Raising a child to 18 years of age costs Chinese families an average of 6.3 times China's GDP per capita, per Yuwa Population Research's "China Childbirth Cost Report 2024," released on Wednesday. That's compared to a factor of 4.11 in the US.
In total, raising a child until they are 18 costs Chinese families an average of 538,312 yuan, or about $73,000, Yuwa said.
Still, raising a child in the US costs far more without considering income disparities. Middle-income families in the US are projected to spend $233,610 raising a child until they are 18, per the USDA. A Business Insider report from January put the estimate of raising a child significantly higher, at an average of $462,852.
Notably, the average cost of raising a child in China fell slightly compared to Yuwa's 2022 report on the same topic. The think tank said data from 2019 showed that the average cost was $76,000, or about seven times the country's GDP per capita at the time.
GDP per capita seems like a poor metric because 1) GDP is garbage metric, especially when comparing a financialized neoliberal economy to a mixed economy; and 2) using the arithmetic mean in countries with high income inequality will be highly misleading. Wouldn’t median household income have been a better choice?
