[Rainbow Crow]

I found myself wondering how much would it cost society to foot the bill for raising a child to the age of 18, so that women can be free to work as much as men do.

It will cost a middle-income family about $241,080 to raise a baby born in 2012 from birth to age 18, according to an annual report by the US Department of Agriculture. The figure rises to $301,970 when adjusted for inflation and represents a 2.6 percent increase from 2011, the report said.

As such, it costs $300,000 when adjusted for inflation. This is not counting the costs of college and subsidizing the woman for the time when she absolutely cannot work, during the very late stages of pregnancy, delivery and recovery. It is not counting the fact that, to fully subsidize the raising of a child, the child would need to be handed over to government unions who are going to want assorted benefits in return for doing the work. It is just the flat cost of the physical resources and public school supplies needed for child raising.

Now let's look at the United States. Let's say there are roughly 300,000,000 (300 million) people in the United States. Let's say that 25% of them want to have two children.

25% of 300 million is 75 million. At two children each, that's 150 million children.

150 million children multiplied by $300,000 is: $45,000,000,000,000. That's $45 trillion. Keep in mind that this is before paying union wages, benefits and pensions that would drive up the cost by a not insignificant amount. This $45 trillion figure is just the cost of the resources needed to raise these children.

This is where the math problem comes in. Anyone have a theory as to how much it would cost to run a unionized, mass child-rearing government operation for 150 million children?

[Rei Murasame]

Given that the United States nominal GDP in 2012 was $16.62 trillion, multiply that by 18 years if you'd like to assume that the GDP will be around the same all the time going forward, for the sake of simplicity.

That means that over 18 years you hypothetically have about $299 trillion to play with. The $45 trillion spent over 18 years for the scenario that you've just come up with would be 15% of that amount. For comparison, the United States 'education budget as percentage of GDP' is about 6% of that amount at the moment. So your scenario would effectively be considered as a an additional 9% spending in 'education'.

I'm not sure if you intended this to sound like an impossible outlandish scenario when you devised it (you had lots of sensational zeros separated by commas there), but when expressed as a percentage of GDP over 18 years, it looks pretty modest. Spending 9% of GDP over 18 years to socialise childcare sounds like a pretty sweet deal.

[Rainbow Crow]

Ok, but that is only in resource costs. For example, those are the resources costs assuming that the parents provide shelter for their children because the children are living with them. In a socialized alternative, after we add in the necessary staff training and payments, likely construction of new buildings, additional transport, and so on, we are probably looking at more than 15% of GDP. I am wondering if anyone can attempt a reasonable estimate as to just how much more it would cost.

[Rei Murasame]

Lots of daycare centres and staff training would have to happen at the beginning, and it always incurs a cost to get a new system underway, but I have no idea on how to work out an estimate of what that would cost.

But assuming that the system allows women to maximise their productivity as a result, the increase in GDP that comes from rising productivity might well cancel out much of the cost of having set up the system, after the first generation passes through it.

[JRS1]

What would this childcare entail?

17K/ year seems a lot of money. I expect this includes designer clothes and all manner of stuff. At the end of the day all they need is food and water (money wise). It would be cheaper if you took those extraneous things out. But what does that leave?

If its just looking after them until mam and dad gets home it could be really quite cheap - just run after school play sessions in existing schools, hardly any additional infrastructure required. Peanuts I would guess.

[Rainbow Crow]

I guess raising the children in a spartan environment is probably inevitable under such a plan.

We can also ask whether children raised in a group environment instead of by their parents would have lower productivity. Looking at how foster kids who are never adopted perform in comparison to other children, it seems likely that no net gains in GDP would accrue over the long run.

[JRS1]

I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater - arent the Kibutz kids successful, also boarding school kids tend to do well, despite being brought up by others.

I just dont see what it would look like given the context of the numbers you are talking about.

All people would want would be pre-school care , and after school care. After school, care would take little capital investment. For kids up to school age, the outlay would be very little over the 18 years of the first draft, and would be a sound investment for the future. And for this you keep women earning their keep.

Lets do some rough estimates. I guess you could provide a suitable pre-school "home" for that could cater for around 100 kids for 2M us dollars. How many of the little bleeders are there in the US?

Edit- just checked there are about 20M, by my maths it would take 400 billion initial investment. Even if you said 4M/ home, it doesn't seem too expensive. You do manage to educate them for 16 years already.

[Rei Murasame]

If its just looking after them until mam and dad gets home it could be really quite cheap - just run after school play sessions in existing schools, hardly any additional infrastructure required.

Yes, basically this is just like bolting on extra things onto the presently-existing system, so it can't possibly be prohibitively economically disruptive.

[Rainbow Crow]

I'm not sure that it is. If you make women pay for their children, you are still disadvantaging them as compared to men because their money is going to different things. So you have to pay for everything and provide everything in order to truly equalize the genders.

[JRS1]

Of course the governmebt would be making the investment on the countries behalf.

Lets say for each of those 20M kids, a woman is out of the workplace for 4 years. for each child. Say she doesnt pay tax of 10K/ year. That is a loss of 40K//kid. The initial investment would be 20-40K per kid. Lets say the up keep of the system is 10% of the initial outlay, you would be breaking even within years.

And Im not worrying about inequality - if the figures were stacked towards women (or men, if that is there bag) stopping at home I would support that.

[mikema63]

It occurs to me that the 300,000 dollars is money that is already spent on the kids.

How will shifting that burden actually change anything in the long run?

[Prosthetic Conscience]

I don't think I've ever seen someone so obviously at sea in their attempts to use math on PoFo as the OP. It's just a car crash of numbers that have nothing to do with the question of 'so that women can be free to work as much as men do'. It use an arbitrary figure of 150 million children, without any idea of how long a time period it's talking about - with nearly 4 million children born per year, this would be, what - 35 years? Why have you chosen that period?

It then multiples that by the existing expenditure by a family to raise a child. What has that to do with "so that women can be free to work as much as men do"? This would seem to be a measure of "so that families don't have to have anything to do with the raising of children" - nothing to do with how much women work. If the average hours worked by mothers were increased to be the same as the fathers, then the difference would be extra childcare needed for a few hours, and nothing to do with the total cost of raising a child (in which the largest component is housing, for instance).

The OP reads rather like it was written by a Martian who has no idea how children are raised on Earth.

[Rainbow Crow]

That would be a good burn if there weren't people on PoFo who actually argue for moving all children into government-run child rearing camps, so that women can be unburdened by the task.

[mikema63]

Schools? Those crazy bastards.

[Rainbow Crow]

Well, if people decide not to own up to that theory anymore by saying they meant schools or whatever, then I could consider my thread a complete success.

[mikema63]

I never suggested child rearing camps in any serious way.

IIRC back when I was a libertarian I wrote something satirical to that effect, but it's been a while so I'm not sure.

[Prosthetic Conscience]

That would be a good burn if there weren't people on PoFo who actually argue for moving all children into government-run child rearing camps, so that women can be unburdened by the task.

If you did find someone who actually said that, then why not reply to them to show the impracticality, rather than starting a badly-worded new thread?

Who said it, anyway? A link would be nice.

[Pants-of-dog]

Rainbow Crow attacked a strawwoman of feminism? I am shocked and surprised.

[AFAIK]

I oppose this program on social grounds. I don't think the state should facilitate the isolation and atomisation of families by promoting the use of remote mass nurturing facilities. If you wanted to facilitate a better work-life balance for parents you could provide creches and nurseries at their workplaces. Child rearing shouldn't be a weekend hobby.

[otokage]

That is not a cost, it is an investment