NYC candidate for mayor Zohran Mandani wants New Yorkers to have free child care: Is that even possible?
The frontrunner in the New York City mayoral campaign, Zohran Mamdani, has made free child care a major plank on his platform. He’s got his work cut out.
Voters will cast their ballots in New York City on 5 November to elect a new mayor. Thirty-three-year-old Zohran Mamdani is leading in the polls over former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who he beat in the Democratic primary, and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa.
One of the issues that has been propelling his candidacy is his promise to provide universal free child care in the Big Apple for children aged 6 weeks to 5 years. That’s not surprising as it cost families on average across the five boroughs to have their kids in a child care center $26,000 in 2024 according to a report from the city’s comptroller’s office.
“It’s literally driving [working families] out of the city,” states Mamdani’s campaign website. “New Yorkers with children under six are leaving at double the rate of all others.”
NYC universal child care: Zohran Mamdani has got his work cut out for him
Bringing universal child care to New York City will not be an easy feat and it will be costly. On top of coordinating existing public and private providers into the system, it will require creating new spaces for day care. Additionally, an army of new child care workers will have to be hired, which Mamdani proposes they and current child care workers be paid the same as public school teachers.
His campaign says that a universal child care system in the city will cost around $6 billion. Mamdani floated the idea of financing the program with taxes on the wealthiest residents. However, such a tax increase would have to be approved by the state legislature, and Governor Kathy Hochul, who is up for re-election in 2026, has made clear that she will not raise taxes.
Mamdani’s aides told The New York Times that they would push to get the tax increases but would also be open to finding other sources to fund universal child care.
For his part, New York City council member representing parts of Brooklyn and chair of the city’s committee on finance, Justin Brannan, feels that the city’s $116 billion budget has the money to pay for the program.
“We have been stuck in this cycle of false austerity where we are supposed to believe that we have to choose between little and even less, and it’s just not true. We just need to do a better job of spending our money,” he told the Guardian.
Lack of child care is costing NYC
In a video on his campaign website, Mamdani notes that the lack of affordable child care in New York has cost the city’s economy over $20 billion in the last few years alone.
The New York City Economic Development Corporation estimated that there was a $23 billion decrease in economic output, a $5.9 billion drop in disposable income, and $2.2 billion less in tax revenues as a result of parents leaving or downshifting careers because of increased caregiving responsibilities in 2022 which was exacerbated by the pandemic.
“We just cannot afford to not have universal childcare,” Allison Lew, senior organizer with New Yorkers United for Child Care told the Guardian.
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