Wealthy PotAverage Childcare Cost: The County-Level Federal Data
In the median US county, full-time center-based care for an infant had a median price of $173.55 a week, or about $9,025 a year, according to the Labor Department's National Database of Childcare Prices. Two things matter more than that headline: the child's age and where you live. Infant center care in San Francisco County was $606.61 a week; in Wayne County, Kentucky, it was $90.47. This page gives the federal figures by age, setting and place, says exactly how old they are, and covers the two tax offsets that can move several thousand dollars a year.
Table of Contents
The Short Answer
- $173.55 a week was the median county price for full-time center-based infant care in 2022, the newest year the federal database measures. Multiplied by 52 weeks that is about $9,025 a year for one child.
- Age drives the price. In the same file, center-based preschool care ran $144.27 a week and school-age care $119.52. Infant care is the most expensive band in every setting.
- Home-based care prices below a center in the national medians at every age. Infant care in a family child care home had a median of $143.22 a week, about 18% below the center price, though some counties reverse that.
- Place matters more than either. County medians for infant center care ran from $90.47 a week to $606.61, a spread of 6.7 times. State medians ran from $118.68 in Mississippi to $490.00 in the District of Columbia.
- In the median county, infant center care took 11.6% of median family income for one child. The federal affordability benchmark is 7 percent, and 96.4% of counties with data were above it.
- Most families do not pay this. Of the 20.0 million US children under 6 and not yet in kindergarten, 45% were in no weekly nonparental care at all, and among those who were, only 65% of families had any out-of-pocket expense.
- Two tax offsets are real money. The dependent care FSA limit rose to $7,500 for 2026, and the Child and Dependent Care Credit covers up to $3,000 of expenses for one child or $6,000 for two or more. Money run through the FSA reduces the credit, so for most families it is a choice rather than a stack.
The Federal Dataset Behind These Numbers
Most childcare price pages quote a marketplace survey, which is a tally of what providers list on a booking site. There is a better source, and almost nobody uses it. The US Department of Labor Women's Bureau publishes the National Database of Childcare Prices, and describes it on its own page as "the most comprehensive federal source of childcare prices at the county level."
The database is built from the market rate surveys every state runs to set its childcare subsidy rates. Its technical report calls it "a collection of county-level childcare price estimates by age of child sourced from state market rate surveys." The price variables are defined as the "aggregated weekly, full-time median price charged" for one child, split by setting and by four age bands:
- Infant: 0 through 23 months
- Toddler: 24 through 35 months
- Preschool: 36 through 54 months
- School-age: keyed to the earliest age a child attends school full time, so it describes before-school and after-school care rather than a full day
Two settings are priced separately: center-based care and family child care, which is care in a provider's own home. The database covers 3,143 US counties plus Puerto Rico's municipios.
The data year is 2022. The Women's Bureau states it flatly: "Data are available from 2008 through 2022." That is the newest measured year in the file, and no federal source publishes a later measured price.
One trap worth naming. The Women's Bureau also hosts archived tables whose columns are labelled "2023." Those are not 2023 prices. The note on the file says so: the figures are "based on the 2016-2018 data collection cycle and are presented in 2018 and 2023 real dollars using the CPI-U for child care." They are 2018 prices reflated. Pages that cite them as 2023 childcare prices are off by five years of actual market data. Nothing on this page comes from those columns.
Price by Age and Care Setting
The single most useful thing the database shows is how steeply price falls as a child gets older. Infant rooms need the most staff per child, and the price reflects it. Here is the median county in 2022, with the 10th and 90th percentile counties on either side to show the spread.
| Setting and age | Median county, per week | Per year (x52) | 10th to 90th percentile county |
|---|---|---|---|
| Center, infant | $173.55 | $9,025 | $113 to $282 |
| Center, toddler | $153.46 | $7,980 | $106 to $235 |
| Center, preschool | $144.27 | $7,502 | $103 to $217 |
| Center, school-age | $119.52 | $6,215 | $63 to $185 |
| Home, infant | $143.22 | $7,447 | $100 to $200 |
| Home, toddler | $131.75 | $6,851 | $97 to $190 |
| Home, preschool | $131.00 | $6,812 | $97 to $185 |
| Home, school-age | $117.50 | $6,110 | $73 to $175 |
Three things fall out of that table.
Infant care is the expensive one. Center-based infant care cost 45% more per week than school-age care in the median county. Parents who budget from a friend's preschool bill and then have a baby are usually shocked, and the shock is measurable rather than anecdotal.
