“The cost for a middle-income family to raise a child born in 2015 to age 18 is $233,610, a 3 percent increase from the previous year, the Department of Agriculture said Monday. Housing was the largest expense, at 29 percent of the cost. Wealthier families, who live in costlier neighborhoods and are more likely to use day care, spend more than twice as much on their children as poorer households.”
Data is a good child raising tool. Next time entitled generation Z kids ask you for stuff, say “pay me back my $233,610” first.
I ain’t getting married or even having them. But it would be interesting to know how having no kids affects your overall health? Are people who never marry or never reproduce generally more happy or wealthy?
The key risk of not having kids is loneliness of an empty nest in retirement and twilight years. I’m speaking in general terms and for healthy relationships where kids/grandkids visit their older relatives.
My biggest fear of growing old and not having kids is becoming too sick to care for myself and becoming a ward of the state and ending up in those awful nursing homes.
True, but like most things related to income (as everyone here knows) the average is likely affected by significant skew. For example, even removing all other lifestyle factors just look at child care and schooling for a wealthy household. These are all discretionary purchses that are common for children in wealthy families:
Day care (5 years, 18k per year):$90k
Private elementary day school (6 years, 25k/year): $150k
Private middle school (3 years, 30k/year): $90k
Private high school (4 years, 34k/year): $136k
Private college (4 years (hopefully), 60k/year): $240k
So, that’s $706k in discretionary spending on education and day care. Even if you take the day care out, it’s still a ton. There are many other things that cost extra as well, such as living in a nice neighborhood, family vacations, better food, etc. The skew has to be significant.
I think when it comes down to it, people will just spend all the money they have anyway. If it’s not kids, it will be cars or something. So, if we say people spent $X on their kid, it is another way of saying they had $X to spend in general.
Is there any tax exemptions for kids in US? I asked because, there are here. Three children means no personal income tax at all. If so, this is deductible item.
I don’t know where you live, but there is an insane amount of deductions where I am for parents with children ($7/day daycare, cheap university fees, generous parental leave, tax free child benefit cheques, major deductions for sports registration and equipment, etc.). It seems in the US the subsidy goes to homeowners in the form of tax deductible interest.
Marriage to a 1950s era supportive spouse is a man’s best asset. Marriage to a creepy feminist is pure liability, offers nothing, then takes your stuff.
Kids are a liability, cost lots, but can’t contribute anything. In Asia kids give back to you when you are old at least, but Western kids give nothing ever.
Given the future for millennials, no job, crushing forced expenses by the corporations and government…kids just seem a bad move. Even for us GenXers kids were a questionable move.
Deductions and subsidies will probably only increase as birth rates will trend lower. A society needs people to function (at least until AI comes along).
Separately, I have thought a lot about whether having kids will look a lot different in 25-50 years. Given the time and costs required, as well as, a very broad range of often unpredictable outcomes (of where kids end up going in life), I could see some future where child rearing is increasingly outsourced. Possibly to the point parents don’t exist in the way we are used to. In some ways, this actually could create a fairer society as kids are raised without gross advantages/disadvantages. It also could free up significant time for professionals to do higher-level tasks.
Same here. Almost free kindergarten, studies almost free of charge, free paid days off work, direct financial transfers and subsides by Government and Municipal. This is all part of governmental pro-natalist policy given the brutal aging of population and emigration trends. Someone should pay taxes in the future.
i can only imagine that kids born today will have a much better future than in the past solely due to their high cost. when kids are cheap and the world is subsequently “overpopulated relative to capital/resources”, unemployment is high, wages and wage growth is low and the outlook for kids is terrible. on the flip side, when kids are expensive and the world is subsequently “underpopulated relative to capital/resources”, the outlook is great.
nobody was crying about how expensive kids were 20-40 years ago and look at the terrible employment situation and living standards that exist for the lesser qualified 20-40 year olds today. the cream of the crop will always rise but it’s the bottom quartiles that suffer under overpopulation.
when you have kids, you never know what you’re going to get. it’s always better to have kids when they’re expensive and people are hesitant to have them. it’s basic economics.
