Raising A Child Just Increased 27.8% To $303,000 And There’s One Big Reason Why

Surprise, surprise: it’s inflation.

Inflation means everything is more expensive, specifically rent is up nearly 50% from last year and clothing costs are up more that 25%. Those two factors alone are massive reasons why raising a child is so expensive now.

But it’s not the biggest cost in growing a human being

Childcare is by far the largest expense for families with kids under 5, which makes sense I guess, but then why is looking after children really expensive for some people but other people get paid to do it?

All of these stats come from a recent study from LendingTree (whatever the f that is) which broke down all the average costs state by state. Click on this article where I’m getting all this information from. It’s pretty cool, they’ve got an interactive map and you can see in which state it costs the most to raise a kid to 18.

Turns out Hawaii is the most expensive and New Hampshire is the cheapest. Who knew?

But on average the cost of raising a child to 18 is $303,418, up 1.9% from last year. (Sorry, should have been clear, that 27.8% in the title is compared to 2023, bit misleading there…) 

As Matt Schulz, chief consumer finance analyst at LendingTree and co-author of the study, explains, “Inflation is just taking a toll, clearly, on people, and it’s certainly one of the reasons why we saw such significant growth here.”

“A few states and even areas within various states are what are called ‘childcare deserts,” where there’s just not nearly enough supply of daycare and child care centers to keep up with the demand for it,” Schulz explained. “So what happens is that the ones that are there—and especially the really good ones that are there—can charge basically whatever they want to charge, and it ends up driving up the rates quite a bit.”

“It’s a real challenge for people who really need the help,” Schulz said. “As much as we wish that people had a relative or a trusted friend that they could lean on for that sort of thing, a lot of people just don’t have that choice, so they have no other choice but to pay whatever they need to for daycare.” 

“It just turns a really challenging situation into an almost unmanageable one for people, and that’s why we see so many people factoring in finances when it comes to deciding whether to start a family or how many kids they might have.” 

“As much as we wish that we didn’t have to to think about the cost of being a parent, you’re doing yourself and your family a bit of a disservice if you don’t, because there are very, very few among us who, for for whom the cost of raising a child is not significant,” Schulz said.