Have you ever wondered how much it costs to raise a child from birth to adulthood?

In today's society, there is more money, the concept has changed, parents are more and more willing to spend money on their children's education, and the cost of children's childbirth has become one of the focuses of family attention.

The emergence of the "China Fertility Cost Report 2024 Edition" has caused heated discussions at once.

The cost of raising a child to the age of 18 in China is essentially the highest in the world, equivalent to nearly seven times the GDP per capita.

It's a staggering amount of money, but what exactly is it about?

First, the cost disparity between urban and rural areas is huge

In this statistic, the average cost of childbirth for urban families is about 700,000 yuan, while the cost of giving birth to children in rural families during the same period is only half of that of urban families, about 370,000 yuan.

And the cost of childbirth is also related to the number of children born, the more children are born, the lower the average cost. The total cost of raising a child in the town until he grows up is nearly 700,000 yuan, and the cost of each child for families with two children has dropped. It became about 500,000, and the number of families with three children was even lower, less than 400,000.

What about the situation in rural areas? Coincidentally, the overall cost of rural households is lower than that of urban households, but this is also the case. The cost of giving birth to a child in rural areas is about 450,000 yuan, and after giving birth to two children, the cost drops to 370,000 yuan, and if you give birth to three children, it is not even 300,000 yuan, and the average cost per day is only 41 yuan.

What does this mean? It means that the more children are born, the less money the family will invest in each child! If we only focus on quantity, then quality will naturally go down. It turned out to be a child enjoying high-quality resources, but now it has become several children competing for inferior resources, which is simply more than worth the loss.

This difference not only reflects the difference between urban and rural families in terms of child planning, but also suggests that there is a large gap in the allocation of resources in education and medical care between urban and rural areas. Good things cost a lot of money, this is the consensus that everyone has.

We all know that there are high-quality schools, various training institutions in the city, and the educational resources are extremely rich, so we all want to send our children to the city. But who doesn't know that the cost of education for a good education is also high? In the rural areas, the opposite is true, where there are not so many resources, and the money to be spent is naturally less.

2. Regional differences in fertility costs

In the economically developed regions of Shanghai and Beijing, for example, there is no better development in China, with higher per capita income and better living standards. People here are willing to spend money to raise children, and people in Shanghai spend more than 1 million yuan to raise a child, followed by Beijing, but there are also more than 900,000 yuan.

As a result, the cost of raising a child is obviously low, about 350,000 yuan in Tibet and less than 400,000 yuan in Qinghai.

Why is this so? It doesn't cost money to buy a house, rent a house, have a prenatal checkup, have an early education, or have an interest class in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou? And it costs more money to do these things in big cities. However, educational resources in the western region are relatively scarce, and parents do not invest so much in their children's education, so the cost of childbirth will naturally be less.

Third, how much money the husband and wife make also affects

Someone said, you can't just look at the region, I live in the western region, and I spend a lot of money on my children every year. It is true that the income of both spouses can also affect the cost of having children. The cost of raising children in families with a lot of money is as high as 1.3 million, while the cost of raising children in low-income families is very small, only about 100,000 yuan, which is less than a fraction of that of high-income families. The gap is huge and intuitive, and it's impressive.

There are two main types of money to raise children, one is consumer expenditure, including nanny fees, childcare fees, tuition fees, book fees, as well as food, clothing, housing, medical care, transportation, entertainment, etc. The other is non-consumer spending, that is, insurance and favor spending, such as red envelopes.

The income level not only directly affects the family's investment in the children, but also indirectly determines the children's growth environment and development opportunities. Wealthy families can provide more good things for their children, so that they can develop better and win at the starting line, while poor families cannot create good conditions for their children because they are poor, although it will not have a particularly big impact, but it is also not good for their future development.

epilogue

You know, the cost of childbirth is inversely proportional to fertility. The more money is spent on having children, the more afraid people are of having children. The cost of childbirth in our country is higher than that of some developed countries, and it is understandable that the fertility rate is at the bottom of the world.

As one of the countries with the highest proportion of fertility costs in the world, the cost of having a child on the mainland has exceeded the financial capacity of some citizens. This does not bode well, and the problem of aging will be very prominent in the future. Therefore, the state has also introduced some policies in recent years. Only with the concerted efforts of the whole society can we ensure that every child has access to a good education and growth environment, thus laying a solid foundation for the future development of the country.