The Truth about Babies and the Economy

Blaire Brody, writing for the Fiscal Times, gave her readers a heads up when she documented the real costs of raising a child. While the U.S. has been hit hard by the recession and everyone is looking for ways to save, the cost of raising a child has continued to climb.

School tuitions, health care, rent, transportation, daycare, and other expenses associated with raising a family have continued to rise but our salaries have not. Here are the sobering numbers:

In 2009, the Department of Agriculture estimated the total before-college cost of raising a child was $286,050 — about $11,700 per year today, and $21,600 a year by the time they’re 18. With college, the cost nearly doubles, not to mention the costs many parents face during a recession, when their college grad shows up at their doorstep expecting to move back in. Housing and child-care were two of the biggest expenses, 31 percent and 17 percent respectively, and 50 percent higher for those who live in urban areas. The U.S. is becoming more urbanized every year — 90 percent of the population is expected to live in cities or suburbs by 2050. For a newborn in New York City, the average family spends up to $16,250 per year on child-care alone.

After steady declines since 2007, the U.S. birth rate has now fallen below replacement rate, and that trend shows no sign of reversal anytime soon. While my research shows that the financial cost of raising a child is not always the most compelling reason to remain childfree, it is a consideration in the decision-making process, particularly for those who have postponed children and then ultimately decide not to have kids.

What about you? Has the cost of raising children in today’s economy influenced your decision making?

Flickr Photo by Hello Turkey Toe

Working Wives, Unemployed Husbands

In the current recession, two things are happening which we need to address politically and individually. One, women are increasingly becoming the breadwinners in their families and two, when the breadwinner loses their job the whole family is at risk of losing their health insurance.

A fascinating and timely article titled Women Breadwinners, Men Unemployed written by Heather Boushey, the Senior Economist at the Center for American Progress examines these current realities and their impact on our lives. Boushey notes:

The reason that more married couples now boast women as the primary breadwinners is because men have experienced greater job losses than women over the course of this recession, losing three-out-of-every-four jobs lost. This puts a real strain on family budgets since women typically earn only 78 cents for every dollar men earn.

What’s equally worrisome is that most families receive health insurance through the employers of their husbands. So when husbands lose their jobs, families are left struggling to find ways to pay for health insurance at the same time they are living on just a third of their prior income.

Worrisome, indeed. Even though my husband and I are married and have been for over twenty years we have a “single + one” health insurance plan through his work that, if he were to lose his job, would be very expensive to replace, even though we are only insuring two relatively healthy people with no life threatening pre-existing conditions.

My income as a writer would not come close to covering this cost. Which is why I’m tempted to contact my representatives in government during their summer break and encourage them to move fast to make sure we pass some kind of health care reform bill.

Families of all incomes and sizes need to be protected, recession-proofed, so that even more people do not become uninsured.

Flickr Photo by keltickelton (cc)