Cost of Raising Kids

Every number on this page comes from a provenance-backed dataset (data.json) or a tax/benefit engine grid — nothing is invented. Hover or tap the small chips next to numbers for the sources. Where a city has no data, the gap is disclosed instead of guessed.

Methodology & sources

City

Household income

Gross household income / year (local currency)

Presets are fractions of the income you typed: 0.5×, 1× and 2× of your entered figure (no assumed medians).

Children

Choices

Childcare

K-12 school

College

Options with no sourced data for the selected city are disabled.

Lifestyle tier

Scales discretionary categories (clothing, activities, toys, milestones, summer, tech, allowances) by published spending-survey quintile ratios — BLS CEX for US cities. Housing, childcare, tuition and healthcare are NOT scaled (choose those directly). p99 uses the top-quintile mean as a floor. Cities without survey data disclose the gap instead of guessing.

Macro assumptions

Inflation %/yr your assumption

Income growth %/yr your assumption

Defaults are 0 — today's prices and flat income — because a forecast is YOUR assumption, not data. Inflation compounds all cost categories; income growth compounds the income fed to the tax/benefit engine (benefit phase-outs shift accordingly).

Currency

USD figures use each value's published conversion; values without one are disclosed as gaps, never converted with a guessed rate.

Summary

Yearly cost by category

Cumulative net cost (with low–high range)

Category share of total

Yearly net cost vs net income

Gross cost vs child benefits

Cross-city comparison (USD)

Computes your scenario in up to 8 cities that have both a benefit engine grid and USD conversions. Loaded on demand.

Full source registry, derivations, scope cuts and confidence grading: /kidcost/methodology.