How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too)

by David Goldman

The average cost of raising an American child to age seventeen is $222,360, according to a 2010 survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s more than four years of after-tax income for the median American family, not counting university. Put it another way: a single child will cost nearly 30 percent of the median family’s spending power over the first seventeen years. Young families go into debt to raise children and pay the debts off when the children are grown. It’s not hard to finance a large family if you start having babies in your early twenties, take out a big mortgage to buy a family home, get the kids out of the house by your mid-forties, and spend the last twenty years of your working life saving for retirement. But that presumes that you plan your life around a prospective family, marrying young and having children right away. If you spend your first ten years out of college playing the field, you’re not likely to raise a big family.