The setting gap is real but smaller than people expect. A family child care home ran about $30 a week below a center for an infant, roughly $1,600 a year, and the gap narrows almost to nothing by school age. Home-based care is not a cheap substitute so much as a different product at a modest discount.
The spread inside each row dwarfs the difference between rows. The gap between a 10th percentile county and a 90th percentile county for infant center care, $113 to $282, is wider than the gap between infant care and school-age care anywhere. That leads to the next section.
Where You Live Decides More Than Anything Else
A national average for childcare describes nobody. The database exists precisely because childcare markets are local, and its own technical report warns that state medians "should be used with significant caution since their metrics do not capture the significant variations that exist within states."
With that caveat attached, the state medians for center-based infant care in 2022 look like this:
| Most expensive | Per week | Per year (x52) | Least expensive | Per week | Per year (x52) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| District of Columbia | $490.00 | $25,480 | Mississippi | $118.68 | $6,171 |
| Massachusetts | $461.55 | $24,001 | Alabama | $136.01 | $7,073 |
| Minnesota | $390.00 | $20,280 | South Dakota | $150.00 | $7,800 |
| California | $379.21 | $19,719 | Kentucky | $151.30 | $7,868 |
| Colorado | $377.40 | $19,625 | Louisiana | $153.33 | $7,973 |
The District of Columbia's median is 4.13 times Mississippi's. At the county level the gap is wider still: San Francisco County's median of $606.61 a week is 6.7 times Wayne County, Kentucky's $90.47. Annualized, that is about $31,500 against about $4,700 for the same product.
Because counties are what actually price care, here is what the file shows for some of the largest ones.
| County | Center, infant, per week | Per year (x52) | Center, preschool, per week | Home, infant, per week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles County, CA | $256.98 | $13,363 | $224.99 | $284.37 |
| Cook County, IL | $278.33 | $14,473 | $189.17 | $207.77 |
| Harris County, TX | $185.00 | $9,620 | $167.00 | $164.00 |
| Maricopa County, AZ | $270.00 | $14,040 | $210.00 | $180.00 |
| Kings County, NY (Brooklyn) | $300.00 | $15,600 | $259.00 | $250.00 |
| Miami-Dade County, FL | $200.00 | $10,400 | $155.00 | $150.00 |
| King County, WA | $478.45 | $24,879 | $389.70 | $346.92 |
| District of Columbia | $490.00 | $25,480 | $392.50 | $400.00 |
Los Angeles County is worth a second look: home-based infant care there priced above center-based care. The setting discount is a national tendency, not a rule you can count on locally. Your own county is the only number that describes your bill.
The 7 Percent Benchmark
The federal government has a published view on what affordable childcare costs, and it is expressed as a share of family income rather than a dollar amount. The number is 7 percent.
It sits in regulation. Under 45 CFR 98.45(l)(3), states running the Child Care and Development Fund must set a sliding fee scale that "provides for affordable family co-payments that are not a barrier to families receiving assistance under this part, not to exceed 7 percent of income for all families, regardless of the number of children in care who may be receiving CCDF assistance."
The benchmark is older than the cap. HHS set it in the 2016 CCDF final rule, where the preamble reads: "It is our view that a fee that is no more than seven percent of a family's income is a better measure of affordability." That rule replaced an earlier benchmark of 10 percent from 1998. In March 2024 HHS made the 7 percent figure binding rather than advisory, explaining that it "established 7 percent of a family's income as the benchmark for an affordable co-payments in 2016 based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau that showed on average families spent 7 percent of income on child care."
One scope note before the comparison. That cap governs what a subsidised family can be charged toward a subsidised place. It is not a price control on the private market. It is a yardstick, and it is the federal government's own.
Measured against it, the 2022 price data is bleak. Using each county's own median family income:
| Setting and age | Median county share of family income | 10th to 90th percentile county | Counties above 7% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Center, infant | 11.6% | 8.1% to 16.7% | 96.4% |
| Center, toddler | 10.5% | 7.6% to 14.8% | 94.7% |
| Center, preschool | 9.9% | 7.3% to 13.6% | 93.3% |
| Center, school-age | 8.3% | 4.6% to 12.0% | 67.3% |
| Home, infant | 9.5% | 6.7% to 13.1% | 85.7% |
| Home, toddler | 8.9% | 6.3% to 12.3% | 82.0% |
| Home, preschool | 8.8% | 6.3% to 12.0% | 81.4% |
| Home, school-age | 7.9% | 4.9% to 11.4% | 66.2% |
In 96.4% of counties with data, one infant in center-based care cost the median family more than the federal affordability benchmark. Even the cheapest category on the list, school-age care in a family home, cleared 7 percent in two counties out of three.
