Mamdani Floats Free Child Care, New Yorkers Weigh Cost—and Hopes—of a City Baby Boom

Making child care less ruinous may be a minor policy tweak, but it could mean much for New York’s parents, workforce, and future birthrate.

After years in which Manhattan’s birthrate has fallen as steadily as the subway’s punctuality, a new proposal rubbing its sleepy eyes in City Hall offers New York’s beleaguered parents a glint of hope—and economists and demographers a natural experiment. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s bid to introduce free child care and preschool citywide would, if realised, represent the most sweeping expansion of family support since Michael Bloomberg banned smoking in bars.

The blueprint, floated last week, is beguilingly simple: within three years, every New York City family with children under five would be guaranteed access to municipally-funded nursery and pre-K, modelled on existing (and famously well-utilised) public school infrastructure. City officials and supporters tout it as both a salve for the nearly $21,000 per annum currently shelled out by the average New York parent for private child care, and as a way to foster loftier aims: increased fertility, rehabbing the city’s waning workforce, and arresting a decades-long “baby bust”.

The proposal’s headline cost hovers around $2.8bn annually—sterling, but less than one-sixth of New York’s police budget and a pinprick in an oaken $107bn city budget. With much of the city already providing (diverse, sometimes patchy) subsidised pre-K, Mr Mamdani’s pitch is to universalise and expand, capturing younger tots currently overlooked by the current patchwork and plugging coverage gaps for low- and middle-income families. It would be, supporters claim, the city’s answer to Copenhagen, Montreal, or other metropolises where public child care is not a fantasy, but a fact.

For many New Yorkers, the promise of free, high-quality child care is no mere luxury. Data from the Citizens’ Committee for Children indicate that a majority of parents with children under six report forgoing work, curtailing hours, or grappling with financial precarity owing to child care costs. That pressure falls especially heavy on mothers, for whom participation in the city’s labour force still lags men by roughly ten percentage points—an atavism more redolent of 1970s Wall Street than of a dynamic “21st-century city”.

The plan’s implications for the city are, if not exactly bucolic, at least resilient. Beyond boosting parental employment, measured studies—by Nobel laureate James Heckman and colleagues—find that city-sponsored early education yields long-term returns, particularly benefitting children from lower-income backgrounds via brighter educational and employment outcomes. If realised, a wholesale expansion could help even the playing field in a city where zip codes still all too often predict trajectories.

Yet the proposal’s second-order effects are subtler, and potentially more far-reaching, than even its authors may admit. New York has, in recent decades, posted historic lows in its birthrate— a paltry 1.23 children per woman in 2022—while also losing legions of young adults to suburbs, Sun Belt, and expanding exurbs, partly for fear they cannot afford to reproduce in situ. Should universally free child care become reality, it could portend not only a stabilising of the city’s population, but perhaps even a modest uptick in its much-mulled birthrate.

Economically, the consequences could, if we squint, be salutary. By narrowing child care disparities, the plan aims to close the “motherhood penalty” in earnings, increase labour supply, and foster higher productivity, all while injecting extra billions into local economies via reduced family costs. More work-friendly cities are, we reckon, more competitive—though not necessarily more equitable, unless quality care is ensured citywide.

Politically, the proposal’s prospects are uncertain. City Council centrists have already begun to grumble about costs, while Governor Hochul’s administration hints that state assistance will not flow freely. The city’s recent experience with universal pre-K—initially ridiculed as Scandinavian make-believe, now an established (if imperfect) part of municipal life—suggests such projects can win converts, though only after bureaucratic teething pains and some public scepticism.

Nationally, New York’s move would place it firmly within a, well, tepid American trend. The federal government’s cash for child care—last notably expanded by the Biden administration’s now-expired pandemic tax credits—is minuscule compared to the outlays of most developed nations: America spends just $500 per child under five, less than a third the OECD average. States such as Vermont and D.C. dabble with free pre-K, but none matches New York’s ambition. Globally, cities from Paris to Osaka deploy universal child care as economic infrastructure, not social largesse.

An imperfect panacea?

Of course, this scheme will not single-handedly fix New York’s multifarious headaches. Free child care cannot conjure affordable housing, bigger apartments, or less frenetic commutes—nor can it make subway platforms any less sticky in July. Oslo-level policies in a city with Chicago-level inequality might only go so far, especially if waiting lists, underpaid care workers, and slipping standards follow the funding surge.

Nonetheless, a city bold enough to tax sodas and ban plastic straws ought not shrink from expanding a service that, on the evidence, increases opportunity, boosts the economy and—possibly—slows urban decline. To guarantee universal access and avoid mere virtue-signalling, officials must ensure robust oversight, fair compensation for carers, and a commitment to quality as well as quantity.

If Mr Mamdani’s plan were somehow to trigger a modest “baby boomlet”—the merest nudge upward in the city’s sperm-count—New York, and perhaps America, might finally have grounds to claim it is serious about sustaining both family and future prosperity.

Free child care is no silver bullet. But providing it would hardly be a shot in the dark. ■