By Steven Cohen, Ph.D., Director of the M.S. in Sustainability Management program, School of Professional Studies
While New York City is gradually evolving into a city that is environmentally sustainable, the high cost of housing, food, and childcare is making the city less affordable to anyone who isn’t well-to-do. A sustainable city must offer a desirable quality of life, but ironically, that desirability has gentrified many neighborhoods, raising the costs of living for long-time residents. If New York City were the disaster painted by the right-wing media, housing prices would be going down rather than up. The incoming mayor campaigned on a theme of affordability, proposing several policies that made for better sound bites than for feasible and affordable policies. However, one policy, universal childcare, while perhaps a heavy lift, could well be a signature policy that would make the city more affordable and more family-friendly than today’s New York.
When many young New Yorkers decide to have children, they often also decide they need to leave the city to afford the cost of raising a family. As expensive as housing is, childcare may well be worse. Universal childcare has an impressive multiplier effect as a public investment: The children enrolled have a better chance at personal success, their parents are better able to earn income, and people gain employment as teachers and caregivers.
The cost estimate of universal pre-k childcare for a year-round system matching the workday is about seven billion dollars a year. The costs would be at least $24,000 per child. The supply of teachers and aids would need to be dramatically expanded, and the capital costs of constructing the massive increase in classrooms would also be large. According to a 2018 report of the New York City Council Finance Committee:
“The average estimated cost per pre-K seat is approximately $100,000. As with K-12 capacity projects the cost per seat for each project ranges widely, from $7,000 to $341,000… SCA [School Construction Authority] estimates an average cost of $164,000 per seat in pre-K projects it expects to build, six projects, and $87,000 per seat in pre-K projects it expects to lease, 65 projects…The average time to complete a pre-K capacity project is approximately 17 months total: 8 months for design and 9 months for construction.”
New York City has about 465,000 children under five years old. It is difficult to project how many would use public early childhood preschool. If we estimate that 50% of eligible children under 2 used the service and 80% of those between 2 and 5 used it, we’d end up with about 300,000 children in early childhood programs. At $24,000 per student, the total cost per year would be $7.2 billion. Utilization would depend on the quality of care, preference for private schools, and the presence of childcare in the home.
An expansion of childcare in New York City would build on what was perhaps the greatest and possibly only long-term accomplishment of Bill de Blasio’s eight years as mayor. Like Mamdani, he campaigned on taxing the rich to pay for public pre-school, first for 4-year-olds and then for 3-year-olds. Instead, the state enacted a state-wide preschool law that provided most of the funding for the city’s program. The city’s program utilizes a mix of Department of Education, non-profit, and private childcare providers. Today, about 60,000 of the city’s four-year-olds and 40,000 three-year-old children attend public pre-K programs. This is about 50% of the city’s three-year-olds and close to 70% of the city’s four-year-olds. Presumably, some parents utilize private care, and others prefer to provide family care at home. While there have been problems matching seat availability with the districts children reside in, overall, the program has been a success that an expanded program could build on.
The city’s Department of Education is not known for management competence, and the power of unions in New York City’s public education system should not be underestimated. Additionally, childcare in New York City is heavily regulated. Nevertheless, strong mayoral leadership coupled with a singular focus on preschool as a central priority could enable this initiative to succeed. Without constant mayoral leadership and competent and experienced management, universal early childhood education will fail. The early childhood education program proposed by Mandani would drive other policy priorities from his agenda, but it might well be worth it. The impact of this initiative would be massive. According to a January 2025 report by NYC Comptroller Brad Lander:
“The provision of free, universal child care would provide substantial benefits… Higher labor force participation and increased work hours of mothers could increase labor income by nearly $900 million…The disposable income of families could increase by up to $1.9 billion due to the avoidance of child care costs…Employers could gain $900 million annually from lower turnover and absenteeism. Given the substantial economic benefit, it is likely that more families would choose to remain in New York City if provided with free, high-quality child care, boosting population growth. Furthermore, many studies have identified the cognitive and social gains in children that can result from access to high-quality child care. These benefits are more difficult to quantify but they are key for the growth and well-being of the city’s population and economy, and therefore for the city’s long-term economic vitality.”
Census data indicate that New York City is losing families while continuing to attract people without families. This is the heart of the affordability issue that Mayor-elect Mamdani ran on. While much of his support was from young people without children, I suspect that many of them would be attracted to this policy. In any case, few would oppose it. While other parts of his agenda might run into opposition, it is easy to imagine that universal pre-K could be a city-wide consensus issue. I am a capitalist and not a socialist, and do not believe that public education is a left- or right-wing issue. It is an investment in a more productive city and its most valuable resource: its children. Extending pre-school to year-round and to very young children will make New York City a more attractive place to live. That has economic and quality-of-life benefits that will multiply and feed on themselves over time.
There are practical problems that must be overcome and finding seven billion dollars a year without raising taxes will be impossible, particularly when the state and city will face a vengeful and erratic opponent in the White House, determined to reduce federal spending in New York. Taxes in New York are already high, and it is true that higher taxes on the wealthy will drive some residents to lower tax states. Of course, some of the wealthiest New Yorkers already own homes in New York and in low-tax states and carefully calibrate their time in other places to qualify for lower income tax rates. They remain in New York for some of the year but avoid our income taxes. So much for civic virtue.
Rather than focusing on a single source of revenue that perhaps fulfils the ideological preferences of the new mayor and the democratic socialists that are a major part of his political base, a more sophisticated and politically viable tax strategy would include a broader variety of revenue streams. Most new revenues require state approval, which, though unlikely while the Governor is trying to get re-elected, are necessary if pre-K is to expand. Increases in property tax are under city control, and each 1% increase generates about $330 million. New York City depends less on the property tax than other localities, and our property taxes are much lower than in nearby suburbs. But property taxes can be a regressive tax if imposed on middle-income homeowners. Nevertheless, an incremental increase in early childhood education could be funded with property taxes if the state refuses to increase taxes it controls.
One piece of the revenue puzzle might be to allocate routine and in part inflation-driven increases in city revenue to an education “lock box” trust account dedicated to early childhood education. Other possibilities (requiring state approval) include the restoration of the commuter tax, which could generate over a billion dollars a year, and the extension of the corporate tax to insurance company profits, which are now exempt from those taxes. Insurance taxes could generate over $670 million a year. In February 2024, the Independent Budget Office of New York City published a report identifying a number of options for generating additional revenues and estimated how much funding each option would raise. The excellent work by the IBO also details the views articulated by proponents and opponents of these tax ideas.
In addition to the need for funding, early childhood education in New York City is heavily regulated by a number of city agencies to ensure the health and well-being of children being served by childcare facilities. These rules could be streamlined and updated, and there might also be an effort to train and certify informal caregivers to expand the labor pool that will be needed to implement universal pre-K childcare.
New York City’s government adheres to a “strong mayor” model of urban administration. Our mayors have a great deal of power. However, cities are creatures of states and must seek state approval for many new taxes and policies. To be effective as a change agent, the new mayor will need to set priorities and focus on a narrower agenda than the one he campaigned on. Universal early childhood education would be difficult to oppose, and, if successfully managed, could provide a tangible accomplishment for the new administration to build on.
Views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Columbia School of Professional Studies or Columbia University.
About the Program
The Columbia University M.S. in Sustainability Management program offered by the School of Professional Studies in partnership with the Climate School provides students cutting-edge policy and management tools they can use to help public and private organizations and governments address environmental impacts and risks, pollution control, and remediation to achieve sustainability. The program is customized for working professionals and is offered as both a full- and part-time course of study.
