A new report tries to narrow down exactly how much it costs to have a family in Canada, including the extra money it takes to get by if they decide to live at home after high school.
But this price is based on raising those kids until the age of 17. It increases by 29 per cent if children stay at home until they are 22 years old — as many do.
The report broke down the cost of caring for two children in Canada for two parents, as well as for a single parent.
The total tab includes costs like housing, transportation, food and clothing, among other expenses.
The report used data from the Survey of Household Spending, gathered between 2014 and 2017. With inflation, these costs are likely higher today.
According to the research, there were almost five million families in the country living with at least one child under the age of 25.
Of this, 37 per cent lived with one child, 43 per cent lived with two and 20 per cent had three or more children.
HOW MUCH IT COSTS
StatCan analysts broke down the costs for a two-parent, two-child family based on whether the family is considered lower-, middle- and higher-income.
For a lower-income household, the costs were about $238,190 per child, the data suggested.
At the time the data was collected, the before-tax household income for this family bracket was less than $83,013, the report noted.
In Canada, middle-income families at that time spent an average of $293,000 on one child from birth to 17 years of age, based on the survey results.
Higher-income families spent $403,910 on raising a child.
When it came to single-parent households with two children, lower-income earners spent about $231,260 per child.
Middle-income single parents cited their expenses per child at $372,110.
MORE COSTLY IF CHILDREN STAY AT HOME
Unsurprisingly, the longer children stay in the home, the higher their parents’ expenses are, the study showed.
And it’s becoming more common, so it should be a factor would-be parents take into account when figuring out their budget.
“Over the past 40 years, Canada has seen an increase in the proportion of young adults living with at least one parent,” the report noted.
About 90 per cent of adults aged 18 to 19 and 68 per cent aged 20 to 24 were living with one parent in 2019, according to previous data from StatCan.
A child in a lower-income, two-parent household who stayed at home until the age of 22 cost an extra $70,520, on top of the initial $238,190.
For middle-income households, the total parents spent went up by $85,900.
The highest-income households spent an extra $117,360 when raising a child until they reached 22.
The costs increased similarly for one-parent households with two children staying at home into early adulthood.
The report says it costs lower-income and middle-income single parents between $299,180 and $479,830 per child if their kid decided to live at home into their early 20s.
“For two-parent and one-parent households, including children aged 18 to 22 years increased the total expenditures by 29 per cent compared with those for children aged 0 to 17 years,” the report said.
As for why the costs went up so much, analysts had a couple of theories: “This increase is attributable to more years of expenses and to higher education costs (likely for post-secondary education tuition).”
HIGHEST COSTS OF RAISING A CHILD
The greatest expense for a family raising a child from birth to 22 years old across all income types was housing, according to the data.
The report said about 27 to 32 per cent of all expenditures accounted for housing. This included rent or mortgage, repairs, taxes, insurance, utilities, household furnishings and operations.
Transportation was the second largest expense for most parents, accounting for 18 to 20 per cent of their budget. Transportation was a smaller share, 11 to 15 per cent, of expenses for single parents, a discrepancy StatCan analysts thought was likely because two-parent families often have two cars.
Food, purchased at stores and restaurants, was the second largest expense for one-parent households, accounting for 18 to 20 per cent of the budget.
This category was the third highest amount for two-parent families, taking up between 16 and 18 per cent of total expenses.
Additionally, child care and education were a “relatively large expense,” the report noted.
About 13 to 17 per cent of the total expenditure for one child went to this category, which includes tuition fees, textbooks and school supplies.
Child-care costs have steadily climbed in most Canadian cities since the time the data was collected.
The cost of raising children varied across Canada, with two-parent, two-child households in the Prairies and on the West Coast paying the most.
The expenses of parents living in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia were 8 to 15 per cent higher than those in the Atlantic provinces at the time.
The costs were about 5 to 9 per cent higher for Ontario and Quebec families than those on the East Coast.
This breakdown, StatCan observed, suggested the general cost of living in the Atlantic provinces was lower than in other places in Canada.
Previous research also suggested that living in Canada’s territories costs about 1.46 times more than anywhere else in the country, the report said.
StatCan left out those living in Canada’s north from this report because of a lack of data from the territories on family spending.
“Caring for children is among the key functions of families and the larger society,” StatCan’s report read. “Although the decision to become a parent is personal, it has individual and social consequences.”
TORONTO – Unifor says workers at a Walmart warehouse in Mississauga, Ont., have voted to join the union.
The union says it’s Walmart’s first warehouse to unionize in Canada.
Unifor national president Lana Payne says the employees stood up for their rights and the union is excited to get to work on their first collective agreement.
Unifor’s campaign at Walmart’s facility began in December 2023.
The vote was held from Sept. 10 to 12.
Unifor represents 315,000 workers across the country.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
MONTREAL – A 20-year-old man arrested over an alleged Islamic State terror plot to kill Jews in New York City will return to court in December in Montreal.
Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, a Pakistani national living in Ontario, was arrested last week in Ormstown, Que., allegedly on his way across the border into New York state.
Khan has been charged in the United States with one count of attempting to provide material support and resources to a terrorist organization, and officials are seeking to have him extradited to stand trial.
He was not present for a hearing today in Quebec Superior Court, where lawyers said they are waiting for extradition documents and for authorization from Canadian officials before proceeding in the case, which will return before a judge on Dec. 6.
U.S. authorities allege that Khan, also known as Shahzeb Jadoon, intended to use “automatic and semi-automatic weapons” in a mass shooting at a Jewish centre in Brooklyn around Oct. 7, the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel.
Authorities allege he began planning his attack in November 2023.
Earlier this week, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Khan arrived in Canada in June 2023 on a student visa.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
