The Red Scare is back, and this time it’s over preschool. Recently elected New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, left the country astonished with his proposals of free childcare, free public transit, and rent freezes, and was soon labeled as a “communist.” In some European countries, however, these ideas wouldn’t cause such a revolt. Dutch policy adviser Alexander Verbeek, writing about Mamdani in his newsletter, said that he is a politician who “finally sounded normal.” He added, “Here, taking care of one another through public programs isn’t radical socialism. It’s a Tuesday.” (The Guardian)

Berlin has offered free childcare from birth until school since 2018, Portugal in 2022, and Nordic countries subsidize childcare for almost all families. Even countries in the Global South have some form of free or subsidized childcare. In this regard, Mamdani is applying the baseline expectations of most developed democracies, not reinventing socialism.

Mamdani’s childcare policy is backed by economic evidence. Nobel laureate winner James Heckman has shown how early childhood investment has the highest returns out of any public expenditure, better than infrastructure and job-training programs. Heckman analyzed the Perry Preschool and Abecedarian/CARE projects and concluded that every dollar invested in high-quality programs for disadvantaged children yields annual returns of around 7 and 13 percent in the long run. That is a higher yield than most private-sector investments.

Heckman’s views reframe social spending as a fiscal strategy. Investing in children under five years old, when the brain is still developing, leads to improved attention, motivation, and sociability. All these “non-cognitive” capacities multiply over time, producing a compounding effect on education and earnings. In this way, early investments reduce long-term deficits by cutting costs in education, health care, and criminal justice. Eventually, the short-term expense pays for itself.

Heckman’s model explains the importance of investing in early childhood. Claudia Goldin,  also a Nobel Prize winner, has identified additional consequences of failing to do so. Her research traces two centuries of women's labor participation, revealing that having a child imposes a "maternity penalty”: taking care of children means that women temporarily leave the labor market, lose human capital, and reduce their chances of promotion. Goldin's findings prove that without accessible child care and family support, women's earnings and career prospects are negatively affected, leading to greater gender inequality in the labor market.

So when Mamdani argues that New York should care for its youngest citizens, he isn’t proposing a radical shift towards a socialist economy. He’s applying in New York City what developed countries and great economic minds have already identified: That childcare is a good social investment and responsible fiscal policy.  

Work Cited List

Heckman, J. J. (2012). The Heckman equation. https://heckmanequation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/F_HeckmanDeficitPieceCUSTOM-Generic_052714-3-1.pdf
Kassam, A. (2025, November 6). Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal.’ The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/06/europe-zohran-mamdani-policies-normal
Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences In Memory of Alfred Nobel 2023. (n.d.). NobelPrize.org. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2023/press-release/