Overview

This paper is a first attempt to estimate the cost of feeding and clothing Australian children at a basic survival level. The paper explores a number of Australian and overseas surveys which have estimated the costs of children using a variety of methods such as the budgetary 'basket of goods' approach, the equivalence scale approach and the public opinion approach. The author, using data collected by these methods, arrives at estimates on the cost of children at various ages in present-day conditions in Australia. These estimates are based on 1983 costings for food and clothes in supermarkets and retail stores in Victoria. The Institute has not attempted a full-scale exercise to determine the costs for children of housing, transport, medical or school expenses. The paper notes the increasing burden on families showing that children cost more as they grow older, a fact which has been ignored by studies of the spending of families as a whole. The paper concludes that these costings cannot be challenged on the grounds of being over-generous and that it is the community's role to ensure that no family with children should fall below this minimum level.

Contents

• Foreword
• Introduction
• Government  response to child costs
• Dependency in families
• Legal context of cost of children
• Methodology of cost of children surveys
• Studies on the cost of children 
  • Overseas studies 
  • Australian studies 
• The approach  of the Institute of Family Studies 
• Comparisons of costs
  • Food 
  • Clothing 
  • Other costs attributable to children
• Use of cost of children calculations 
• Conclusion
• References
• Appendixes