“No. Yes.” The Cost of Raising a Family in California
October 27, 2026
Her husband couldn’t breathe. So she brought him to a clinic in East Los Angeles. The doctor gave him injections on three separate occasions. Then he turned to her with a question.
“You have the money? It’s $300.”
“I said, ‘No. Yes. Well, I want my husband to get better.’”
“No. Yes.” Many working Californians know this feeling. It’s what you say when you don’t have the money, and you’ll find it anyway because the alternative is unthinkable.
Nearly one in five children in California live in poverty, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. If we measured the true cost of living here, that number would be much higher. That’s not because parents aren’t working. Nearly four in five Californians living in poverty live in a household with at least one working adult. Almost half have someone working full time.
The poverty line is a bare minimum. For two parents and two kids, PPIC puts it at about $46,200 per year. That’s meant to cover food, clothing, shelter, and utilities. In California… that is nearly impossible.
Child care alone can swallow a paycheck. Families in California paid upwards of $23,000 for infant care in 2025.
The help meant to catch families often slips away just as they start to climb. One mother told us her food assistance was cut the moment she started earning “two thousand and something” a month. “So, I shouldn’t work,” she asked. “Even for my child?”
Another woman knew someone who lost food assistance “because of a quarter.” Another woman shared that her public support was denied because she exceeded the limit by $1.
That’s the benefits cliff. Earn a few dollars more, and you can lose hundreds of dollars in support for food, health care, or child care. Families get punished for trying to get ahead. They need a benefits escalator instead, where support steps down slowly as pay goes up.
Nowadays, Everything Counts
Rigoberto is a medical technician and a dad of six in Watsonville. With free tax help from a Golden State Opportunity partner, his family got back $8,000 one year, including the CA EITC and the Young Child Tax Credit. Every dollar goes toward a home of their own.
“Everything counts nowadays,” he told us. “Being here in California…everything is outrageously expensive. I don’t know how people can afford it with one job.”
We know what works, because we’ve seen it. In 2021, the expanded federal Child Tax Credit sent families up to $300 a month for every child under six. Not once a year. Every month. That help, along with other pandemic-era support, reduced poverty. When it ended, poverty climbed right back.
Three hundred dollars a month. The same amount that a woman in East Los Angeles needed to care for her husband.
No parent should have to look at a clinic, a daycare, or any urgent need and say, “No. Yes.” No child should go to bed hungry because paychecks coming home aren’t enough. That isn’t these parents failing. It’s a baseline that hasn’t kept up with what it costs to raise a family here.
We can raise it. That means wages that cover real costs. Tax credits that grow with families. Benefits that step down instead of vanishing. Child care parents can afford without choosing between it and rent.
Join our upcoming Webinar to learn more about how GSO will help raise the baseline and shape a future where “No. Yes.” moments are just a distant memory.