Family size and income levels

[Xantippe]

Medical is my biggest expense every year. Like you said each child will only need a small increase in groceries and they can share hand-me-downs, but they will each need individual medical care. And it isn’t as if discount health care is something you can or even should seek out.

When I first started working I had a medical plan that had a simple 2000 family deductible with everything covered at 100% after that. Plus my employer was covering the monthly premium at something like 80%. Those were the good old days; I’ve had to come back to reality since then. Last year I was left owing around 8000 after a surgery. I set up a payment plan and never missed a payment but the hospital still turned us over to a collection agency a few months later. Now it’s every month with a thousand here a few hundred here.

Gah!

At our house, part of our budget is a sinking fund for medical. So, every month we budget for projected medical/dental/therapy expenses, and at the end of the month, if anything is left, we save it for a rainy day. In the past, I’ve tried to keep it at $200 a month, but it’s currently running at around $100 a month, which isn’t quite enough. There have been times when it would pile up pretty good, but it always gets spent (plus some dipping into the main emergency fund).

We also do a sinking fund for car maintenance/repair–no less than $80 every month. That also always eventually gets spent.

 

[Usige]

I think part of that comes out of thinking of mom’s labor as “free” and not thinking about opportunity costs. However, if mom were able to make even $30k a year instead of being home, that means that that additional child is costing the family a fairly substantial chunk of money.

That’s partially true, but in the area I live in day care runs between 10-14k per year. So if my wife was working and making 30k. We would take about 11k off the top for taxes leaving about 19k in take home. Now subtract day care cost and we’d only net an additional 5-9k per year or say 450-750 a month. We’d then have to subtract out additional costs for travel to work, clothes, etc. For us we figured out it was a zero sum game at one kids. If our 5 youngest were in daycare we’d be looking at 3k a month in day care costs. So yes there are opportunity costs, but they are often offset by the cost to have others watch your kids. It’s not that my wife’s labor is free, but rather that there is not a profit overhead attached to it.

I suspect when you look at the higher earnings with 6+ kids, that thise households are single incomes and still highly educated. I personally know 8 or 10 single income familes with 8+ kids. In at least 4 cases the wife is also well educated (engineer, lawyer, etc). The drop off is not strictly because of high education, but when both spouses work because of personal reasons rather than economic reasons.

 

[Xantippe]

That’s partially true, but in the area I live in day care runs between 10-14k per year. So if my wife was working and making 30k. We would take about 11k off the top for taxes leaving about 19k in take home. Now subtract day care cost and we’d only net an additional 5-9k per year or say 450-750 a month. We’d then have to subtract out additional costs for travel to work, clothes, etc. For us we figured out it was a zero sum game at one kids. If our 5 youngest were in daycare we’d be looking at 3k a month in day care costs. So yes there are opportunity costs, but they are often offset by the cost to have others watch your kids. It’s not that my wife’s labor is free, but rather that there is not a profit overhead attached to it.

I was assuming that the older children are in school and that there are no daycare costs. So, mom’s $30k is mostly intact–after taxes, work clothes, commuting expenses, etc. So, yeah, we probably have lost about half of it. But even a net of $1,000 a month can be very appealing, depending on circumstances.

 

[PhiloMed]

I was assuming that the older children are in school and that there are no daycare costs. So, mom’s $30k is mostly intact–after taxes, work clothes, commuting expenses, etc. So, yeah, we probably have lost about half of it. But even a net of $1,000 a month can be very appealing, depending on circumstances.

And don’t forget the long term income loss due to being out of the workforce. Kids are not little forever and one day both parents will reach retirement age even if only one worked. That means that one spouse’s 401K and/or pension needs to support both people.

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

I was assuming that the older children are in school and that there are no daycare costs. So, mom’s $30k is mostly intact–after taxes, work clothes, commuting expenses, etc. So, yeah, we probably have lost about half of it. But even a net of $1,000 a month can be very appealing, depending on circumstances.

