The Inflation of Life - Cost of Raising a Child Has Soared!!! (I want children!) But...

DaltheJigsaw

Your little bundle of joy is going to require a wad of cash.
The cost of raising a child from birth to age 17 has surged 25 percent over the last 10 years, due largely to the rising cost of groceries and medical care, according to the Department of Agriculture, which tracks annual expenditures on children by families.
The government's most recent annual report reveals a middle-income family with a child born in 2010 can expect to spend roughly $227,000 for food, shelter and other expenses necessary to raise that child - $287,000 when you factor in projected inflation.


I just want one. I bet marriage is also expensive!
Probably more like $20,000 for a small one....

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/inflation-life-cost-raising-child-145736881.html

federica

And not all of that money is paid out by the parents - In some countries, there is a married person's allowance and child/family allowance paid by the state, paid into by every taxpayer, some of whom have no kids, don't want kids, don't like kids, and have no intention of ever having kids!
If people have children, they should be means-tested because the responsibility of having a child, raising it, feeding it clothing it and providing everything it needs - should fall primarily to the parents!

DaltheJigsaw

And not all of that money is paid out by the parents - In some countries, there is a married person's allowance and child/family allowance paid by the state, paid into by every taxpayer, some of whom have no kids, don't want kids, don't like kids, and have no intention of ever having kids!
If people have children, they should be means-tested because the responsibility of having a child, raising it, feeding it clothing it and providing everything it needs - should fall primarily to the parents!

Absolutely!

RichardH

In Canada there is universal health coverage funded by our taxes, but it does not include medication, which is paid directly and expensive. The public school system is devalued and stressed, and does not know what to do with LD kids except to stream them into "special ed" i.e. a ghetto. We pay for a private school (@ $20,00 U.S. per year) while still supporting, with our taxes, the public system... and we are happy to do so. If there was a means test at the time of our child's birth we would have failed... but we paid our way anyway... and then some. Besides, the provinces are fighting over who gets the new immigrants because we need the tax base to cover costs of aging baby boomers with children or not. There are self centered people who say they resent their taxes being channeled toward schooling etc...and it's not just the child related costs to our society, it's all kinds of things in with they imagine themselves detached. I do not resent my taxes paying for the huge health care bill of the lifestyles I don't share, that burden this country. I don't mind my taxes going to infrastructure I don't use. I don't mind funding all kinds of things I don't personally partake in.

federica

I wouldn't mind if it was means-tested, but as matters currently stand, a woman with four children, all in private schooling and with a title after their name - gets the same family income support, as a single mother struggling with a child in a one-bedroom basement flat in the tougher inner-city.
i personally believe that you could perhaps receive an allowance for the first child, and possibly, half that amount of the second: but the amount should be evaluated according to personal circumstance, and any children after that - you pay for and are responsible for.
That should be standard legislation; XX amount for the first, x for the second and zero from then on - but anybody believing they should be considered for alternative/supplementary funding would have to apply for personal assessment.
at the moment, payment is indiscriminate, and it's simply not a good system. It's a drain on the economy and frankly, encourages scrounging and people actually having children for the money it brings them.
and this truly isn't cynicism - I've met and spoken to girls who have deliberately fallen pregnant for the housing and child benefits they stand to gain. And it's not isolated or rare.

Dakini

And not all of that money is paid out by the parents - In some countries, there is a married person's allowance and child/family allowance paid by the state, paid into by every taxpayer, some of whom have no kids, don't want kids, don't like kids, and have no intention of ever having kids!

haha! Here in the US, people can only dream of such a thing! Leon is wise to consider the costs seriously. Personally, I'm shocked as to how much I spend on groceries, just on myself. Friends of mine who both are tenured university faculty have always had to pinch pennies, and raise their 3 kids on cheap, starchy food. So if they could barely make it, it must really be tough for people with lesser jobs.

And yeah, speaking of schools, Leon, you'd have to research schools in the Bay Area, and move to where there are good schools. (I heard Fremont, near you, isn't too bad.)

Marriage, for now, isn't as expensive as it used to be. I think the "marriage tax" --the extra amt. couples used to pay on their income taxes, was eliminated, and is still off the books, not sure.

All you can do, Leon, is wait and see where you end up job-wise, and evaluate from there. Are you still planning to go to grad school at JFK? Remember, they have a scholarship program for MA students.

RichardH

I believe in the principle of universality... because along with proposals for the kind of means testing Federica is describing, there is the other side of the coin.. for example here there was a proposal that those with a child in private school could write-off that expense, and essentially no longer fund the public system. I could sorely use such a write-off.. but it would be, to my mind, wrong. Canada has so far avoided a radical stratification.. because of the principle of universality. There will always be a percentage of welfare abusers.. always. It is the cost of a society that doesn't backslide into something Dickensian.. and it is sliding that way... .

This is my view at any rate.

Dakini

I'm with you there, @RichardH! President Reagan introduced that type of write-off in the US, and it's totally wrong. It undermined the public schools. The problem in the US is that there's no more sense of the common weal, the idea that supporting public services and public assistance benefits everyone in a holistic fashion. Too much of an every-man-for-himself ethos has been encouraged since the Reagan era.

RichardH

We watched it go down, Dakini... and there is a push here to go down the same road. I don't pretend to understand it.

Dakini

I don't know why Canada, while often turning up its nose at the US, keeps coming up with strategies to imitate it. I've heard for years there's been a push to do away with the fab health care system in favor of US-style private insurance coverage!!! Who in their right mind would invite a train wreck like that into a well-functioning system? It must be coming from fiscal conservatives, who want to save money, or something. Yet there's this opposite effort to erode the budget by giving credits to people with kids in private schools. How much sense does that make?! The world has gone mad!

KuJiMieDao

Children are our future, and every tax dime paid is a form of investment into "future index". (well, ideally every dime should be)\

All tax dollar may go into something not used directly, but indirectly. One example is the grocery we buy come from commercial freight port, rail way, air cargo bay, and rural high highways (of which we don't use directly). Everything is interconnected and co-dependent, and we happen to pay for part of the user fee.

RichardH

I don't know why Canada, while often turning up its nose at the US, keeps coming up with strategies to imitate it. I've heard for years there's been a push to do away with the fab health care system in favor of US-style private insurance coverage!!! Who in their right mind would invite a train wreck like that into a well-functioning system? It must be coming from fiscal conservatives, who want to save money, or something. Yet there's this opposite effort to erode the budget by giving credits to people with kids in private schools. How much sense does that make?! The world has gone mad!

One word... Alberta. Since that culturally uncomplicated province realized it can suck money out of the ground in the form of oil, the neo-con more-Texan-than-the-Texans freedom loving big sky folks have been funding think-tanks and deciding (after collecting for decades as a"have not" province) that it should not have to fund the federal program for current have-not provinces because they are such geniuses of free enterprise for finding money in the ground. Our Prime Minister is.. I have to admit .working for oil interests.. and harbors a resentment of eastern "socialists".

ahh.. obvously there is much more than very Canadian interprovincial mud fighting. nets within nets of causality... etc.

The Canadian center is still left of the American center, which is distorted to the right by an extreme right that is off the scale. You do have a good President.. Gawd.. don't blow it in November..