As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, Texas has 31 cities among the largest 250 in the nation.
A Pearland family pays 11.3 percent of household income for full-time infant center care; a Houston family in the next county over pays 20.2 percent. Both live in the same state, draw from the same labor market, and operate under the same near-absent state policy framework. That spread — the widest within-state distribution of any market in the 2026 score — is what propels Pearland to first nationally, McKinney to second, and Frisco to third while Houston ranks 29th of 31 measured Texas cities. Statewide, Texas's affordability dimension scores 89.5 of 100; its supply dimension scores 17.6, the second-worst imbalance in the index. The composite lands at 51/100, Moderate, 25th of 50. The dimensions follow.
Key highlights & actionable takeaways
- Moderate (51/100), 25th nationally — middle of the pack, propped up almost entirely by some of America's cheapest infant care.
- Affordability scores 89.5; supply scores 17.6 — the second-worst dimension imbalance in the index.
- The most internally divided state: Pearland #1, McKinney #2, Frisco #3 nationally, while Houston ranks 29th of 31 Texas cities.
Affordability — 90/100
Texas is, on paper, one of the most affordable states in the country to raise a young child. The forward-projected 2025 average for full-time infant center care lands at $11,917 a year — roughly $5,200 less than the national average of $17,163. That works out to 15.6 percent of the state's $76,292 median household income, well under the 21.9 percent national share and below the federal Department of Health and Human Services' 7-percent affordability threshold only when households sit comfortably above the median. Family child care homes are cheaper still: $10,387 a year for an infant, $9,875 for a toddler.
The deeper picture is more uneven than a single state average suggests. NDCP county-level prices vary by a factor of more than two between, say, Brazos County around College Station, where a typical family spends 22.2 percent of household income on infant care, and Brazoria County south of Houston, where the figure drops to 11.3 percent. The state-level "cheap" headline is real for Pearland and Frisco; it does not describe the experience of a family in Harris, Travis, or Bexar County, where the local infant cost share runs 18 to 22 percent of HHI and aligns with the national median rather than the Texas one.
Childcare relative to rent reinforces the same point. Statewide, a year of infant center care equals 0.74 months of median rent — a dollar of childcare buys about three weeks of housing, versus 1.06 months nationally. Cheap by national standards, but still the largest line item in a working family's budget after housing.
Supply — 18/100
This is where the Texas story gets honest. The Bipartisan Policy Center counts roughly 1,414,600 Texas children under 5 with potential care need against 1,332,870 licensed slots. The headline statewide gap is only 7.9 percent — comfortable on its face — but the index's 17.6 supply score reflects the cohort-percentile reality that Texas runs near the bottom of all states on licensed capacity per kid in working families, with 6,119 licensed establishments serving 1.93 million children under 5 (3.17 establishments per 1,000).
The national context is unforgiving: the U.S. averages 4.21 establishments per 1,000 kids under 5, with a 27 percent supply gap nationally. Texas's tighter raw gap masks the fact that 2.4 million children under 5 live in households with all parents working — meaning the addressable demand is closer to that figure than to the BPC headline. By the broader denominator, Texas serves about 55 slots per 100 kids in working families. That is the working definition of a chronically rationed market, and it is why a Texas family can pay below-average prices and still spend nine months on a waitlist.
Workforce — 47/100
Texas pays its early educators a median of $13.71 an hour, or $28,520 a year for full-time work. That equals 63 percent of the EPI single-adult living wage of $21.77 — slightly above the national 62.6 percent benchmark, but only because Texas's living-wage threshold is one of the lowest in the country.
The workforce dimension hides its own internal split. Statewide employment in the standard occupational code 39-9011 totals 45,020 workers — the largest absolute childcare workforce of any state, and one that is concentrated in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston metros where labor competition with retail, warehouse, and hospitality is fiercest. Wages in Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley score above 70 percent of the local living wage, while Laredo workers earn 52.4 percent and McAllen workers earn comparably little. The result is a labor market where retention is a daily problem in the major metros and where the lowest-paid corners of the state are paradoxically closer to a "living" wage simply because rent is cheaper.
