Let’s be more narrow and talk about middle-class professional Americans. And lets take a pass on the “pure altruist” angle, and just talk about how much altruistic good you do by having a child (compared to the next best option).
For having a child, it’s roughly 70 QALYs that they get to directly experience. Plus, you get whatever fraction of their productive output that’s directed towards altruistic good. There’s also the personal enjoyment you get out of raising children, which absorbs part of the cost out of a separate budget.
As far as costs go, a quick google search brings up the number $241,000. And that’s just the monetary costs—there are more opportunity costs for time spent with your children. Let’s simplify things by taking the time commitment entirely out of the time you spend recreationally on yourself, and the money cost entirely out of your altruism budget.
So, divide the 70 QALYs by the $241k, and you wind up with a rough cost of $3,400 per QALY. That completely ignores the roughly $1M in current-value of your child’s earnings (number is also pulled completely out of my ass based on 40 years at $60k inflation-adjusted dollars).
So, the bottom line is whether or not you enjoy raising children, and whether or not you can buy QALYs at below $3,400 each. There’s also risks involved—not enjoying raising children and having to reduce your charity time and money budget to get the same quality of life, children turning out with below-expectation quality of life and/or economic output, and probably others as well.
There’s also the question of whether you’re better off adopting or having your own, but that’s a separate analysis.
Let’s be more narrow and talk about middle-class professional Americans. And lets take a pass on the “pure altruist” angle, and just talk about how much altruistic good you do by having a child (compared to the next best option).
For having a child, it’s roughly 70 QALYs that they get to directly experience. Plus, you get whatever fraction of their productive output that’s directed towards altruistic good. There’s also the personal enjoyment you get out of raising children, which absorbs part of the cost out of a separate budget.
As far as costs go, a quick google search brings up the number $241,000. And that’s just the monetary costs—there are more opportunity costs for time spent with your children. Let’s simplify things by taking the time commitment entirely out of the time you spend recreationally on yourself, and the money cost entirely out of your altruism budget.
So, divide the 70 QALYs by the $241k, and you wind up with a rough cost of $3,400 per QALY. That completely ignores the roughly $1M in current-value of your child’s earnings (number is also pulled completely out of my ass based on 40 years at $60k inflation-adjusted dollars).
So, the bottom line is whether or not you enjoy raising children, and whether or not you can buy QALYs at below $3,400 each. There’s also risks involved—not enjoying raising children and having to reduce your charity time and money budget to get the same quality of life, children turning out with below-expectation quality of life and/or economic output, and probably others as well.
There’s also the question of whether you’re better off adopting or having your own, but that’s a separate analysis.