Why is China one of the most expensive places in the world to raise children?

Raising a child in China is more expensive than almost anywhere else in the world. How did China’s childcare costs get so high, and what does this mean for the country’s future?

Beijing-based think tank YuWa Population Research has estimated that the average cost of raising a child to the age of 18 is RMB 538,000 (£58,900), more than six times China’s GDP per capita*. The report found that only South Korea is more expensive to raise a child, where the average cost is 7.79 times GDP per capita.

A similar report by the UK’s Child Poverty Action Group estimated that the average cost of raising a child to 18 in the UK is £166,000 per couple, or £220,000 for a single parent.

The cost of raising a child in China has been driven up by high housing prices, a lack of affordable nursery services, and the pressure to sign up for extracurricular activities and tutoring services to ensure that a child succeeds academically. These problems are compounded in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai, where the report found the average cost of raising a child was RMB 936,000, almost twice the national average.

The report also emphasised the time and opportunity costs of childbearing for women, with many seeing a significant reduction in wages and hours worked after having a child.

The report comes after demographic data released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed China’s population falling for a second consecutive year last year. The population decline of 0.15% – or 2.08 million people – to 1.409 billion in 2023 was well over the 850,000-person drop seen in 2022, which was China’s first decline in population since 1961. Total new births fell 5.7% to 9.02 million in 2023, while deaths rose 6.6% to 11.1 million.

The country’s crude birth rate of 6.39 per 1,000 people puts it on a par with South Korea and Japan, which have been among the countries with the lowest birth rates for the past few decades (by comparison, the crude birth rates in the UK and US are around 10-11 per 1,000).

* For more information on how the report calculated these figures, see section 2, “估算全国家庭孩子 0-17 岁的平均养育成本”.