As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, Hawaii has one city among the largest 250 in the nation.
A two-child Hawaii family with one infant and one toddler in center care faces $50,640 in annual childcare bills — more than half of the state's $98,317 median household income before any other line item. Infant care alone runs $25,320, 47% above the national average and roughly equal to a full year of the state's $1,938 median monthly rent. Childcare workers, paid a median $17.52 an hour, earn 56.5% of a single-adult living wage — among the worst ratios in the country. Hawaii has no paid family leave program, places just 5% of four-year-olds in state pre-K, and reaches only 8.3% of CCDF-eligible kids. Its overall score is 35, ranked 49th of 50. The island economy compresses every input simultaneously: rents, groceries, transportation, and educator pay all bend toward the same arithmetic.
Key highlights & actionable takeaways
- Strained (35/100), 49th nationally — island-economy cost stack: $25,320 infant care, $1,938 median rent, 56.5% wage-to-living-wage ratio.
- Center infant care consumes 25.8% of median household income — worst ratio in the Pacific, nearly four times the federal 7% benchmark.
- No paid family leave, 5% of 4-year-olds in state pre-K, 8.3% CCDF reach — the smallest policy footprint in the West.
Affordability — 15/100
A Hawaii family with one infant in center care now spends $25,320 a year — 47% above the national average and roughly equal to a full year of the state's $1,938 median monthly rent. Set against the state's $98,317 median household income (the highest in the Pacific on paper), the cost burden hits 25.8% of pre-tax earnings — the worst ratio in the Pacific and one of the worst in the country. The headline household income figure obscures the island cost-of-living premium: groceries run roughly 40-50% above mainland averages, transportation costs are structurally higher, and the share of household income consumed by housing alone exceeds California and Washington.
The 15.0/100 affordability score is among the worst in the country. There is no quality-tier escape hatch: family childcare home settings still run $13,505 a year — competitive with Pacific norms but offering little headroom against the wage-and-rent compression every Hawaii family faces. Toddler care costs the same $25,320 as infant care here, an unusual pattern in NDCP data that reflects the island economy's flat labor cost structure: there is no meaningful pool of less-experienced caregivers to staff toddler rooms at lower rates than infant rooms.
For a two-child family with one infant and one toddler, total annual childcare costs reach $50,640 — more than half of the state's median household income before any other line item.
Supply — 67/100
Hawaii licenses 24,100 regulated childcare slots against approximately 61,300 children with potential need by Bipartisan Policy Center methodology — a 60.7% gap, the worst among all 50 states. Establishment density runs 4.96 licensed providers per 1,000 children under five, slightly above the national 4.21, but the absolute count of 407 establishments statewide leaves no margin for islands beyond Oahu: families on Maui, the Big Island, Kauai, and Molokai face supply environments materially worse than the state average.
The 66.7/100 supply dimension score is paradoxically Hawaii's second-best dimension, but it reflects the score's percentile-ranked methodology more than absolute strength. Hawaii does not score badly on supply because most other states score badly on supply too — the national slot-to-need gap is roughly 27%, and a state at 60% gap nonetheless lands in the middle of the distribution because the bar is low. In absolute terms, Hawaii has the worst slot-to-demand math of any state in the country.
The interisland transportation reality compounds the licensed supply count. A Maui family without a slot on Maui cannot commute to a slot on Oahu — supply is functionally hyper-local in a way it is not on the mainland.
Workforce — 12/100
This is among the lowest workforce dimension scores of any state in the score. Hawaii's median childcare worker earns $17.52 an hour — $36,440 annually — against a $31.01 single-adult living wage, putting state educators at 56.5% of survival earnings. That is among the worst wage-to-living-wage ratios in the country. The absolute hourly figure sounds reasonable, but the island cost-of-living premium means a Hawaii childcare worker takes home meaningfully less, after housing, food, and transportation, than a counterpart earning the same nominal wage in any mainland market.
The implications are mechanical. National research on early-educator turnover finds annual workforce churn at 56% wage-to-living-wage ratios runs in the 35-45% band — meaning roughly two of every five Hawaii childcare workers leave their position each year. The state employs just 1,860 childcare workers (the smallest workforce in the country by an order of magnitude relative to need), and the high turnover compounds the supply shortage: every center operating below licensed capacity because it cannot staff its ratios is a pattern Hawaii providers report at materially higher rates than mainland counterparts.