School aged kids do still need daycare (unless a parent’s hours coincided with the kids’ dismissal time)

 

[Kelfa28]

School aged kids do still need daycare (unless a parent’s hours coincided with the kids’ dismissal time)

This.

Not to mention the fact that many middle class families look into Private school for their kids.

For us…Private school is the only option.

 

[EasterJoy]

I think that American Catholic discussions about large families can get kind of warped because our paradigmatic large family (8+) is actually pretty rare today, and yet it’s still the paradigm.

My in-laws were both born in Poland in the post-war years and were both one of two children, are very devout Catholics, and had two children themselves. I have to note that John Paul II was largely formed as a priest by his experiences with those generations of Polish families. Also, JPII was himself one of only three children, one who died in infancy–so he was raised with only one much older sibling.

I’m from a rural family of eight and knew several families of 10-16 while growing. I have never thought of eight children as a “paradigm,” and I don’t think it ever was. Even back then, a family of eight was one of the bigger families. Typical family sizes were more in the range of four or five children. Couples who wanted lots of children but who only actually got one or two or three or who were not able to conceive at all were not rare.

My mother got started having her children immediately after her marriage at age 18 in order to have 8 children. Her peers who had 8-16 also got started very early. The paradigm for women who marry 4-8 years later is going to be a lot lower than that, no matter how open to children they are after marriage. A gradual decline in female fertility that starts at about age 25 is simply a fact of human biology. Likewise, family-wage jobs take either a college education or a certain amount of time in the work force. No one, male or female, lands a reliable family-wage factory or retail job at age 18 or 20 any more!

The median age of first marriage for young women in the US hit an all-time low in the 50s and 60s, presumably because those were boom years in which young men could find reliable family-wage jobs. That age of first marriage is six years later now than it was then. In 1970, the median age of mothers giving birth for the first time was 21.4. In 2013, it was 26. (There are now three times as many births to unmarried mothers as in 1970.)

I see several fallacies in the “practical conservative” calculations:

1. The likelihood of securing a reliable family wage job without a college education or work experience that takes just as long to obtain is at an all-time low.
2. The likelihood that a woman is going to meet and marry a man with a family-wage job before she turns 21 is also at an all-time low. If she does not go to college, the likelihood that she will meet and marry a future college graduate is also low.
3. There are not enough religious sisters and brothers running schools on a budget of personal poverty to make parochial schools as affordable as they once could be.
4. Affordable housing is increasingly difficult to find in many areas. This is just one fixed expense of raising a family that has gone through the roof, never to come down again.

The list could go on and on, but the short answer is that now is not then, and then is not coming back.

 

[pensmama87]

School aged kids do still need daycare (unless a parent’s hours coincided with the kids’ dismissal time)

I don’t know how common this is, but around here many schools (public and non) offer extended day services to parents until 6pm. There is a cost but it’s very low ($2-$3/hr per kid). Usually open gym and homework help.

(I don’t recall this being a thing when I was in school, but that may have been because my mom was a SAHM and I was just oblivious. Though our afternoon bus route did stop at a daycare.)

These numbers are interesting. Our area is pretty low for cost of living, but we do pay federal, state, and local income taxes and our property taxes are high-ish. But housing is cheap as are most consumer goods. We’re under the median, but I expect that may have something to do with our ages. I would expect many people with 3 kids had them later than we did.

Eta: Actually, that might partially account for the high incomes in 8+ kid families. Almost all of those families are probably at their peak earning years.

 

[Xantippe]

Eta: Actually, that might partially account for the high incomes in 8+ kid families. Almost all of those families are probably at their peak earning years.

That is a very good point.

 

[Xantippe]

I’m from a rural family of eight and knew several families of 10-16 while growing. I have never thought of eight children as a “paradigm,” and I don’t think it ever was. Even back then, a family of eight was one of the bigger families. Typical family sizes were more in the range of four or five children. Couples who wanted lots of children but who only actually got one or two or three or who were not able to conceive at all were not rare.

