Universal Childcare As Anti-Poverty Policy
Posted by Robin Hood on June 16, 2026
A new study from Robin Hood finds that between 2022 and 2024, an average of 3,400 two- and three-year-olds in New York City were pushed into poverty each year by the cost of child care. If universal 2-K and 3-K had been in place between 2022 and 2024 at full coverage, the study find it could have cut poverty among two- and three-year-olds by roughly 9%, lifting 4,100 of these young children out of poverty in each year and fully offsetting the impact of child care costs on poverty among this age group. The research also finds that the impacts of universal 2-K and 3-K on poverty among two- and three-year-olds have the potential to be larger than the impacts of WIC and to approach the anti-poverty impacts of SNAP.
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