California second in nation for child care costs, study shows

by Madeline Shannon, The Center Square, Dec. 26, 2025

(The Center Square) - A study by the financial organization SmartAsset places California as the second-most expensive state in the country for parents of young children.

According to the study, Californians need to earn at least $97,656 a year to be able to afford a child and one stay-at-home parent, while working couples with children have to earn together at least $115,814 a year to pay for housing, transportation, child care and other essential expenses.

“If you were to just isolate the cost of raising a child alone, we actually found that the cost of just raising one child is about $35,000 annually in California,” Jaclyn DeJohn, director of economic analysis for SmartAsset and the author of the study, told The Center Square this week. “If Californian parents are able to keep a parent at home, they save the biggest chunk of the cost of raising a child.”

However, DeJohn said California is still the most expensive state to raise a child in across the board.

“These costs are specifically for raising a young child,” DeJohn said. “That’s a child that really needs care, whether that’s paid care or unpaid family care.”

SmartAsset said its study was meant to answer questions parents might have about child care costs and other expenses associated with having kids in different parts of the country. The study also shows how much money one parent needs to earn for the other parent to be able to stay at home.

Hawaii is the most expensive state in the country for a one-income household with kids, according to the study. Parents in the Aloha State need to earn at least $102,773 from one parent’s income for the other parent to be able to afford to stay at home, while parents of young children who both work need to earn at least $119,226 together to pay for child care.

West Virginia is the least expensive state in the country to be able to afford children. Parents living on one income need to earn $68,099, while parents of a dual-income household need to earn $78,998 together to be able to afford child care, the study shows.

“I don’t want this to discourage anyone from their own family planning,” DeJohn said. “It’s very important to keep in mind that these are benchmarks to help your planning. Let it help fuel long-term planning and being able to strategize around your family’s unique needs.”

State legislators who sit on child care-related committees were not available to speak with The Center Square.

Head Start, the federally-funded child care program that serves low-income families across the country, cost more than $1.4 billion in federal funds just for California, according to the National Head Start Association. That money paid for 80,345 children to attend Head Start programs across the state, as well as 26,681 staff, the fact sheet shows.

Officials from Head Start California were not available to speak with The Center Square.

Another study released in April 2025 from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research shows that less than half of children between birth and 5 years old in California had regular child care arrangements between 2019 and 2023, the time frame studied in the research. That study also found that Latinx children and children living in households 200% below the federal poverty line were less likely to have regular child care.

Data from that study also shows that child care is more expensive for more California households between 2019 and 2023. Approximately four in 10 households with young children paid at least $200 a week on child care in 2019, which rose to seven in 10 households that spent that amount in 2023.

Researchers involved in that study were not available for comment.