Two limitations belong with those numbers, and the Women's Bureau states both itself. The affordability measure "is not fully representative of the price burden of child care for all families in a county, as half of the households have a lower income and thus child care would constitute an even higher percentage of their income." And it "is not representative of the price of child care for families with more than two children." Read the table as a floor.
The gradient by income is documented too. In the 2024 rule, HHS cites a White House Council of Economic Advisers finding that "households with annual incomes below $25,000 pay between 9 and 31 percent of their income for child care, while households with annual incomes above $150,000 pay between 6 and 8 percent of their annual income for child care."
Who Actually Pays, and Who Pays Nothing
Every figure above is a price for paid care. It is not what the average family spends, because a large share of families spend nothing. Treating a market price as a household budget line for everyone is the most common error on this topic, so here is the measured picture.
The National Center for Education Statistics surveyed a nationally representative sample of parents in 2023 through the National Household Education Surveys Program. The universe is 20.0 million children from birth through age 5 and not yet in kindergarten.
- 45% were in no weekly nonparental care arrangement at all. For children under one year old, that rises to 60%.
- Among those in at least one weekly arrangement: 66% center-based, 34% relative care, 17% nonrelative care in a private home. The categories overlap because a child can be in more than one.
- Among families with a child in nonparental care, only 65% had any out-of-pocket expense. The other third had no fee charged, or someone else paid it.
- Put together, the NCES cost estimates cover about 7.1 million children, which is roughly 35% of all children under 6 and not yet in kindergarten.
Who pays out of pocket tracks income closely. Among households earning $20,000 or less, 27% reported any out-of-pocket childcare expense. Among households earning more than $100,000, it was 78%. Below the poverty threshold it was 34%, at or above it 69%.
Among the families who do pay, NCES measured the hourly out-of-pocket cost by care type:
| Primary care arrangement | Mean per-child hourly out-of-pocket expense |
|---|---|
| Center-based care | $21.32 |
| Nonrelative care in a private home | $16.16 |
| Relative care | $10.94 |
That $10.94 for relative care is the quiet story in this dataset. Grandparents and aunts are the cheapest formal-sounding option, they are used by a third of families with a child in care, and a good share of them charge nothing at all. Any household budget built off a center price is building off the most expensive branch of a wide tree.
Cost also shapes access, not just budgets. Among parents who searched for care, 72% reported at least a little difficulty finding it and 11% did not find the program they wanted. Where parents reported difficulty, cost and lack of open slots were each the primary reason for 34% of children.
What About Today's Price?
There is no measured federal childcare price for 2023, 2024, 2025 or 2026. The National Database of Childcare Prices stops at 2022, and nothing else measures county prices. So the honest answer is that the newest real number is four years old.
What is current is the direction of travel. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a monthly consumer price index for day care and preschool, and it is still climbing faster than the general price level was over most of this stretch:
| Period | Change in the day care and preschool index |
|---|---|
| 2023 annual average vs 2022 | +5.6% |
| 2024 annual average vs 2023 | +5.3% |
| 2025 annual average vs 2024 | +5.1% |
| August 2026 vs August 2025 | +4.0% |
| August 2026 vs the 2022 annual average | +22.2% |
If you apply that 22.2% to the 2022 median county price, $9,025 becomes roughly $11,030 a year for infant center care. Treat that as hypothetical. It is our arithmetic on two federal series, not a measured price. A price index holds the product constant, while the database records what providers actually charged in a given county; the two can drift apart, and neither is a quote for your local center.
Use the 2022 figures for the structure of the problem, which barely changes: infants cost most, school-age costs least, and geography swamps both. Use the index to understand that the 2022 numbers are now conservative. Then call three providers near you for the number that actually goes in your budget.
The Two Tax Offsets Most Pages Skip
Childcare has two federal tax breaks, and for 2026 one of them just got considerably larger. Together they can be worth a few thousand dollars, which on a $9,000 to $15,000 bill is not a rounding error.
The dependent care FSA, now $7,500
A dependent care flexible spending account lets you route pay into an account before federal income tax and before Social Security and Medicare tax, then reimburse yourself for work-related care. The limit had been stuck at $5,000, with no inflation adjustment attached to it. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Public Law 119-21, raised it.
IRS Publication 15-B for 2026 states it directly: "For the 2026 tax year, the annual dependent care FSA limit was raised from $5,000 to $7,500 ($2,500 to $3,750 for married filing separately)." The statute behind it, section 70404 of the Act, amended Internal Revenue Code section 129 and applies "to taxable years beginning after December 31, 2025." The figure is flat: it carries no inflation adjustment, and it does not appear in the IRS revenue procedure that sets 2026 inflation-adjusted amounts.
