According to the Dagens Industri article Söner dyrare i drift, it costs noticably more to raise a boy in Sweden (from the ages of 4 to 18) than to raise a girl. The cost for navigating a boy through those ages is said to be 391,000 Swedish crowns (about $66,000 at today's exchange rate) whereas a girl is said to cost 302,000 Swedish crowns ($51,000). Strangely enough, a good chunk of the descrepancy is said to lie in the fact that the boys apparently cause twice as much monetary damage in the clothing department.
In a way, since the cost of living is higher in Sweden, and whatever can be bought for 391,000 SEK in Sweden could perhaps be bought for, say, $40,000 in the States, $40,000 would perhaps be a more accurate translation.
The website Babycenter.com has a little tool for calculating the cost of raising a child in the States. It asks you to fill in a bit more info about your own situation, including what part of the U.S. you live in, how much money you make, whether it's one or two parents in the family and what kind of college, if any, you plan on sending Junior to. I filled out info that most closely matches our own, including "No College" since university is fee-free in Sweden, and was told that it would cost us over $270,000 to raise a kid.
Huh.
Us Americans are clearly very high-maintenance creatures.
Meat Filled Saturday
10 years ago
2 comments:
It seems the study is about Great Britain and not Sweden.
Aha, I see that now... not that they were particularly clear on that in the article. In which case... what a perfectly useless article! But my highly scientific analysis about Americans being dear to maintain clearly still stands.
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