The Unaffordability of Parenthood
Apple News keeps delivering the same type of news story: Bringing a child into the world has grown unaffordable. Salaries haven’t kept up with the cost of raising a child, and more people are choosing not to have children because they cannot afford them.
A CBS article put the estimated yearly cost around $21,681 in 2021, and it is likely slightly higher in 2023.
That is the estimate before college, which you’ll want to start saving for as soon as the child is born because the average in-state tuition is $26,027 per year and private college tuition is $55,840 per year. So let’s average that to $40,933 per year or $163,734 that you need to save over 18 years. Assuming you don’t have a 529 plan (and we can’t predict the performance of the plan), that comes out to an additional $9096 you need to save per year beginning at birth to send your child to college, based on 2023 prices.
So it’s expensive — even if you take college savings out of the mix.
The birth rate has been dropping for years, but we’re also asking people to take on enormous costs to ensure we have a future population of little Generation Alphas to support the Gen Xers and Millenials and beyond without giving the societal support needed to make this happen.
I’m not sure why Apple News keeps delivering stories about this to me except that the algorithm connects infertility with any lack of reproduction?
1 comment
I know cost is a big reason why young people aren’t having kids these days, or are having just one child. (And yes, there’s not much societal/government support for them either, despite a lot of lip service being paid to the importance of families and the need for more babies.) Both of our nephews have one child each and say that’s probably it for them. Our great-niece is an IVF baby, so a brother or sister would mean spending more money on fertility treatments than they already did just to get her here — plus the mom had a difficult delivery. Not sure how she feels, but I know our nephew is not anxious to repeat that experience…!