Raising children is expensive in the United States, and families are feeling the pressure.
More than 12.5 million children in the U.S. live in poverty. Even middle-class families are increasingly struggling to pay for everyday expenses.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture published a report using 2015 data that estimated expenses of child rearing from birth through age 17 in a middle-income family of two adults and two children is $233,610. With inflation, that number translates to almost $286,000 in 2022.
But adjusting for inflation may not be enough. … Child care costs have actually outpaced inflation. In 2020, child care expenses rose 5.03% year over year compared to the annual inflation rate of just 1.2% at the time.
“The fact is that sending an infant to day care in many places across the country could be significantly more expensive than in-state public tuition to send them to college,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
www.cnbc.com/2022/06/08/childcare-social-safety-net-policy.html