The problem isn’t theoretical, it’s real and urgent for the approximately 445,000 New York City families with children under five years old. Many of those families – 80% in fact, can’t afford child care in the city.
And it’s easy to see why. A 2024 study found that a family of four needs an annual income of $318,406 to live comfortably in New York City, but according to the U.S. Census Bureau the median household income in the city was just $79,713 in 2023. When you are coming up short by over $200,000 the idea of staying in the city becomes quickly untenable, especially when the cost of childcare accounts for so much of a family’s monthly budget. For childcare to be considered affordable according to national guidelines it needs to account for no more than 7% of a family’s budget. But with the average cost of daycare for infants and toddlers in the city clocking in between $18,000 and $26,000 a year, child care for one kid alone would eat up over 20% of the average family’s income.
This impossible math is part of the reason why the majority of the people leaving the city are middle and lower income families. All of these families leaving translates to 186,000 fewer children in the city compared to just five years ago. A city without children, without families, is a city without a future…