New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is moving forward with plans to implement “free” universal childcare for all New York City children. In an announcement earlier this month, Mamdani, alongside New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, said that the program will launch this fall and will be offered to 2,000 NYC families. As of now, it is projected to cost $73 million. However, the program is likely to be expanded to cover 12,000 children by fall 2027 and grow to as many as 100,000 within four years.
“As New York’s first mom Governor, achieving affordable, universal child care has been a key priority for my administration and we are doing the work to see it through. That’s why we didn’t hesitate to partner with New York City to lay the groundwork and fund not one, but two years to realize the full implementation of free child care for all two-year-olds across the city,” Hochul declared. Mamdani promised that this was only the beginning.
Assuming that the program even sticks to the budget that has been announced, this new program will cost taxpayers $36,500 per child for the first 2,000 children, costing taxpayers a total of $73 million in the first year. The program then is expected to grow to $425 million the next year, or around $35,400 per child. Funding plans haven’t been announced after that, but assuming that the state continues to spend $35,000 per child, the program would end up costing taxpayers $3.5 billion per year when fully implemented over the next four years. And that’s even assuming that it isn’t then expanded even further.
Based off of 2026 data, which estimates that the average cost for childcare for infants is $20,439 annually, this new “free” childcare will actually cost more than an additional $16,000 per child. If the childcare industry in New York is anything like Minnesota, (or even the adult care industry in New York), taxpayers will end up seeing hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars stolen from them.
Levi Mikula is an editorial intern with The Heartland Institute.
Chris Talgo (CTalgo@heartland.org) is the editorial director and a research fellow at The Heartland Institute, as well as a researcher and contributing editor at StoppingSocialism.com.
