The private sector has been making raising children more inexpensive. The public sector has been making raising children more expensive. That’s the lesson I draw from this Bloomberg blog post by the indefatigable and insightful Megan McArdle. She links to U.S. Department of Agriculture data on “expenditures on a child from birth through age 17, total expenses and budgetary component share” for 1960 and 2013, both expressed in 2013 dollars. The pie charts show that the percentages spent on housing and transportation have remained static, while the percentages spent on food and clothing have declined significantly and the percentages for health care and “child care & education” have risen significantly.

I thought it would useful to translate these percentages into dollar figures. The following table shows dollar figures for 1960 and 2013 (both in 2013 dollars) and the percentage increase or decrease over those 53 years.