Cost of Raising a Child Calculator

Raising a child from birth to age 18 is one of the largest financial commitments most families take on, and seeing the number early changes how you plan for it. This tool turns your income band and region into an estimate, so the cost is something you can budget toward rather than a vague worry about the future.

The benchmark for this kind of estimate is the USDA's Expenditures on Children by Families, 2015, published in 2017 and the last edition of that report. It put the cost of raising the younger child of a middle-income married couple with two children, from birth through age 17, at $233,610 in 2015 dollars, spread over seven categories: housing 29%, food 18%, child care and education 16%, transportation 15%, health care 9%, miscellaneous 7% and clothing 6%. Adjusted with the Consumer Price Index (the CPI-U went from a 2015 average of 237.017 to 334.980 in August 2026, a factor of 1.413), that is about $330,200 at August 2026 prices. The calculator stores the USDA figure for your income third (before-tax income under $83,700, $83,700 to $151,800, or above, in August 2026 dollars) and urban region, adjusted the same way and rounded to $1,000, divides it by 18 for the annual and monthly averages, and splits it with those USDA shares, combining clothing and miscellaneous as 13%.

Treat the output as an average; your real costs will move with your lifestyle and the surprises no spreadsheet anticipates. College tuition sits outside this calculator entirely, and so do the non-financial costs of time and emotional investment. Childcare and healthcare are the line items families most often lowball, and both can run higher than expected.