WSJ:  It Now Costs $300,000 to Raise a Child

WSJ:  It Now Costs $300,000 to Raise a Child

It determined that a married, middle-income couple with two children would spend $310,605—or an average of $18,271 a year—to raise their younger child born in 2015 through age 17. The calculation uses an earlier government estimate as a baseline, with adjustments for inflation trends.

Before Bill Nye the Science Guy became a garden-variety Progressive try-hard, he used to say “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”

It isn’t plausible that it costs $18k per year to raise a child.  Where is the proof?

To the parents of nice kids, thank you for your service.  Raising children must be challenging and occasionally gratifying.

The article is from the Wall Street Journal and is supposed to sound credible, but it isn’t believable.  There is no need to make parents sound like pathetic victims or to make having children sound like a worse decision than buying a time-share condo.

The estimate covers a range of expenses, including housing, food, clothing, healthcare and child care, and accounts for childhood milestones and activities—diapers, haircuts, sports equipment and dance lessons, among other costs.

The article skips over the specifics with this paragraph.  If it’s $18k per child per year, show the math. 

My brother has five children.  Am I supposed to believe that if they had no children, they’d have $1.5 million in the bank?  I don’t have any children and I don’t have $1.5 million in the bank.

There are economies of scale, tax deductions, government programs and costs to being single.

A single person probably has more living space, but cooking for one is not efficient.  A married couple with no kids doesn’t need a bigger house, but they would go out to eat more and take more expensive vacations.  A married couple with a few kids would need a bigger house, but wouldn’t go out to eat as much or take expensive vacations.

Family finances aren’t linear.  People make choices based on their lifestyle.  Making the claim that it takes $310,000 to get a baby to adulthood is intentionally misleading.  Show the math.