Cost for kids: Middle-income families now pay $235,000 per child

Cost for raising kids is has reached $235,000 for middle-income families, says a new report by the USDA. The highest expense is housing, averaging $70,500.

|
Tony Avelar/The Christian Science Monitor
Housing is the highest expense for middle-income families raising kids. In this 2009 file photo, Bill Estrada, then 3, plays on the playground that is part of San Clemente Place, a new development that provides 79 affordable apartments to low- to middle-income families in Corta Madera, Califorina.

For $235,000, you could indulge in a shiny new Ferrari — or raise a child for 17 years.

A government report released Thursday found that a middle-income family with a child born last year will spend about that much in child-related expenses from birth through age 17. That's a 3.5 percent increase from 2010.

The report from the Agriculture Department's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion said housing is the single largest expense, averaging about $70,500, or 30 percent of the total cost.

Families living in the urban Northeast tend to have the highest child-rearing expenses, followed by those in the urban West and the urban Midwest. Those living in the urban South and rural areas face the lowest costs.

The estimate also includes the cost of transportation, child care, education, food, clothing, health care and miscellaneous expenses.

The USDA has issued the report every year since 1960, when it estimated the cost of raising a child was just over $25,000 for middle-income families. That would be $191,720 today when adjusted for inflation.

Housing was also the largest expense in raising a child back in 1960. But the cost of child care for young children — negligible 50 years ago — is now the second largest expense as more moms work outside the home.

The report considers middle-income parents to be those with an income between $59,400 and $102,870. It says families that earn more can expect to spend more on their children.

The cost per child decreases as a family has more children. The report found that families with three or more children spend 22 percent less per child than those with two children. The savings result from hand-me-down clothes and toys, shared bedrooms and buying food in larger quantities.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Cost for kids: Middle-income families now pay $235,000 per child
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2012/0615/Cost-for-kids-Middle-income-families-now-pay-235-000-per-child
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe