also can help to mitigate the effects of summer learning loss and helping students bounce back into school the next year with greater ease.
But, perhaps the most significant economic impact of summer camp is in labor force participation of parents, specifically women. The Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research published findings that women’s employment-to-population ratio drops significantly from May to July. They find this drop is greatest among mothers of younger children, and they track the trend across states with differing school schedules to show that the drop in employment coincides with school closure. Women’s earnings fall 3.3 percent over the summer. And that is with the existence of summer camps! The true economic impact of summer camp is in how much greater the drop in women’s employment and wages would necessarily be without summer childcare.
In my family alone, that impact is huge. While I can do a lot of my summer working from home or while traveling, writing is especially hard with distractions. When you see publications or articles like this one from me during the summer break, we all have summer camp to thank.
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Dr. Melissa Trussell is a professor in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia who works with the college’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. Contact her at mtrussell@ccga.edu. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the College of Coastal Georgia.
Reg Murphy Center