My mother got started having her children immediately after her marriage at age 18 in order to have 8 children. Her peers who had 8-16 also got started very early. The paradigm for women who marry 4-8 years later is going to be a lot lower than that, no matter how open to children they are after marriage. A gradual decline in female fertility that starts at about age 25 is simply a fact of human biology. Likewise, family-wage jobs take either a college education or a certain amount of time in the work force. No one, male or female, lands a reliable family-wage factory or retail job at age 18 or 20 any more!

The median age of first marriage for young women in the US hit an all-time low in the 50s and 60s, presumably because those were boom years in which young men could find reliable family-wage jobs. That age of first marriage is six years later now than it was then. In 1970, the median age of mothers giving birth for the first time was 21.4. In 2013, it was 26. (There are now three times as many births to unmarried mothers as in 1970.)

I see several fallacies in the “practical conservative” calculations:

1. The likelihood of securing a reliable family wage job without a college education or work experience that takes just as long to obtain is at an all-time low.
2. The likelihood that a woman is going to meet and marry a man with a family-wage job before she turns 21 is also at an all-time low. If she does not go to college, the likelihood that she will meet and marry a future college graduate is also low.
3. There are not enough religious sisters and brothers running schools on a budget of personal poverty to make parochial schools as affordable as they once could be.
4. Affordable housing is increasingly difficult to find in many areas. This is just one fixed expense of raising a family that has gone through the roof, never to come down again.

The list could go on and on, but the short answer is that now is not then, and then is not coming back.

1. When I say 8+ is paradigmatic, I mean CAF paradigmatic. I think you’re right that 4-5 surviving children was more usual in the real world.
2. I’m pretty sure that the Practical Conservative would agree with you on pretty much all your points. Or if not, I would.

I believe what she is primarily addressing is the idea (very popular in conservative religious circles and often seen on CAF) that the only thing standing between young couples and having a large family is laziness, selfishness and materialism.

 

[UbiCaritas]

We also might do well to remember that Back In The Day, a lot of who we think of as kids weren’t “just” kids–they were also wage earners. When JPII was 12 or 14, it wouldn’t have been at all unusual for him to be holding down an after-school job that would help support his family, and no one would have blinked twice at it. A family of eight is a bit easier to feed and clothe when two or three of the kids are working part-time jobs and contributing the money to family upkeep.

Mind you, I’m not saying this is ideal, but it is how many bigger families in the US managed until pretty recently, and how many bigger families all over the world still manage. I think we can all agree that having the seven-year-old skip school to work in a cotton mill isn’t exactly the ideal we should strive for, but there’s a reason that children worked as laborers back then, and it generally wasn’t for fun money.

I once heard a fairly traditional priest give a sermon on the blessings of a large family. While I agreed with a number of his points, I thought some of them were a tad out of touch. To those who worried about finances, he held up Pius X’s family as an example: a dozen or so kids raised in a one-room, dirt-floored house, and they all turned out happy and well, including, of course, St. Pius X. That setup in 19th-century Italy wouldn’t cause anyone to bat an eye, but if you tried that today in America, much less–gasp!–without the appropriate car seats , CPS would be yanking the kids out of that situation yesterday.

In short, we’ve hit a time when parents are expected to have more stuff/do more stuff for their kids than ever before (I’m not talking about the latest gaming system: I’m talking about our society expects every kid to receive medical care, wear appropriate-for-the-season clothing, have various pricey safety implements available at all times, etc) while kids also are no longer contributors to the family finances. Of course children are blessings, and that they’re blessings has ***nothing whatsoever ***to do with how much they financially contribute to a family!–but it is something to bear in mind when comparing our current status to that of people Back In The Day.

 

[Book_Worm]

Medical costs are a significant factor for so many people, yet we refuse to consider any form of socialized medicine and vote time and again for people who waste taxpayers’ time and money on meaningless votes against Obamacare.

