The cost of raising a child continues to rise. Here’s how PA compares to US average

Pennsylvania parents find themselves in the middle of the pack when it comes to the cost of raising a young child.

LendingTree, an online lending marketplace, crunched the numbers for all 50 states and the District of Columbia and ranked Pennsylvania as having the 28th highest annual cost in 2021. The Keystone State’s annual figure of $18,577 — a total of more than $334,000 over 18 years — falls between Missouri and South Carolina.

Washington, D.C., is the most expensive place to raise a child at an annual cost of $28,785 — more than $518,000 over an 18-year period. The least expensive state is Mississippi, where it costs $13,596 a year.

The figures are based on a two-earner couple making the 2019 median income of $77,263 who are raising a girl younger than 5. The data included costs for housing, food, child care, clothes, transportation and health insurance. The company used data from several organizations including the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Kaiser Family Foundation and Internal Revenue Service.

The largest expense across the states was for day care. In Pennsylvania, the average cost of center-based day care is 23rd in the country at $11,560 per year.

The Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., research group, said in August the average cost to raise a child in the U.S. has risen to more than $300,000.

A child born in 2015 to a middle-class family with two children would cost $310,605 from birth to age 17, Brookings said. Five years ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would cost $233,610 in 2015 dollars to raise a child. Brookings updated the USDA’s numbers to take inflation into account.