When thinking about becoming a parent, a few major considerations come into play, such as where you’ll live, where the kids will go to school and the type of family life you hope to raise them in.
Of all the factors that go into this life-changing decision, cost can be a huge part. A new study by Lending Tree found the cost of raising a child — from infant to 18 years old — in Georgia is now $201,058, making it the fourth most affordable state in the country.
Using average costs for common expenses like rent, food, apparel, child care, transportation, state taxes and health care, Lending Tree calculated the cost for parents over the first 18 years of their child’s life.
“There are plenty of reasons for the growth, including inflation, growing labor costs and rising demand,” Lending Tree’s chief consumer finance analyst Matt Schulz said in the report. “However, whatever the reason, this growth is making an already challenging aspect of parenthood that much worse.”
A 2024 Pew Research survey found that 12.5% of adults under 50 waiting to have children hesitated because of cost, making it the third-highest reason under just not wanting to become a parent or concerns about the state of the world. Adults 18 to 39 are even more likely to cite this as a concern holding them back, with 41% citing it as their main reason.
“No one should be surprised that costs have risen in recent years, but the type of growth we’ve seen in child care costs is on a whole other level,” Schulz said.
According to the report, Hawaii is the most expensive state to raise a child, costing about $362,891 over the 18 years. On the other hand, the most inexpensive state, Mississippi, still costs $190,402.
Nationwide, the cost of child-rearing has risen 25.3% since 2023, according to Lending Tree, which can create problems for most Americans who “don’t have a ton of wiggle room from month to month.”
Annual child-rearing expenses have risen drastically, too. In the past year, these expenses have increased from $21,681 to $29,419.
“When a big cost like child care shoots up by 40%-plus, it can be a real crisis,” Schulz said. “That extra money has to come from somewhere, so it forces families to make some difficult decisions.”
The rising costs of raising a child, however, have not been accompanied by rising wages in many cases. Families now spend 22.6% of their income on child-related expenses, according to the report, which is up from just 19% in 2023. Only six states have infant day care costs less than $10,000 annually, with the Peach State averaging $11,066.
“For many families, the costs of child care are so high that it eats up the majority of their salary and makes it nonsensical financially for people to stay in that job,” he said. “It’s awful that people find themselves in that situation, but many do.”
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