Excerpts
With the cost of living running high, raising children is not cheap in Canada.
According to new data released by Statistics Canada on Sept. 29, a middle-income family with two parents and two children spends on average $293,000 to raise one kid till the age of 17.
For lower-income families earning less than $83,013 per year before tax, this spending comes down to roughly $238,190.
Higher-income families — making more than $135,970 gross yearly — would spend about $403,910 per child.
If the children live five more years in the family home from the age of 18 to 22, that would mean an additional $68,000 to $117,000 spent per kid, and that varies depending on the family size and how much they earn, StatCan said.
The data is based on a survey of household spending for the years 2014 to 2017.
It found that families spent almost a third of their income on housing, 20 per cent on transportation, 17 per cent on food and 14 per cent on child care and education.
New child-care measures that have cut daycare fees by at least 50 per cent have offered some relief to parents across the country.
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Even so, inflation, which rose to four per cent in August, a housing crisis and other financial pressures are leading some Canadians to think twice about having kids.
In 2022, the number of babies born in Canada dropped to a 17-year-low, according to a StatCan report released last week.
The high cost of living has magnified the size of the drop in births, one expert told Global News in a previous interview.
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