Thursday, June 11, 2009

How Much Kids Cost at the Top and Bottom of the Income Scale

Marcia Carlson and Tim Smeeding reported at the Furstenberg Conference that parents in the top fifth of income spend about five times as much on their children as do parents in the bottom quintile of income.

At first glance this seems like common sense - parents with more money to spend will spend more on their kids. But the fact that children could be raised for less shows that richer parents are choosing to invest more in their children. The concerted cultivation that middle class parents normally engage in for their kids costs much more than the natural growth childrearing of the poor and working class families.

3 comments:

Black Sea said...

Evidently, learning to say "no" is quite an expensive education.

Michael Bush said...

Do the richer parents get measurably different results?

Gruntled said...

On the whole, the richer classes invest more in their kids, who then tend to do very well in school and all the things that follow from school.