Two practical constraints. Your employer has to offer a plan, and the plan can set a lower limit than the statute. And the exclusion cannot exceed the earned income of you or your spouse, whichever is smaller. The mechanics are close to the health FSA rules covered in our HSA vs FSA guide, including the use-it-or-lose-it design.
The Child and Dependent Care Credit
The credit covers a percentage of work-related care expenses, capped at $3,000 of expenses for one qualifying person and $6,000 for two or more. Those caps are not indexed and did not change.
What did change is the percentage. For tax years beginning after 2025, section 70405 of the same Act rewrote the formula. The applicable percentage now starts at 50 percent and falls by one point per $2,000 of adjusted gross income above $15,000, with a floor of 35 percent; then falls again by one point per $2,000 of AGI above $75,000, or per $4,000 above $150,000 on a joint return, with a floor of 20 percent. Working that arithmetic through the statute:
| Adjusted gross income | Applicable percentage | Maximum credit, one child | Maximum credit, two or more |
|---|---|---|---|
| $15,000 or less | 50% | $1,500 | $3,000 |
| $45,000 up to $75,000, or up to $150,000 on a joint return | 35% | $1,050 | $2,100 |
| $105,000 or more, or $210,000 or more on a joint return | 20% | $600 | $1,200 |
They cancel each other, so pick deliberately
This is the part that gets left out. Money you exclude through a dependent care FSA reduces the credit's expense cap dollar for dollar. The 2026 Form 2441 spells it out: line 27 is the $3,000 or $6,000 cap, line 28 is your excluded benefits, and line 29 says "Subtract line 28 from line 27. If zero or less, stop. You can't take the credit."
So a full $7,500 through the FSA leaves nothing for the credit at any family size. You are choosing between them, not stacking them, once the FSA amount reaches the cap.
A rough way to think about it. The following is hypothetical and illustrative only. Suppose a household in the 22% federal bracket puts the full $7,500 through a dependent care FSA. It escapes 22% federal income tax plus 7.65% in Social Security and Medicare tax, about $2,224, before any state income tax saving. The same household with two children in care and an AGI above $210,000 would get a 20% credit on $6,000, which is $1,200. The FSA wins there. At a much lower income the credit percentage is higher and the tax bracket lower, and the comparison can flip. Run both against your own numbers, or ask a tax professional, before you set your open-enrollment election.
Whichever you use, the offset belongs in the budget as a reduction to the childcare line rather than a refund surprise. If you are rebuilding the household budget around a new childcare bill, our average monthly expenses breakdown shows where the money usually has to come from, and the 50/30/20 rule is a reasonable frame for deciding what gives.
Sources & Methodology
- US Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, National Database of Childcare Prices: the description of the database, the coverage statement "Data are available from 2008 through 2022," and the links to the data files below.
- NDCP county-level data file, 2008 to 2022 (XLSX): every weekly price on this page, the county extremes, the named-county figures and the county median family income used in the share-of-income table. We filtered to study year 2022 and computed medians and percentiles across counties with data.
- NDCP state-level estimates and affordability rankings, 2022 (XLSX): the state medians and the list of states without a 2022 value.
- NDCP Technical Report, September 2024 (PDF): the definition of each price variable as a weekly full-time median for one child, the age bands, the school-age rate convention, the market rate survey sourcing, and the two limitation quotes about median income and larger families.
- 45 CFR 98.45: the current regulation capping CCDF family co-payments at 7 percent of income.
- HHS, Child Care and Development Fund Final Rule, 81 FR 67438 (30 September 2016), at page 67515: the origin of the 7 percent benchmark and the 10 percent benchmark it replaced.
- HHS, Improving Child Care Access, Affordability, and Stability in the CCDF, 89 FR 15366 (1 March 2024): the statement that HHS established 7 percent as the affordability benchmark in 2016, the change from benchmark to cap, and the Council of Economic Advisers figures on what households at different incomes pay.
- National Center for Education Statistics, Early Childhood Program Participation: 2023 (NCES 2024-112): the 20.0 million child universe, the 45% with no weekly nonparental care, the arrangement type shares, the 65% with out-of-pocket expenses, the hourly cost figures and the search-difficulty figures.
- BLS Consumer Price Index, series CUUR0000SEEB03, day care and preschool, US city average, not seasonally adjusted: the annual and twelve-month changes in the price index.
- IRS Publication 15-B (2026), Employer's Tax Guide to Fringe Benefits: the $7,500 dependent care FSA limit for 2026 and the earned-income cap on the exclusion.
