The cost of raising a child increased by about the price of a new car over the past year, while wages haven’t nearly kept pace.
SO WHAT
Don’t even ask about college tuition.
THE NUMBERS
For a middle-income married couple with two children, the cost of parenting one kid from birth to age 17 surpassed $300,000 for the first time thanks to soaring inflation, according to a Brookings Institution analysis highlighted Friday by The Wall Street Journal.
That was an increase of 16%, or $43,605, from 2021, based on U.S. Department of Agriculture and Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
- By comparison, the average new car cost about $48,000 in June 2022, up 13% from last year.
- According to the Journal, the annual cost of raising a child is $18,270, including basics like housing, food, clothing, healthcare, child care as well as “diapers, haircuts, sports equipment and dance lessons among other costs.”
Median weekly earnings in the U.S., on the other hand, have hovered around $1,000 since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
SAME ENERGY
Eighteenth birthdays won’t offer much relief for families planning on sending their kids to college.
- The average annual cost of a four-year in-state public college reached $22,690 last year, an increase of 6% since the end of the 2018-2019 school year, outstripping median income growth, according to the College Board.
- A pre-pandemic study published in 2018 forecast that the cost of college could almost double by 2035.
MEANWHILE
The proportion of childless Americans ages 18-49 who said they are unlikely to have kids rose from 37% in 2018 to 44% in 2021, the Pew Research Center found.
- Three in five childless millennials said cost is a major reason for their hesitancy.
THE DEMOCRATS’ RESPONSE?: After driving inflation to a four-decade high with trillions of dollars in federal spending, President Biden last week signed the Inflation Reduction Act law, which will not reduce inflation but will reduce middle-class incomes and cost manufacturing jobs, according to experts.
- Now, CNN reported Monday, President Biden is planning to wipe out hundreds of billions of dollars in federal student loan debt which many experts and ordinary Americans predict will send prices even higher.