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BEING A PARENT has never been an easy task. However, as time goes by, fulfilling that role has become increasingly difficult in a country that until recently was an example to the world in economic matters. Now, the cost of raising a child in the US, at least through high school, has reportedly risen to more than $300,000 due to runaway inflation.
A Brookings Institution estimate for The Wall Street Journal found that a middle-income married couple with two children would spend $310,605 (or an average of $18,271 a year) to raise their youngest child born in 2015 to age 17. According to the study, the total cost has increased by more than 9% compared to the rate of inflation two years ago.
The Financial Challenge of Raising a Child in the US
Brookings calculated the cost of raising a family based on a 2017 estimate from the Department of Agriculture. The estimate covers a range of expenses, including housing, food, clothing, health care and childcare, and takes into account childhood milestones and activities: nappies, haircuts, sports equipment, and dance classes, among other expenses.
“A lot of people are going to think twice before they have either a first child or a subsequent child because everything is costing more”, said Isabel Sawhill, a researcher at Brookings.
Sawhill notes that it is important to keep in mind that the analysis only takes into account the cost of raising a child up to the age of 17. Therefore, anyone planning to send a child to college or other institutions of higher education can expect to pay even more.
According to the Department of Labor, food prices rose 13.1% in July compared to a year earlier, hitting Americans’ pocketbooks and especially lower-income families.
“Everything has gone up so much, from rents to food, that my partner and I decided to move to my mother-in-law’s house to cut costs”, Samantha Pérez, a Hispanic American who lives in California, told El American.
“I have a seven-month-old baby and I am buying some eco-friendly and reusable diapers to reduce costs on that front. Thank God I am still breastfeeding her and the issue of formula milk has not affected me. But yes, everything is very expensive, I feel that for some time now life is becoming more difficult for us to afford,”, Perez explained.
A Wall Street Journal article points out that the main items that account for most of the $300,000 expenditure are housing and childcare.
“For the average family, housing and child care account for more than 50% of the annual cost of children under age 6”, writes the WSJ.
According to Care.com the national average price for a year of childcare is $11,750; the average in California is $14,900, in Washington the average is $15,800, in Massachusetts $16,800; which means that for many families, a year of childcare costs more than an entire childhood of clothing.
Editor’s note: The quotes featured in this article were originally published in Spanish, then translated to English and edited for publication.
Sabrina Martín Rondon is a Venezuelan journalist. Her source is politics and economics. She is a specialist in corporate communications and is committed to the task of dismantling the supposed benefits of socialism // Sabrina Martín Rondon es periodista venezolana. Su fuente es la política y economía. Es especialista en comunicaciones corporativas y se ha comprometido con la tarea de desmontar las supuestas bondades del socialismo