- Public Law 119-21, sections 70404 and 70405: the statutory text raising the section 129 exclusion to $7,500 and rewriting the section 21 applicable percentage, both effective for tax years beginning after 31 December 2025.
- IRS Publication 503, Child and Dependent Care Expenses and the draft 2026 Form 2441: the $3,000 and $6,000 expense caps, the tax liability limit that makes the credit nonrefundable, and the Part III lines that reduce the credit base by excluded dependent care benefits.
What we deliberately did not state. No 2023, 2024, 2025 or 2026 measured childcare price, because no federal source publishes one; the only forward-looking figure here is labelled hypothetical. No figure from the Women's Bureau tables whose columns read "2023," because the file's own note says those are 2018 prices expressed in 2023 dollars. No price for New Mexico, Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri, Pennsylvania or Vermont for 2022, because the database has none. No share-of-income figure for families with more than one child in care or for families below their county median, because the Women's Bureau disclaims both. No average rate from a childcare marketplace or comparison site, because those are self-reported listings rather than measured prices. No official 2026 IRS percentage table for the Child and Dependent Care Credit, because the 2026 instructions were not published when we checked.
This article is for general information and is not tax, legal or financial advice. All figures were checked against the primary sources listed above on 2026-09-30. The childcare price data year is 2022 throughout, the NCES survey data is from 2023, the price index runs to August 2026, and the tax figures apply to tax years beginning after 31 December 2025. Childcare prices are local and individually quoted, and your own cost will differ from any median. The tax calculations shown are illustrative; your result depends on your income, filing status, state and employer plan. Speak to a qualified tax professional before acting.
FAQ
What is the average cost of childcare in the US?
In the median US county, full-time center-based infant care had a median price of $173.55 a week in 2022, about $9,025 a year for one child, per the Labor Department's National Database of Childcare Prices. Preschool care was $144.27 a week and school-age care $119.52. There is no single national average that describes a typical family, because county prices range from $90 to $607 a week for the same infant care.
Why is the newest federal figure from 2022?
The database is compiled from the market rate surveys states run to set subsidy rates, and those run on multi-year cycles. The Women's Bureau states that data are available from 2008 through 2022. No federal source publishes a later measured county or national price.
How much has childcare gone up since 2022?
The BLS price index for day care and preschool rose 22.2% between the 2022 annual average and August 2026, and 4.0% over the twelve months to August 2026. Applying that to the 2022 median county price would put infant center care near $11,030 a year, but that is arithmetic rather than a measured price.
Is home-based childcare cheaper than a daycare center?
Usually, though less than people expect. In 2022 the median county price for infant care was $143.22 a week in a family child care home against $173.55 in a center, a gap of about $30 a week. By school age the gap nearly closes. In some counties, including Los Angeles, home-based infant care priced above center care.
What does the government consider affordable childcare?
7 percent of family income. That figure is in regulation at 45 CFR 98.45(l)(3), which caps subsidised families' co-payments at "7 percent of income for all families." HHS set it as a benchmark in 2016, replacing a 10 percent benchmark from 1998, and made it a hard cap in 2024.
How many counties have childcare above that 7 percent line?
For one infant in center-based care measured against the county's own median family income, 96.4% of counties with 2022 data were above 7 percent, and the median county was at 11.6%. Half of families in any county earn less than the median, so their share is higher still.
Do most families actually pay for childcare?
No. Of the 20.0 million US children from birth through age 5 and not yet in kindergarten, 45% were in no weekly nonparental care arrangement in 2023, and among those who were, only 65% of families had any out-of-pocket expense. About 7.1 million children, roughly 35% of the age group, were in paid nonparental care.
What is the 2026 dependent care FSA limit?
$7,500, or $3,750 if married filing separately, up from $5,000. IRS Publication 15-B for 2026 confirms it, and the increase comes from section 70404 of Public Law 119-21, effective for tax years beginning after 31 December 2025. The limit is not inflation-indexed, and your employer's plan may set a lower cap.
Can I use a dependent care FSA and the childcare tax credit together?
Only up to a point. Amounts you exclude through the FSA reduce the credit's expense cap dollar for dollar, and Form 2441 stops you from claiming the credit once that subtraction reaches zero. A full $7,500 FSA election leaves nothing for the credit at any family size, so the two are usually an either-or choice.
Cite This Page
Journalists, educators and bloggers are welcome to cite this guide. Please link back so readers can reach the primary sources.
"Average Childcare Cost: The County-Level Federal Data." Wealthy Pot, 2026. https://wealthypot.com/average-childcare-cost/
