According to a new study, the cost of raising a child until the age of 17 has risen by more than $300,000 because of increasing inflation.
The Brookings Institution calculated for The Wall Street Journal that the average cost of raising a child born in 2015 through high school for a married, middle-income couple with 2 kids is now projected to be $310,605.
That equates to approximately $18,270 per year, a 9% rise over the previous estimate due to rising costs running amok on Americans’ budgets.
Brookings updated data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s last “Expenditures on Children by Families Report” in 2017 to account for rising inflation rates in the United States.
For many goods, including food, gasoline, clothing, and housing, the consumer price index is near a 40-year high.
According to the USDA, the average costs of raising a child born in 2015 was $233,610, but that was with the assumption of inflation staying close to the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2%.
According to Isabel Sawhill, a Brookings senior fellow who helped lead the new analysis, rising inflation has “made everything — including raising children — quite a bit more expensive.”
According to the most recent Labor Department data, the consumer price index rose 8.5% year on year in July, slowing from the 9.1% rate noted in June.
Brookings examined trends from the last moment inflation was this high, in the 1980s, to account for the Fed’s decisions as it increases interest rates to battle price increases. It assumes a 4% annual inflation rate in the life of a child born in 2015.
Sawhill emphasizes that the assessment only considers the cost of raising a child up to the age of 17. As a result, anyone planning to send a child to college, or another institution of higher education should anticipate paying even more.
