American Dream Ledger: Cost of Raising Two Children

## What this measures

USDA's estimate of what a middle-income married couple (before-tax income $59,200 to $107,400 in 2015) spends on a child from birth through age 17, for two children, with each budget category (housing, food, transportation, clothing, health care, child care and education, other) carried from 2015 to the month by its own CPI-U index. Child care uses the CPI day care and preschool index. Dollars, monthly.

## Why it matters

Children are the cost a household commits to longest. USDA's budget is the standard public estimate and the one most other estimates start from.

## How to read it

Higher means raising children costs more at today's prices. Because the 2015 budget is fixed, the series moves only with prices, fastest when child care and housing prices rise.

## What it does not say

USDA stopped the report after the 2015 edition (published 2017), so this is a 2015 spending pattern inflated by CPI, not a new survey; families spend differently now. Its child-care figure counts only families who pay for child care. College is not included (see the college component).

## How it is priced

Each month is priced in that month's dollars. Annual public figures (a BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey year, an NCES academic year, a CMS health-spending year) are the average for their own period: a month inside the period is the figure × the matching CPI-U index for the month ÷ its average over the period, and months after the newest published period carry that figure forward by the same index until the next edition replaces it. Nothing is projected forward and nothing is discounted: it is the price tag at today's prices. A month is written once its CPI and a full month of mortgage rates exist. October 2025 has no reading because BLS published no CPI for it.

## Assumptions

Assumptions used across the American Dream Ledger: an adult lifetime of 60 years (18 to 78, about the remaining period life expectancy at 18 in SSA's life tables); a working lifetime of 40 years (25 to 64); two adults and two children; a 30-year fixed mortgage with 20% down; four years of public in-state college per child; retirement of 20 years from 65 (about SSA's period life expectancy at 65, men and women averaged) at 70% of median household income. Weddings are left out: no public-domain source measures what a wedding costs.

## Source

Palanor calculation (src/lib/standards/american-dream.ts), recomputed daily by /api/cron/american-dream. Inputs: USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, Expenditures on Children by Families, 2015 (Miscellaneous Report No. 1528-2015, revised March 2017), Table 1, total $233,610 per child in 2015 dollars (public domain); CPI-U housing, food, transportation, apparel, medical care, all items (BLS via FRED) and day care and preschool (BLS).