January 09, 2017
Current and prospective parents in Pennsylvania will undoubtedly maintain, for good reason, that no amount of money can really outweigh the joys associated with guiding a young person from birth to adulthood.
Yet statistics in recent years indicate that the Keystone State is in the midst of a mild fertility crisis, with the state's birth rate falling to 11 out of every 1,000 residents in 2013. That puts Pennsylvania on par with some European countries, such as Denmark and Sweden, and places the state at the lowest level in the United States outside of New England.
There are numerous cultural and aspirational reasons for shifts of this nature, but one key indicator will always be the cost of child-rearing. This month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released its annual report on the expenditures U.S. families make on children from birth until age 17. The latest numbers encompass data from 2011-2015 and clearly show a rise in expenses for both married couple and single-parent families.
The report calculated per-child expenditures for households at varying income levels by reviewing the expenses of 23,297 married couples and 7,030 single-parent families, each with at least one child under the age of 17.
Nationwide, the USDA found that in 2015 it cost the average American family $233,610 to raise a child until the age of 17, which of course excludes the cost of sending a young adult to college. The expense categories are broken down as follows: housing (29 percent), food (18 percent), childcare and education (16 percent), transportation (15 percent), healthcare (9 percent), clothing (6 percent), and miscellaneous necessities (7 percent).
The table below shows the expense projections for a child born in 2015, operating under the premise that child-rearing costs increase considerably as children get older.
Projected cost of child-rearing in U.S. from 2015-2032.
When the report was first established in 1960, the cost of child-rearing was $202,020 in 2015 dollars, indicating a rise of about $50,000 in total expenses for Pennsylvania families over this period of time. From 2014 to 2015, however, overall expenses for child-rearing increased by approximately $380, led by gains in every category except transportation, which saw a decrease of about $140 annually. Year-to-year, the increase actually fell below the historic annual rate increase of 4.3 percent since 1960.
For a closer look at numbers and expenses, read the full USDA report here.
