Face the Facts USA: The rising costs of raising a child

Each day in the 100 days leading up to Election Day, our website and Face the Facts USA will be partnering to bring you one exhaustively researched and vetted, non-partisan fact about a major issue facing our nation.

Fact #25: This is why your mom and I do staycations

It will cost a middle-income family $234,900 to raise a child born in 2011 from infancy through age 17.

If mom and dad foot the bill for four years of college, add another $68,524 for a public school education and $154,356 for private college.

Without college, the cost of raising a child in a middle-income family rose from $216,505 in 2001 to $234,900 in 2011, an 8.5 percent increase.

The biggest change over the decade was expenses for child-care and non-college education costs, which increased from 10 percent of the total in 2001 to 18 percent in 2011.

Housing, food, transportation, health care and other costs stayed roughly the same as a percentage of the total.

Go to Face the Facts USA’s website