US: Who Can Afford Kids These Days?
The large data sets on the cost of living and the cost of children are instructive. But nothing compares with the anecdotes you hear from people who once thought they were prosperous but now wonder if they can really get by while completely ruling out the idea of having and raising children. It’s a genuine shift and one that is devastating for the future.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a fascinating piece by a high-end worker in New York City. He has a great job and so does his wife. But during the last year, they discovered that they are truly living paycheck to paycheck, barely able to pay the bills. They have discovered home cooking and have pretty well given up concerts and dinners out with friends. The writer was being deeply honest about a problem that seems to affect most people.
They thought that they had finally achieved the long-sought goal of prosperity. Instead, they feel a sense of impending doom. The kicker: the writer is in the C-suite of the Wall Street Journal itself! It turns out that this situation is now typical. A majority of Americans live this way!
And this is a childless couple. How in the world can they afford to have children? The wife cannot quit her job else they would both have to move, if they can find a place. Giving up a full income stream to raise a child is a huge expense in addition to the high costs of everything associated with children from diapers to formula to health care insurance.
The alternative is to keep working and put the kid in childcare. That is extremely difficult to come by everywhere. A report on childcare by Care.com offers some amazing data of the costs over the last ten years.
• Weekly nanny cost: $736 (up 56 percent from $472 in 2013). • Weekly daycare cost: $284 (up 53 percent from $186 in 2013). • Weekly family care center cost: $229 (up 80 percent from $127 in 2013). • Weekly babysitter cost: $179 (up 92 percent from $93 in 2013)
In terms of the most expensive places, the report offers the following. A weekly nanny in D.C. costs $885. In Massachusetts, it’s $865. In Connecticut, it’s $799. A weekly babysitter costs $200 in places like California. Daycare is going to run $250 to $400.
These are the most expensive cities and also the most regulated states. When there is no competition and the costs of opening child care are astronomical, this is what you get. However, the problem is also nationwide.
The report comments: “Today, families are spending, on average, 27 percent of their household income on child care expenses. And 59 percent of parents surveyed tell us they are planning to spend more than $18,000 per child on child care in 2023. It’s no surprise that 50 percent of parents are more concerned about the cost of child care than they were at this time last year.”
Think about this impossible situation that affects millions of young couples. You need two incomes to pay the bills, and that’s if you are lucky. Chances are that one of the two will need an additional part-time job, which is why multiple job holders are higher than ever before. That was the big change that occurred after the last great inflation of the late seventies. After 1985, women with children were more likely to have a remunerative job than not.
At the time, this was called “women’s liberation” but that was mostly a marketing gimmick to hide the dramatic decline in household income that required a second income to have growing household prosperity. That seemed to work for a while, even a long time. But as health care and childcare have become so expensive, the second income went from being a luxury to being an expected necessity.
Many people these days are hoping to homeschool children. This is especially true since the school closures forced so many millions into Zoom school that didn’t work and set a whole generation of kids back two years in learning outcomes. Many parents want to avoid that as their children get older. But homeschooling requires foregoing a full income stream. Only the richest can do that now, so that is ever more out of the question.
Oh and by the way, the Biden administration is considering new regulations on au pairs that would more than double their cost. The government wants to demand that they get paid the minimum wage, which would dramatically reduce demand and thus supply, thus ruining one of the few functioning migration markets we have.
After the school situation is solved, there is the problem of college, which introduces another set of problems. It’s no longer even thinkable that people can work their way through school and pay the bills. How many people are declining to have kids on those grounds alone? Who can afford to throw down $200K for a college degree in addition to paying the bills for the household?
For most of human history, having kids was just what you do, the whole reason for pairing up, and a driving force of the purpose of life itself. Today, we have different options and choices, and that’s great. But what happens when bearing children becomes completely unaffordable for any couple that has bills to pay, health care to cover, and would like to think about retirement too? That’s a huge problem and not just for the family but for the whole of society.
