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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Having six kids does not help your finances living in a Tier 1 city (assuming you need at least a three bedroom for that sized family). Each one costs $250k-$300k to raise 0-18 (per Brookings) without accounting for daycare, private school, or college. Hard to have sympathy for the financially irresponsible.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2022/08/30/its-getti... (2022)

https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/01/13/cost-raising-chil... (2017)

https://gothamist.com/news/it-could-cost-you-500k-to-raise-a... (2014)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33991744 (additional citations from a previous comment)

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Not trying to dispute anything here, as I don't think anyone sane would suggest it isn't expensive to have kids, but the Brookings article in particular is kind of hard to parse. $310k for kid #2 born in 2015 to a middle-income family. What's middle-income in this case? How does that change for higher income which would be more representative of HN readers? How does that change if it's kid #1 instead of 2? They also say "adjusted for higher expected future inflation" but don't say what numbers they're using. Elsewhere they say that inflation is increasing the cost by about $26k overall. Over 18 years that's $120/mo which for a $300k expense is pretty insignificant overall. And in general, I don't think people take cost into account for children this granularly. Who is looking at $290k over 18 years and thinks "yeah let's do it" then balks at $310k? Nobody.

> And in general, I don't think people take cost into account for children this granularly. Who is looking at $290k over 18 years and thinks "yeah let's do it" then balks at $310k? Nobody.

40% of pregnancies annually are unintended in the US [1]. Poverty is the fourth leading cause of death [2]. Between 9 and 12 million children are exposed to chronic hungry (fluctuates year to year) [3]. High level, the citations and data strongly suggest that no one (or very few people) does the math, and then they're all surprised pikchu when US socioeconomics comes for them.

You'd laugh at someone when they buy a Lambo and can't afford the gas for it, but no one batts an eye when people do the same with kids.

[1] https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-u...

[2] https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2023/04/17/poverty-4th-greates...

[3] https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/child-hunge...

>40% of pregnancies annually are unintended in the US

Note that 61% of unintended pregnancies are aborted.(1) So it would be mistaken to think that 40% of children born are unintended.

(1)https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-world...

The feeding America statistics are grossly inflated.

It is based on survey data with set questions. Answering yes to any of the following can categorize you as food insecure

A parent lost weight (for any reason)

Adult(s) cut size or skipped meals in 3 or more months of the year

Relied on few kinds of low-cost food to feed child(ren)

If Elon Musk skips breakfast to lose weight and succeeds, his family qualifies as food insecure.

This is why you see very different summary statistics. 1 in 5 children suffer food insecurity versus 0.9% of children have gone hungry at lest once in the last year.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31277978

I have other citations if that one is not to your liking.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/snap-works-for...

> The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) delivers more nutrition assistance to low-income children than any other federal program, making it the nation’s largest child nutrition program. In 2016, SNAP will help about 20 million children each month — about one in four U.S. children — while providing about $30 billion in nutrition benefits for children over the course of the year.[2] (See Figure 1.) While SNAP provides only a modest benefit — just $1.35 on average per person per meal for households with children — it forms a critical foundation for the health and well-being of America’s children, lifting millions of families and their children out of poverty and improving food security. Research shows that its support can have surprisingly important long-lasting effects.

That indicates that there are important programs in place, which makes sense.

That is a very different claim than 10 million children are going hungry despite this program.

You are just wrong. I don't know if you are intentionally wrong or mistaken. But going by the link in your other response you linked to (love the self-quotes), is the survey that the government uses to generate its results. Question 8 (which refers to parents losing weight on the survey) asks:

> In the last 12 months, did you lose weight because there wasn't enough money for food

(Emphasis added)

All the other questions also specify that underlying causes should be money or resource based.

> 40% of pregnancies annually are unintended in the US [1].

Misleading - what is important is what % of children are unintended.

Given the sea change in recent laws, I expect those numbers to come closer to parity in the next few years.

Doubt it will to a substantial degree, they will not prevent large majority of abortions.

Most people are willing to drive to a legal state for something as important as an abortion.

e: Not that 6% [0] potentially isn't absolutely massive, and that is before Florida.

[0]: https://archive.is/IZWQi

Correction, most people who can afford to do so (both financially and with respect to risk, e.g. of losing their job) would be willing to. The jury is out on what percentage of people wouldn't be able to but it's certainly quite a bit above 0.

Sorry, which part of my statement is your "correction" correcting?

I made my statement about 'most' people and 'large majority' precisely because they do not cover all people.

He's correcting your statement because the population "most" and "large majority" are drawn from is different. "Most people own a yacht" and "A large majority of billionaires own a yacht" are different statements, but not because of the semantic difference between "most" and "large majority".

Or, to put it another way, he's saying a lot of people (maybe even most people who accidentally get pregnant) cannot afford the monetary/time/etc costs to go to another state to get an abortion.

1. Large majority of abortions will be unaffected: Unless we consider large majority 95%+, this is true.

2. Most people can afford to travel to another state: Trivially true.

Sure, the population of the statements are different (abortions vs. people), but they are both true and do not need to be corrected. Moreover, they would still be true even if you switched which population the 'most' was for and which one the 'large majority' was for.

Your first point is just reiterating your assertion that we're disputing. Your second point is not "clearly true" or "true at all". The average cost to travel for an abortion is in the thousands, given the need to stay multiple days and the fact that insurance may not cover it. Most Americans cannot afford an unexpected multi-thousand dollar expense. Half cannot afford a surprise $400 bill[1].

The majority of people in America are unable to cross state lines to get an abortion, financially or in the time off work.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-04/most-amer...

If they can't afford $2K for an abortion and related travel, having the child obviously isn't exactly a cost-free alternative.

Can't squeeze blood from a stone. Not having the money today frequently means you have to make sub-optimal future decisions as well.

Of course it's not a cost free alternative. They probably know that it costs substantially more and that's why they want an abortion. But, it's the only alternative they can actually pay for because it's the only one that doesn't demand thousands of dollars up front (and $2k would be below average.)

When I said they couldn't afford it, I mean it was something they would have to convince someone to loan them money to do. They likely don't have a credit card with that limit, and payday loans usually top out below $1,000 (according to Google).

And all that is without addressing the fact that they need to suddenly take several days off work (because most states have waiting periods) and not get fired.

> Each one costs $250k-$300k to raise 0-18 (per Brookings) without accounting for daycare, private school, or college.

$250k / 18 years / 12 months a year = $1,150/mo on average to feed + clothe a child, take it on vacation, put it in sports, buy it school supplies, and take it to the doctor, deal with a broken arm, birthday presents, tutoring, etc.

About $265/week. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks. Call it 3 meals a day. $37.95/day to raise a kid. $12.65/meal 3 times a day for 18 years. (that's 100% of the budget for food, obviously unrealistic). 80% of the budget is $10/meal 7 days a week before inflation.

Eaten at home, I cannot imagine a breakfast approaching $10. School lunches (the majority of lunches in any given year) average $4.33.

There's a lot of variability in those costs. A third of the estimate is just housing. It's not quite as simple as saying that each kid will cost you another $1400 out of pocket each month.

They easily will for the first six years of their lives in NYC, assuming both parents work.

For a religious family with six children that is probably not the case.

On what, though? Well over a thousand bucks a month per kid? The dollar figure specifically excluded daycare.

Further the financial stress almost always passes to the children in one form or the other. The kids through no choice of their own may get stuck with a big bag of guilt, anger, apathy, insecurity, and more.

This is why public institutions are so important. This is why studying the real impact of socio-economic disparities on an individuals pursuit of happiness is so important.

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