Massachusetts families are facing some of the highest child care costs in the country, and new data show prices are rising faster than wages and straining the state programs meant to keep care affordable.
New research from Boston University's Institute for Equity in Child Opportunity & Healthy Development finds that about three out of four full-time working parents in Massachusetts cannot afford center-based child care under the federal benchmark that says care should cost no more than 7 percent of family income.
The Cost of Child Care
For Black and Hispanic parents, the burden is even heavier: 85 percent of Black parents and 92 percent of Hispanic parents face center-based prices that exceed that benchmark, highlighting sharp racial and income gaps in access to early education, according to the Boston Globe.
The dollar amounts are steep. For a full-time working parent with two children in center-based care, an infant and a preschooler, the estimated annual bill is roughly $44,649, including about $26,709 for infant care and $17,939 for preschool care.
Even switching to licensed home-based care leaves families with an estimated annual cost of about $28,067 for an infant and a preschooler combined, which is still out of reach for many budgets.
In 2023, one estimate put the cost for one infant and one toddler in center-based care at more than $46,000 a year, more than many families pay for rent or a mortgage.
Meanwhile, the overall costs of raising a young child in Massachusetts have kept climbing. A recent analysis found that the annual cost of raising one child under five reached about $44,221 in 2025, up 5.72 percent from the previous year and well above the national average of $27,743.
Increasing Costs
That increase outpaced general inflation, which was about 2.82 percent, suggesting child-related expenses, including child care, are rising faster than many family incomes, Boston25 News reported.
State leaders have tried to respond with new money for providers and families, but advocates say it is not yet enough to close the affordability gap.
Massachusetts' Commonwealth Cares for Children, or C3, grants were created to stabilize child care during and after the pandemic and are now funded entirely by the state, with about $475 million dedicated in the 2024 budget to keep programs open, boost worker pay, and limit tuition hikes.
Lawmakers have also moved toward a promise that families receiving child care financial assistance will pay no more than 7 percent of their income for care, aligning with the federal affordability standard.
Despite these efforts, researchers say affordability has barely improved since before the pandemic and may have worsened slightly as prices rose and wages stayed mostly flat, as per the US Chamber Foundation.
They argue that child care should be treated more like K–12 education, as a public good requiring sustained public investment, rather than a private cost that individual families are left to shoulder on their own.
