Could Child Care Tip the Mayoral Race?

“Raising children is very expensive. Raising children in NYC is frightfully expensive,” said Captain Obvious.

Mayors past and current have made efforts to lower the costs of child care.

“However these efforts have been fatally flawed with the extremely low wages and a pay gap that allows a huge disparity in the compensation paid by NYC Public Schools as contrasted to what NYC pays child care workers. Further compromising the ability to operate is the NYC Department of Education bureaucracy, which is challenged to provide reasonable financial support,” said Michael Rochford, executive director of St. Nicks Alliance.

The current candidates for NYC mayor each have their own ideas about child care on their platforms.

Curtis Sliwa doesn’t mention his plan for child care directly on his site. He lists many education initiatives for school-age students, and his ideas on affordability mainly deal with affordable housing. He does acknowledge that parents are leaving the city because of the high cost of raising children. He wants to prevent this, but doesn’t specifically say how.

Former Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a comprehensive plan to expand child care and early education on March 8, 2025.  His mother was a teacher, and she influenced him as to how education is an equalizer. 

“Working families in New York City face a child care and early education crisis. As mayor, I will ensure that every three-year-old has access to a high-quality education so no family is forced to choose between paying rent and paying for child care,” said Cuomo. On his campaign site, he guarantees a suitable 3-K slot to all families and will work to ensure sufficient 3-K programs are offered where families live and work. He also plans to expand Pre-K by ensuring “its full universality and prioritizing neighborhoods with the highest unmet demand.” For families with children under three who “earn up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, about $100,000 for a family of four, [they] can access subsidized care and child care for younger children.” Cuomo doesn’t seem to address the wages of the child care workers, but he does mention expanding the workforce.  He also plans to eliminate child care deserts by “utilizing vacant spaces in businesses and public schools, and offering grants and loans to property owners, the plan will significantly increase the number of licensed child care providers.”

NYS Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani states on his platform when he is elected mayor he “will implement free child care for every New Yorker aged 6 weeks to 5 years, ensuring high quality programming for all families. And he will bring up wages for child care workers – a quarter of whom currently live in poverty – to be at parity with public school teachers.”

Four reports published between February 2024 and February 2025 underline the need to reduce the cost of child care in NYC: One by the 5BORO Institute published in February 2024, one by Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI) in June 2024, one by NYC Comptroller Brad Lander published in January 2025, and one by NYS Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli that was released in February 2025.

One observation in FPI’s analysis is “the State’s pattern of out-migration is primarily a result of an affordability crisis in the state, particularly for families with young children.”

The introduction to Lander’s Child Care Affordability and the Benefits of Universal Provision states, “The cost of child care is a major contributor to the affordability crisis in New York City, putting significant strain on working families with young children. While some of these families are eligible for subsidized care, the system is difficult to navigate and leaves tens of thousands of low-income families without subsidized care and thousands of middle-income families ineligible for vouchers yet still struggling to make ends meet.” Lander’s study states that from 2019 to 2024 the cost of center-based child care rose 23% for infants, 43% for toddlers, and 52% for preschoolers.

DiNapoli’s report cites, “From 2018 to 2023, New York’s average annual child care prices were higher than every other state except for Massachusetts, rising nearly 18 percent from $12,422 per child to $14,621.”

Several of the above reports reveal that the low wages of child care workers cause issues with staffing, which in turn causes lack of accessibility as there isn’t enough staff to care for a center’s capacity.

In addition to promising “free child care for every New Yorker aged 6 weeks to 5 years,” Mamdani has also promised “he will bring up wages for child care workers.” He is the only candidate to state this explicitly.

The importance of paying child care workers more fairly was addressed in Jon Campbell’s Gothamist article published on Oct 12, 2025.  In the piece, the campaign manager for the Empire State Campaign for Child Care, Shoshana Hershkowitz, “said the first step toward enacting a universal system is to stabilize and expand the workforce — which would require state funding to ensure child care workers get paid a livable wage.”

Then there is the matter of how these plans will be paid for.

Mamdani’s plan is estimated to cost between $5B–$7B and he has proposed to increase taxes on the rich. In the last debate, Mamdani said, “Making universal child care a reality costs about $5 billion, or $6 billion a year. If you raise the state’s top corporate tax rate to match that of New Jersey, you’d be raising $5 billion in and of itself.” 

Although, Governor Hochul supports universal child care, she is hesitant to raise taxes.

Cuomo’s plan would cost much less as it offers much less.

And so the voters will decide.