Family strain — 35.3/100
Mothers of children under 6 in Texas participate in the labor force at 62.82 percent, more than five points below the 68.21 percent national rate. The state's share of single-parent households is 30.67 percent, just below the 31.81 percent national figure. The mothers' LFP gap is the more telling number: in a state where 63 percent of children under 6 live in households with all available parents working, a 62 percent maternal participation rate signals that the marginal Texas mother is sitting out of the labor force at a higher rate than her national counterpart, with childcare access and cost both plausible drivers.
Sixty-three percent of households with kids under 6 here have all parents working, the lowest figure among the four South Central states in this batch. That is not a sign of leisure; it is the demographic signature of a state where one parent — almost always the mother — has done the math on $11,917 in infant care plus a second commute and chosen to stay home.
Policy support — 50.0/100
Texas earns a middling policy score because it does one thing well and several things barely at all. The state enrolls 52 percent of 4-year-olds in publicly funded pre-K — above the national average — but spends only $4,682 per child enrolled and meets just 2 of the 10 NIEER quality benchmarks, the second-lowest in the index. Three-year-old enrollment sits at 11 percent. CCDF subsidy reaches 16.4 percent of eligible children, slightly above the national rate, and serves about 158,700 kids per month. Head Start enrolls another 65,384, of whom 14,189 are in Early Head Start.
Texas has no state paid family or medical leave program. The combined picture is breadth without depth: a pre-K system that touches a majority of 4-year-olds but invests less than half of what the most ambitious states spend per child, and a subsidy footprint that reaches one in six eligible families.
City spotlight
Top performers. Three Texas suburbs sweep the national top three. Pearland (74/100, #1 nationally) leads the country on the strength of 98.1 affordability and an 80.3 family-strain score, with infant care running just 11.3 percent of household income in Brazoria County. McKinney (73/100, #2) and Frisco (73/100, #3) follow on near-identical Collin County profiles — 75.6 supply, 98+ affordability, 77-83 family strain — making the I-35 corridor north of Dallas the single highest-density cluster of strong-tier city scores in the country. Plano (69/100, #8) rounds out the cluster.
Bottom performers. The state's largest cities take the worst hits. Houston scores 49/100 (Strained) and ranks 29th of 31 measured Texas cities — Harris County's 20.2-percent infant-cost share, paired with the lowest family-strain reading in Texas, drags it well below the suburbs in its own metro. Laredo (51/100, #27 in state) suffers a workforce score of 2.8 — among the five lowest in the country — driven by a $10-an-hour median childcare wage that is 52 percent of the local living wage. Tyler and College Station fill out the bottom tier on workforce and affordability respectively.
In-home care in Texas
In-home care occupies an unusual position in Texas precisely because the state's center-based market is so unevenly priced. In Pearland or Frisco, where center care runs $9,000-$12,000 a year, the calculus for a single-child family does not favor a full-time nanny; in Austin's western suburbs and central Houston, where infant center prices regularly exceed $18,000 and waitlists at sought-after centers extend six to nine months, the gap closes quickly. Beverly Research's metro-level intake data shows full-time live-out nanny rates running $25-35 an hour across Austin, Dallas, and Houston — putting an annualized full-time hire above $50,000, the rough breakeven point at which two children in center care become more expensive than one nanny.
Nanny shares between two families are gaining traction in close-in Dallas and Houston neighborhoods, which lowers the per-family cost to roughly $14-$20 an hour each. Au pair placements are concentrated in the Dallas, Houston, and Austin metros, where bilingual demand and the dual-earner professional households that anchor the J-1 program are densest. The state's no-state-income-tax structure makes full nanny payroll comparatively cheaper to run, but nothing in Texas's policy or labor environment is doing anything to expand the supply of either nannies or center slots — so families increasingly cobble care together by the week.
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 scores roll up county-level price and supply data to a population-weighted average. 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); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS (May 2024) and QCEW NAICS 624410 (2024); Bipartisan Policy Center 2026 state childcare data PDFs; 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); EPI Family Budget Calculator (2024).