 

[Maximilan_Kolbe]

I can’t understand that data well, but that led me to look for my State’s stats. I’m in disbelief. Maryland is so expensive but the household median ranges from Potomac’s 175,000 to Baltimore City’s 40,000.

Yeah, MD is crazy. And comparing the cost of living to other areas (say Texas) doesn’t work because for many of us, our incomes are tied to and commensurate with the area we live in. Outside of medicine and law (and even then), salaries don’t remain static when you move to cheaper areas. Based on the industry I work in (business owner) I am tied to this area. My income would be no where near what it is elsewhere. In Texas, I’d make half what I make now, so you have to factor that in when looking at cheaper areas of the country. If it was as simply as finding lower housing costs, everyone would move, thus driving up the prices.

 

[Corki]

I haven’t yet checked the stats you cite for accuracy, but for interested parties, this is a link to the relevant US census data from 2014 showing mean and median household income by household size, adjusted and unadjusted for inflation.

census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/families/2014/f08AR.xls

It is hard to use this along with the data in the OP. The census data doesn’t take marriage into account, just family size. So an unmarried couple with two kids is lumped in (statistically) with a married couple with two kids and a single mom with 3 kids. The OP’s cited article is specifically about in-wedlock children.

 

[Kelfa28]

Medical costs are a significant factor for so many people, yet we refuse to consider any form of socialized medicine and vote time and again for people who waste taxpayers’ time and money on meaningless votes against Obamacare.

Because it’s impossible to do with so many illegal and, to an extent, legal immigrants flooding into our country on a daily basis.

Even Sanders…a socialist…recognizes that you can have open borders or you can have a socialized government…but you cannot have both.

I’m about as libertarian as they come but it isn’t hard for a struggling family, like mine, to get excited about free healthcare and free college…except when the kids of undocumented workers are given those benefits over mine.

Sorry for derailing this thread but if we’re going to argue socialism as a solution to the financials struggles of large families and why so many Catholics stop at two or three kids…we need to state the obvious.

 

[Xantippe]

We also might do well to remember that Back In The Day, a lot of who we think of as kids weren’t “just” kids–they were also wage earners. When JPII was 12 or 14, it wouldn’t have been at all unusual for him to be holding down an after-school job that would help support his family, and no one would have blinked twice at it. A family of eight is a bit easier to feed and clothe when two or three of the kids are working part-time jobs and contributing the money to family upkeep.

Mind you, I’m not saying this is ideal, but it is how many bigger families in the US managed until pretty recently, and how many bigger families all over the world still manage. I think we can all agree that having the seven-year-old skip school to work in a cotton mill isn’t exactly the ideal we should strive for, but there’s a reason that children worked as laborers back then, and it generally wasn’t for fun money.

I once heard a fairly traditional priest give a sermon on the blessings of a large family. While I agreed with a number of his points, I thought some of them were a tad out of touch. To those who worried about finances, he held up Pius X’s family as an example: a dozen or so kids raised in a one-room, dirt-floored house, and they all turned out happy and well, including, of course, St. Pius X. That setup in 19th-century Italy wouldn’t cause anyone to bat an eye, but if you tried that today in America, much less–gasp!–without the appropriate car seats , CPS would be yanking the kids out of that situation yesterday.

In short, we’ve hit a time when parents are expected to have more stuff/do more stuff for their kids than ever before (I’m not talking about the latest gaming system: I’m talking about our society expects every kid to receive medical care, wear appropriate-for-the-season clothing, have various pricey safety implements available at all times, etc) while kids also are no longer contributors to the family finances. Of course children are blessings, and that they’re blessings has ***nothing whatsoever ***to do with how much they financially contribute to a family!–but it is something to bear in mind when comparing our current status to that of people Back In The Day.

