Asking families to shape Universal Child Care in New York City
New York City Mayor’s Office of Child Care
December 2025 - May 2026
Why This Matters For Families
Outside of housing, child care remains one of the largest household expenses and drivers of New York City’s affordability crisis. Population and school enrollment data indicate that the city is losing families with young children, as they move out of the boroughs in search of lower cost of living. While New York has increased income eligibility for subsidized care, many families still struggling with out-of-pocket child care costs remain ineligible, and demand for subsidies outstrips available resources – with the voucher waitlist climbing to over 10,000 children. A 2021 child care affordability study found that only 1 in 4 income-eligible families in NYC received government assistance for child care. Having universally accessible, affordable, and quality child care has the potential to reduce the economic pressure on families, saving families utilizing care today more than a collective $1 billion annually.
The Implementation Challenge
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is setting out to fulfill his campaign promise of bringing universal child care to the city. With a commitment of significant new public investments, big decisions are ahead of the team to expand child care in a way that balances impact, timeliness of delivery, quality, and equity. An additional 12,000 free publicly-funded slots for two-year-olds are expected by fall 2027. To be effective, the team needs to understand both the supply side - where can existing capacity be leveraged? - and demand - where is the need most felt and what kinds of child care options do parents actually want?
Absent this critical data, the city risks falling into the child care paradox: where there are waitlists in some areas and under-enrollment in others. Last year, about 1 in every 5 seats for the city’s free child care programs for children ages 4 and under, or more than 27,000 of roughly 136,000 seats, went unfilled, according to city data. It’s not only about providing more child care, it’s about providing the child care where it’s needed, when it’s needed, and by the caregiver or early educator parents want.
Our Approach
New York City’s phased-in approach to universal child care implementation and the Administration’s commitment to family input and outreach present a unique opportunity to bring the voices of those who will be most impacted by the program into policy design in a new and intentional way. To ensure the City’s universal child care program is informed by what families really want in child care, the New Practice Lab designed and launched a largest-of-its-kind representative survey of New York City parents with young children. Building off of the Lab’s National Parent Survey, and funded by the Robin Hood Foundation, the New York City Parent Survey will be open to New York City residents beginning on March 31, 2026. The survey will provide actionable data to the city by capturing:
The gap between current and ideal child care arrangements in terms of schedules (hours/days available) and type (e.g., relative, home-based, center-based, school)
Preferences for child care arrangements from birth to age three, to understand if and how preferences might change over early childhood
School district-level estimates of demand for formal care
Demographic information to understand distribution of needs at a school district level
How parents learned about and decided on their current child care arrangement
What qualities are most important in their child’s early care and education environments
Familiarity with existing NYS and NYC programs including child care subsidies, 3K, early intervention, and the Empire State Child Credit (New York’s CTC)
Utilization of paid parental leave as well as desired duration of parental leave
Average household child care expenses
A minimum of 2,500 participants from across NYC are expected to complete the survey. NORC at the University of Chicago is leading the sampling, recruiting a representative group of New York City parents, as well as data collection and analysis.
OBJECTIVE
Design & field a survey to understand early child care needs in NYC
WHAT WE DID
In Progress: Designed a 42-question survey instrument that takes an estimated 15 minutes to complete in English and Spanish. Tested with potential family respondents to ensure readability and understanding and improve usability. Collaborated with NORC, Robin Hood, and NYC Mayor’s Office of Child Care to design outreach strategies to increase uptake.
What We Learned
The survey instrument was finalized in March 2026, and was announced on March 31st in a mayoral press release. Parent responses will be collected over an approximately two-week period in early April. We expect to analyze results and share findings as quickly as possible.
Next Steps
We will analyze survey results and share publicly in early Summer 2026
