Next time your children are giving you grief don’t think about this: it’s costing you more to raise them.
The U.S. Agriculture Department said a middle-income family with a child born in 2011 can expect to spend about $234,900 for food, shelter, and other necessities to raise them over the next 17 years, an increase of 3.5 percent increase from 2010.
Similarly, middle-income parents with an income between $59,410 and $102,870 can expect to dole out $234,900; and a family earning more than $102,870 can expect to spend $389,670 to raise a child.
The report, issued annually by the USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion since 1960, found expenses for transportation, child care, education, and food posted the biggest increases in 2011 compared to a year earlier. There were smaller increases in housing, clothing, health care, and miscellaneous expenses during the same period.
The report notes geographic variations in the cost of raising a child, with expenses the highest for families living in the urban Northeast, followed by the urban West and urban Midwest, which includes Iowa and South Dakota among other states. Housing costs are the single largest expense to raising a child, averaging $70,560, or 30 percent of the total cost over 17 years, the USDA found. Child care, education and food were the next two largest expenses.
Child care costs have soared dramatically since the first report 51 years ago. Back then a middle-income family could have expected to spend $25,230 ($191,720 in 2011 dollars) to raise a child through age of 17. Housing was the top cost back then, too.
As expected child care expenses as a family decline with more children as clothes, toys and shelter can be shared. Families with three or more children spend 22 percent less per child than families with two children.