Quantifying the real cost of children over the first 21 years

Date Published: 27-Feb-2013

A UK insurance company has estimated that it costs £222,000 – just over €261,000 – to raise a child from birth to 21…..not including the cost of indigestion tablets for those nights you can’t sleep as you wait in vain for them to come home.

That’s £82,000 or 58 per cent more than it cost just ten years ago, and that – on top of the current economic downturn – has forced more than three-quarters of all parents to make cutbacks.

In fact it’s £4,000 up on last year alone and LV=, the insurance company which formulated the research, expects it to rocket to £350,000 (€410,000) in the next ten years.

In Irish terms, that means the cost of rearing a child to 21 averages out at €12,500 a year as it stands – or just under €20,000 per child per year by 2023.

Only clothes have come down in price over the last decade, and that was by just four per cent.

Not surprisingly, education and childcare are the biggest costs in the UK – and there’s no reason to suspect otherwise here; education has gone from £32,000 to £72,000 in a decade, which childcare is up from just under £40,000 to almost £64,000 in the same period.

Free education has been something of a misnomer from the start – parents of second level exam students are currently digging deep to come up with the €110 for the Junior or €130 for the Leaving Cert.And what came as an even bigger shock was the fact that the mocks now have to be paid for too – anything between €80 and €110 because teachers appear to be too busy to set for correct their own students’ papers.

They do however seem to find the time to correct other students’ exams – because they get paid extra for it, despite the fact they already earn a full-time salary from the state.

There’s no doubt that many of them do tremendous work – in numerous cases, above and beyond the call of duty – but quite frankly the level of absenteeism among others is so shocking that they wouldn’t last a wet week in private employment.

And the sheer incompetence of others, who rely on a daily diet of old exam papers in an effort to offer a best guess at what will get their students through in June – as opposed to actually teaching them – is breathtaking.

At the other end, a degree is the new Leaving Cert and a Masters appears to be the new degree – so you must find the money to keep your loved one in full-time education for those few years longer if they’re to have a real chance at professional success.

Still this is where we find ourselves; paying more than ever for longer than ever – and someday someone might carry out a little study to see if it’s actually worth it.

But in the meantime, we still have to pay for it – and while a good education is the best investment you can make, it is becoming more difficult than ever to afford as it rises in cost at a time that salaries are on the decrease.

And overall, it’s the little things that add to the bottom line. You wouldn’t be overly surprised that food would come to just over £19,000 over 21 years – but holidays are just behind on £16,000.

One of the real changes has been in the cost of toys and goods to entertain the little people – and you can forget dolls and train sets.Today’s children want the same toys as their parents, and the popularity of smart phones, tablets and laptops is adding to the expense of raising a child.

Parents feel under pressure to keep up with the latest technological advances – even for children as young as three years old.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.