More than 80 percent of the city’s families cannot afford full-time child care, while at the same time it is becoming harder for daycare owners to survive and many have closed, according to a study.
The study was published by the nonprofit 5 Boro Institute, and it shows that the growing child care affordability crisis has driven many young families to leave the city.
The City is asked to take action by helping families with the cost of child care or providing more child care services.
“The future of our city depends on the availability of high-quality, affordable child care services,” said Grace Rauh, executive director of the institute.
In 2022 alone, the city had an estimated loss of $23 billion in economic activity due to parents who have left the workforce or reduced their careers to help care for their children, Rauh detailed in an interview with NY1.
Under federal affordability guidelines, a family should spend no more than 7 percent of their income on child care. However, in places like Queens, the study notes that for many families the cost of child care consumes a third of family income.
For this reason, many parents (mostly mothers) choose to stop working due to the need to take care of their children and the alternative of high costs for daycare (easy between 15 and 20 thousand dollars a year).
A family would have to have an income of about 300 thousand dollars a year to pay these amounts and only consume 7% of their income. Hence it is said that 80% of families cannot afford full-time child care.
Another problem that the study points out is the increasing costs and difficulties of finding personnel and others for the daycare centers themselves.
