DOL NDCP 2022 · original analysis
What the county price list does not say out loud
The National Database of Childcare Prices publishes a price for each county, setting, and age band. It does not publish how often family care undercuts center care, how much extra infant care costs versus school-age care, or how a state's own county spread compares with the national listing. Those three derived ratios are computed here from 2,661 priced 2022 counties.
Data updated 2026-07-05
- 2,555
- Dual-setting counties
- 89.0%
- Family cheaper
- 1.3x
- Median infant premium
- 1.8x
- Typical state span
The finding
Family infant care costs less than center infant care in 89.0% of the 2,555 counties that published both prices in 2022, but it costs more in 281 counties. The median family price is 19.3% below the center price, not a uniform discount.
- 89.0%
- dual-setting counties where family infant care is cheaper (2,273 of 2,555)
- 1.3x
- median center infant price relative to school-age center price (2,638 counties)
- 1.8x
- typical within-state infant-price span (42 states with at least 5 priced counties)
- 43.5%
- like-for-like mean increase, 2008 to 2022 (1,285 counties in both years)
3 leftover county rows with an older latest_year are excluded so the listing year stays 2022. Null prices are missing reports, not zero.
Key findings
Each finding is computed from the archive when this page is served. Quote any of them with attribution to PlainChildcare and the DOL NDCP source.
- In 2,273 of 2,555 US counties that published both center-based and family-based infant prices in the 2022 DOL NDCP listing (89.0%), family infant care cost less than center infant care.
- Family infant care cost more than center infant care in 281 of those 2,555 dual-setting counties (11.0%), so a family-is-cheaper rule does not hold in about one county in nine.
- At the median dual-setting county, family infant care is 19.3% below the center infant price (ratio 0.81), from the 2022 DOL NDCP listing.
- Among 2,638 counties that published both figures, center-based infant care costs 1.3x the school-age center price at the median (2022 DOL NDCP).
- 2,651 of 2,661 priced 2022 counties (99.6%) have center infant care above the HHS 7% of median household income line; the mean share is 15.2%.
- In a typical state with at least 5 priced counties, the dearest county infant price is 1.8x the cheapest county in that state, against a 6.7x span across the whole 2022 national listing (42 states in the state sample).
- The widest of those 42 state listings is Virginia at 4.7x, still below the 6.7x national span.
- On the 1,285 counties that published a center infant price in both 2008 and 2022, the mean price rose from $6,902 to $9,905, a 43.5% increase on a like-for-like county set.
How often is family care cheaper?
Restricting the listing to counties that published both a center infant price and a family infant price avoids treating a missing setting as a zero. On that like-for-like pair, family care is cheaper in most counties and dearer in a minority. The median ratio is the typical discount; the 10th-to-90th range shows the discount is not a constant.
Dual-setting counties, 2022
Within-state span versus the national listing
A national cheapest-to-dearest ratio mixes Alaska with Alabama. Measuring each state's own max/min among counties with at least 5 priced infant figures, then taking the median of those state ratios, asks a different question: how wide is the listing a state resident actually sees?
Infant-price fold, 2022
2008 to 2022 on the same counties
A national average in 2008 versus 2022 can move because the set of reporting counties changed. Restricting to the 1,285 counties that published a center infant price in both years, the mean rose from $6,902 to $9,905 (43.5%). That is a coverage-matched change, not a claim about counties that entered or left the survey.
Limits
NDCP prices are licensed-provider market rates from state surveys, not what every household pays after subsidies, sibling discounts, or informal care. Median household income is Census ACS, not a childcare-specific budget. The HHS 7% line is a national benchmark and does not adjust for local cost of living. Unpriced counties are excluded rather than filled. This page does not rank providers or recommend a setting.
Download the study table as CSV. County pages: browse by state. Methods: methodology.
Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau National Database of Childcare Prices · 2022 Median household income is Census ACS, joined at the county. Derived ratios are computed by PlainChildcare and are not an official DOL publication.
PlainChildcare is rendered directly from the U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau National Database of Childcare Prices and Census ACS income data, no number is typed in by an editor. National statistics aggregate the same NDCP county price and ACS income tables used on state and county pages. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of July 2026. Primary sources: DOL Women's Bureau NDCP and U.S. Census Bureau ACS.