ASK ANY PARENT about child care in Massachusetts, where the average cost of placing an infant into full-time, center-based care surpasses $26,000, and they might break into a cold sweat.
Read more Faced with crippling housing crisis, Beacon Hill nibbles at the edges
Despite increased investment by Beacon Hill, child care costs in Massachusetts continue to top national rankings. As they search for solutions, some lawmakers might turn their eyes to the west, where New Mexico is at the forefront of a massive policy experiment: making child care essentially cost-free to all families.
A political campaign more than a decade and a half in the making culminated in November, when New Mexico removed income limits from its universal child care system, offering subsidies to all, even the state’s wealthiest households.
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Chris Lisinski speaks with Jacob Vigil, chief legislative officer of the advocacy group New Mexico Voices for Children, to understand how the state got to this vanguard position and what lessons Massachusetts — which tops the national income scale while New Mexico lingers toward the bottom — could learn.
Early assessments suggest New Mexico’s changes have had a major impact. The number of children enrolled in care has increased more than 12,000 since November 1, and families are saving an average of $12,000 per year, Vigil said. Before the universal program launched, state officials estimated about 27,000 children were in care, so the growth is substantial.
“That is an incredible boon to any family,” Vigil said. “If [that cost] is something that families no longer have to worry about, what possibilities does that open up for them?”
The roots of New Mexico’s policy stretch all the way back to 2009, when advocates set out to find the next major step to improve the well-being of children in the state, according to Vigil. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham made expanding child care access a signature issue when she was first elected in 2018 and again when she successfully ran for reelection in 2022.
Read more Lawmakers send Healey $63.4 billion annual budget bill
Along the way, supporters got explicit buy-in from the populace. Seventy percent of New Mexico voters in 2022 approved an amendment to the state constitution that essentially commits a portion of money collected from the oil and gas industry toward child care. Vigil called the wide margin of victory a “watershed moment.”
“It opened the horizons of possibilities for what could happen after that,” he said.
Still, the surge in funding has not been a panacea. Critics argue that New Mexico still has not done enough to address a shortage of early education slots, leaving some parents newly able to afford care but struggling to find open positions.
Vigil said the improvements to affordability have now “put more urgency” on tackling supply problems as well.
On this episode, Lisinski and Vigil discuss how “universal” New Mexico’s system actually is (9:50), how ramped-up child care spending has changed the state budgeting outlook (15:00),and what levers state governments can pull to increase the supply of child care slots (24:30).
Read more July is here, and that means it’s busy season again on Beacon Hill