New Mexico Offers Free Childcare for All. The Federal Government Should Follow Suit.

Last week, New Mexico announced that it will become the first state in the nation to provide no-cost universal childcare for all its residents. This comes as welcome news in a country in the throes of a decades-long childcare crisis. I spoke with USA Today this week about the significance of this news out of New Mexico.

In a time of overwhelmingly untenable costs for Americans, childcare is among the most urgent cost-of-living issues. The news from New Mexico shows a state government acknowledging the toll that childcare costs take on families’ wallets by providing no-cost childcare for everyone. Implementation of universal childcare at a scale yet to be seen in the US will not be easy, and we look forward to learning more details about the New Mexico program.

Roosevelt, along with our partners at Community Change, put out a paper in July sharing principles that should undergird a universal childcare system, drawn from speaking directly with childcare providers, parents, and grassroots community organizers. New Mexico’s plan in its early stages includes several pieces that align with the principles we laid out in our paper:

Universal program, targeted rollout: New Mexico plans to begin the rollout of the new program focused on infants and toddlers (who often lack available slots because of a higher cost of care), as well as low-income families and children with special needs. Many of the stakeholders we spoke to referenced the need to combine the principle of true universality with a rollout that would prioritize children and families with the highest needs.

Supply-side investments to ensure sufficient spots: New Mexico also announced dedicated funding to construct, expand, and renovate childcare facilities. It’s heartening to see the state realize the need for building out supply, a main tenet of our guiding principles. For too long, US childcare policy has focused on demand-side interventions like tax credits and subsidies. 

Investing in the workforce: The state also plans to address the workforce shortage, through a statewide campaign to recruit licensed and registered home providers, higher reimbursement rates to reflect the true cost of care, and an additional incentive rate for programs that commit to paying entry-level staff a minimum of $18 per hour. The stakeholders we spoke to for our paper all deeply understood the connection between the low wages for childcare workers and the lack of availability of care. Our provider stakeholders in particular made clear that, by increasing wages for childcare workers, a system would see less turnover and more available, stable, quality care.

As exciting as it is to see local innovations, we also know that states can’t do this on their own. Not every state has this level of funding ability (New Mexico has utilized oil and gas surplus revenue to pay for its early childhood expansions), and states cannot deficit spend. A patchwork of state policies on childcare is therefore not equitable, let alone sustainable. The federal government has the obligation to step up and offer relief to the struggling families who face an average annual price of childcare that exceeds their costs of transportation, food, health care, and housing. As one parent we spoke to for our paper put it, “Stop figuring out who to deny, and start figuring out ways to get children and families on the program.” New Mexico took a historic first step to doing just that. Federal lawmakers should take a page out of New Mexico’s book and finally deliver national childcare for all.