New York’s Capacity Crisis

All families with infants and toddlers should have access to affordable, high-quality, safe, and culturally responsive child care supported by a universal, transparent quality rating and improvement system. That requires increasing the availability of high-quality child care slots and ensuring that the full range of providers have the resources and support they need for stability and success. Download brief fact sheets on child care capacity and trends in each of New York’s 10 regions.

Note on data sources: Child care provider data provided by the New York State Office of Children and Family Services. ZIP code and income data from U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 and 2017 American Community Survey (5-year average), and excludes ZIP codes with fewer than 20 children ages 0-5 in 2017. For family providers, infants are defined by New York State as children up to 24 months old and toddlers are children 24 to 36 months old; for center-based providers, infants are children up to 18 months old and toddlers are children 18 to 36 months old. In New York City, infant and toddler age thresholds are defined differently for center-based providers. Analysis conducted by The Education Trust–New York.