A real historical turning point comes from the United States: New Mexico has become the first American state to guarantee free childcare for all families, regardless of income. A radical change, far from our limited nursery bonuses, which aims to support parents, improve children’s educational opportunities and fight poverty which, in this area, affects almost one citizen in five.
Thanks to the new program, every resident family will be able to receive state vouchers to fully cover the costs of public and private nursery schools and childcare facilities. This is the result of a journey that began in 2019, when the local government established the Department for Early Childhood Education and Care, with the aim of making access to educational services a universal right.
This launch comes as other Democratic-led states, cities and counties look at working families with a different look. Connecticut recently passed a bill making child care free for families earning less than $100,000 a year, while New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdaniproposed free universal child care.
A measure that already has a concrete impact
The governor Michelle Lujan Grisham defined child care as “the backbone of a system that allows families to work, study and build a better future for the State”.
With this measure, New Mexico not only rewrites the rules of American welfare, but sends a strong message: investing in children means investing in everyone’s future.
A special education teacher from Taos says she will be able to save about $12,000 a year on child care for her two-and-a-half-year-old son. “We will finally be able to take a holiday and no longer have to choose between paying the mortgage or heating“, explains.
But to become truly universal, the system will have to grow further: 14 thousand new places in childcare centers and around 5 thousand more educators are needed. For this reason, the government launched a $12.7 million fund to support the construction of new facilities and increased the minimum wages of educational staff to $18 an hour, well above the state minimum wage.
Behind the measure there is a very clear, clear and far-sighted vision. What if we took an example?