1. You’re right about the child as wage earner. Benjamin Franklin was an apprentice printer at 12 (his father was only able to send him to school very briefly) and also by 12, Thomas Edison was selling candy and newspapers on a train. I’m listening to Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park right now, and in the early 19th century, it was considered normal for boys to go to sea as cabin boys at 10. I was also recently looking for photos of cotton mill workers and found one from Alabama in 1910 where the workers were largely girls of middle school age. And even much younger children were at some point employed cleaning the inside of chimneys.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimney_sweep

In our culture, there’s a much longer lag-time between birth and when it is reasonable to expect a child to begin full-time labor, with a corresponding lag in financial independence. From listening to parents of 20-somethings, it seems like parents today are very lucky if their adult children are off the family dole by their mid-20s.

1. About the St. Pius X example and CPS–that’s a very good point. I suspect that the reason the priest was able to make that recommendation was that nobody in his audience was likely to follow his advice literally. There’s a US family I’ve been reading about that had basically those living conditions. CPS took their 10 kids, but the kids are back after the parents got donations and put up a prefab house and fenced a pond.

offthegridnews.com/current-events/breaking-all-10-children-returned-to-off-grid-naugler-family/

But without those expensive improvements, the kids would still be in foster care.

1. This is quite right: “In short, we’ve hit a time when parents are expected to have more stuff/do more stuff for their kids than ever before (I’m not talking about the latest gaming system: I’m talking about our society expects every kid to receive medical care, wear appropriate-for-the-season clothing, have various pricey safety implements available at all times, etc) while kids also are no longer contributors to the family finances.”

And don’t forget dental and the obligation to supervise kids until they are old enough to babysit.

 

[Xantippe]

Medical costs are a significant factor for so many people, yet we refuse to consider any form of socialized medicine and vote time and again for people who waste taxpayers’ time and money on meaningless votes against Obamacare.

You’re right that medical is a big issue for the larger US middle class family.

However, Obamacare has been a bust in a variety of different ways.

bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-16/obamacare-enrollment-flattens-showing-program-s-limits

 

[Neal76]

Medical costs are a significant factor for so many people, yet we refuse to consider any form of socialized medicine and vote time and again for people who waste taxpayers’ time and money on meaningless votes against Obamacare.

Yeah, seriously, why would you use your money to pay for your children’s medical care when you can use someone else’s money to do it? It makes literally no sense.

 

[Xantippe]

Yeah, MD is crazy. And comparing the cost of living to other areas (say Texas) doesn’t work because for many of us, our incomes are tied to and commensurate with the area we live in. Outside of medicine and law (and even then), salaries don’t remain static when you move to cheaper areas.

Right.

There are other industries, though, where it is relatively flat. My husband is an academic, and at least some years ago, the starting salaries were very similar across the country. That was a pain when his first job turned out to be in WA DC.

 

[pianistclare]

Because it’s impossible to do with so many illegal and, to an extent, legal immigrants flooding into our country on a daily basis.

Even Sanders…a socialist…recognizes that you can have open borders or you can have a socialized government…but you cannot have both.

I’m about as libertarian as they come but it isn’t hard for a struggling family, like mine, to get excited about free healthcare and free college…except when the kids of undocumented workers are given those benefits over mine.

Sorry for derailing this thread but if we’re going to argue socialism as a solution to the financials struggles of large families and why so many Catholics stop at two or three kids…we need to state the obvious.

Working in a parish with many undocumented people…I can’t say that I know of any that are getting to go to college for free or for a reduced rate. They don’t qualify for scholarships. They need papers. Which are expensive, I can tell you. My immigrant husband blew his life savings getting his residency card. We lived on his savings for the 5 years it took because no one will hire an immigrant. Too much red tape.

We live in Georgia, and my straight A, American daughter got free college tuition at a state University
The children of our immigrant friends did not, despite having the grades to qualify.

It’s not always as clear cut as people think. If the immigrants all left tomorrow, we’d still all be struggling.

But, as you say this is WAY off topic.
Peace.