In many ways, New York City is the ideal place to raise children. It’s a city that is bursting with culture, museums, and parks, where kids can grow up with a real sense of community and quickly learn self-sufficiency. But for far too many families, rising housing expenses, costly childcare, and the growing costs of daily life are pushing them to ask whether they can realistically build a future here. More families are making the difficult decision to leave the city, not because they want to, but because staying no longer feels financially sustainable.
When families leave, the impact reaches far beyond any one household. Neighborhoods lose longtime residents and communities lose stability. On a more existential scale, population decline weakens New York’s political influence. Fewer residents means we lose congressional seats and federal funding. If New York City wants to remain strong economically and politically, we cannot afford to continue losing working families.
The administration of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the New York City Council have appropriately made affordability a major focus, honing in on reducing childcare costs and supporting families raising children in the city. Those investments are important and necessary. But lowering immediate costs alone will not solve the broader problem. Families also need to believe their children will have a path to stability and opportunity here in the long term.
That requires us to think more seriously about building and sustaining generational wealth.
For many New Yorkers, economic mobility is shaped not only by income, but by whether a family has assets to rely on. Wealth determines whether parents can help pay for college, contribute to a first home, support a child starting a business, or simply help them navigate financial hardships early in adulthood. Families with savings and assets are better positioned to remain in New York through economic uncertainty. Families without them are often one crisis away from displacement.
The racial wealth gap continues to define much of this reality. Black and Latino families are far less likely to inherit wealth or own appreciating assets as a direct result of generations of discriminatory housing, lending, and labor policies that prevented many families from building wealth in the first place. While policymakers often focus on wages, income alone cannot close a gap that compounds across generations.
That is why baby bonds have gained growing attention across the country.
Baby bonds are publicly funded trust accounts established for children early in life and allowed to grow over time for future wealth-building purposes. Since Connecticut and Washington, D.C. launched baby bond programs in 2021, more states and municipalities have begun exploring them as a practical way to address wealth inequality and strengthen long-term economic mobility.
The idea behind baby bonds is straightforward. Families with wealth are often able to invest in their children early, whether through college savings accounts, homeownership support, business capital, or financial safety nets. Families without wealth do not have those same opportunities. Baby bonds create a modest foundation that can grow over time and help young people enter adulthood with some degree of financial footing.
Importantly, these programs recognize that there is no single path to success. Some young people will pursue higher education. Others may enter the skilled trades, start a small business, or save toward purchasing a home. Public policy should support all of those futures.
New York City has already taken an important step through the NYC Kids RISE Save for College Program, which provides public school kindergarten students with an initial investment in a 529 savings account for higher education. The Council is pushing to raise the City’s investment in the program, so that every young New Yorker receives $1,000 and low-income students receive initial investments of $3,000 each in kindergarten, helping them build a firmer funding base for their future. The program helps serve as a strong foundation, one that the City should think about expanding into a next step of long-term asset building and economic stability for families.
That is why today we are introducing legislation to establish a Baby Opportunity Fund pilot program in New York City. The proposal would create publicly supported savings accounts for eligible children that could later be used for wealth-building activities such as education, homeownership, entrepreneurship, or retirement savings.
No single policy will solve the affordability crisis or reverse generations of inequality overnight. But this issue demands more than isolated solutions. If New York City wants to remain a place where families can stay and put down roots, we need policies that address both the cost of living today and the ability to build wealth tomorrow.
Families should not feel that leaving New York is the only way to secure a future for their children. When we invest in families, we are investing in keeping our city the greatest in the world.
Julie Menin is the City Council Speaker, Member for the 5th District (Upper East Side, Carnegie Hill, Yorkville, Lenox Hill and Roosevelt Island) and founding board chair of NYC Kids RISE.
Crystal Hudson is the Council Member for the 35th District (Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights, Crown Heights).