Family Strain — 62/100
Mothers' labor force participation among women with children under six sits at 67.9% — essentially in line with the national 68.2% — and single-parent share is 28.4%, below national. The composite family-strain score of 61.8/100 is Hawaii's strongest dimension, again reflecting percentile-rank methodology: Hawaii looks middling on family strain because every state with high mothers' LFP and a moderate single-parent share scores well on this dimension, regardless of underlying economic pressure.
The data underneath tells a more complicated story. Hawaii's 67.9% mothers' LFP is not "high" because childcare is accessible — it is "high" because the cost of living forces two earners. The same families post the highest infant-cost-to-HHI burden in the Pacific. The dimension score captures the labor-force outcome but not the economic friction generating it.
Honolulu, the only Hawaii city in the score, posts a city-level family-strain score of 68.9/100 — slightly above the state composite — driven by a 70.9% mothers' LFP among urban-Honolulu households. Outside Oahu, family-strain dynamics are likely materially worse, but the index does not measure neighbor-island cities at the resolution required to confirm.
Policy Support — 19/100
Hawaii has no state paid family leave program — one of fewer than ten states in that category. State pre-K serves just 5% of 4-year-olds and 2% of 3-year-olds at $7,398 per child, the lowest per-child pre-K spending in the Pacific. NIEER scores Hawaii's pre-K quality at a perfect 10 of 10 benchmarks met — a ceiling-quality program that reaches almost nobody. CCDF subsidy reach is 8.3%, serving just 3,500 children monthly statewide. Head Start enrolls 2,902 kids, with 721 in Early Head Start.
The 19.0/100 policy score is the second-worst in the country. The structural pattern — high quality, low reach, no leave — is consistent across Hawaii's social-policy footprint: a state that has historically built excellent small-scale programs and not scaled them.
City spotlight
Honolulu is the only Hawaii city in the 2026 score. The city posts a 27/100 score — Crisis tier, ranked 246th of 250 cities nationally. Honolulu's affordability dimension hits 12.5/100, the workforce dimension 19.1/100, and the policy dimension 13.1/100. The lone bright spot is family strain at 68.9/100, driven by high mothers' LFP that — as discussed above — almost certainly reflects forced economic participation more than abundant childcare access. The other islands are not represented in the index, but the per-county pricing and supply-density data underneath suggest neighbor-island metros would score similarly to Honolulu or worse. The state's childcare reality is, for all practical purposes, the Honolulu reality scaled across the islands.
In-home care in Hawaii
The in-home childcare market in Hawaii is structurally smaller than mainland counterparts of comparable income — partly because housing density makes live-in arrangements harder than in detached-housing mainland markets, and partly because the island cost-of-living premium pushes the all-in cost of a full-time nanny well past most family budgets. Full-time live-out nanny rates in Honolulu run roughly $24-32/hour, putting a 50-hour weekly schedule with payroll taxes at $65,000-$85,000 a year — competitive with two infant slots at $25,320 each but a stretch for any family below the 80th household-income percentile.
Nanny shares are common in Honolulu, particularly among military-spouse and tech-worker families clustered in specific neighborhoods. The au pair pathway through State Department-designated sponsor agencies — running $27,000-$30,000 all-in for live-in care with a $195.75/week federal stipend — has historically been popular among Hawaii families with adequate housing and bedroom capacity, but the housing constraint binds harder here than in any other state in the index. Multigenerational households remain a meaningful informal childcare resource: U.S. Census tracts in Hawaii consistently report among the highest multigenerational-household shares in the country, and that family-network capacity is doing real work to absorb demand the licensed system cannot serve.
Methodology: The the score is a 0-100 composite score across five dimensions: Affordability (30 pts), Supply (25 pts), Workforce Health (15 pts), Family Strain (15 pts), and Policy Support (15 pts). State-level prices and supply use population-weighted county aggregates; city scores use the city's primary containing county. Full methodology and data sources: beverly.io/research/methodology.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2019-2023 5-year estimates; U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau National Database of Childcare Prices (2018 base, 2023 DOL-projected, 2025 forward-projected); Child Care Aware of America 2024 anchor; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS (May 2024) and QCEW NAICS 624410 (2024); EPI Family Budget Calculator and MIT Living Wage Calculator; Bipartisan Policy Center / Buffett Early Childhood Institute / Child Care Aware childcaregap.org (Sept 2025); NIEER State of Preschool Yearbook 2024; HHS ACF CCDF FY2023; National Partnership for Women & Families (March 2026).