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Estimating the cost of children and some results from urban United States

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Abstract

The testing of economic theories of fertility has been hampered by the absence of suitable data on the direct (versus opportunity) costs of children. This study hopes to help remedy this deficiency, first, by proposing a new method of estimating the magnitude of money expenditures parents make on their children. This method is then applied to the urban sample of the 1960–1961 U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey to estimate the total money expenditure costs of children to age eighteen. The distribution of these costs by income level, by birth order, by age of the child, and by components of cost (food, housing, clothing, and so on) is considered. The impact of the number and age of children on family living standards is also explored.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Social Research and Dept. of Economics, Florida State University, Florida, USA

    Thomas J. Espenshade

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  1. Thomas J. Espenshade
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Additional information

This research was supported by a grant to International Population and Urban Research, University of California, Berkeley, from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (5 R01 HD04602-03). The author wishes to thank Warren C. Robinson for his constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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Espenshade, T.J. Estimating the cost of children and some results from urban United States. Soc Indic Res 1, 359–381 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00303863

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