Raising a child in the City of Buenos Aires costs up to $1.5 million per month

The Institute presented the report on the cost of raising children based on “energy requirements by age groups and sex” up to 17 years. Add the cost of the basket of goods and services and the cost of caring for children and adolescentsto calculate the total value of upbringing, differentiating boys and girls.

Depending on these variables, The food and services basket for the month of June showed a value of $381,068 for ages 0-5 years to $850,470 for 16-17 years.

To these values, direct care tasks (health, school support, transportation) and indirect care tasks (meal preparation, washing and ironing, shopping, meal preparation) were added, with the workload corresponding to the ages.

The hours and cost of care are: 0-2 years: 12 hours daily or 360 monthly, $ 1.062.109; 3-5 years: 8 hours a day or 240 a month, $ 708.072; 6 to 12 years: 4 hours a day or 120 a month, $ 354.036; 13 to 17 years: 3 hours a day or 90 a month, $ 389.560.

Thus, between the cost of food and services plus care tasks for a child 0-5 months old yields $1,443,777drops to $996,432 for 8/9 years old and rises to $1,240,030 for 16/17 year olds (male).

These values ​​differ from those of Indec, which, among other differences, computes the cost of parenting up to 12 years of age from the poverty line and as 147 hours of care per month for children under one year of age; 168 hours from 1 to 3 years; 105 hours from 4 to 5 years old and 85 hours from 6 to 12 years old. and the total values range between $529,539 and $678,308 monthly.

The cost of care was estimated by the Buenos Aires Institute based on the data collected in the time use survey. It is assumed, for example, that care work occurs 7 days a week and 24 hours a day. And the baskets were built with the consumption patterns of the Household Survey (Engho 2017/2018).

In turn, the food baskets of the parenting baskets are calculated from the differentiated consumption of boys, girls and adolescents, while Indec uses the indirect method, since it calculates it from mathematical relationships from the poverty consumption of an adult man of moderate activity.

Furthermore, non-food goods and services, instead of being calculated as a block and as a result of multiplying the food basket by a coefficient (such as Indec), assuming that non-food requirements vary in the same way as food requirements, in CABA they are calculated separately for various groups of non-food goods and services, such as clothing, recreation, etc.