There are certainly tallies of the expenses. I don’t know about over time, but Googling immediately got me the number $233k in 2015 from the USDA. https://www.u

There are certainly tallies of the expenses. I don’t know about over time, but Googling immediately got me the number $233k in 2015 from the USDA. https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/01/13/cost-raising-child https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/01/13/cost-raising-chil... I’ve seen many other such lists over several decades, so charting the average costs over time should be possible. It might be worth checking out the countries that have implemented child bonuses to check the hypothesis that costs are the reason. https://money.com/government-pays-have-a-baby-low-birth-rate/ https://money.com/government-pays-have-a-baby-low-birth-rate... (Not to mention what others nearby have called out: look at birthrates tallied by socioeconomic status. If birthrates go down with increasing income, maybe costs aren't a major factor in birthrate declines, perhaps increasing income is the reason?) What this kind of thing doesn’t tell us is anything about the alternative choice that is much more difficult to model: what is the cost of not having children. There are cities in the US and countries in the world whose economies are collapsing due to population loss. And I’ve watched people in my life go through breakdowns due to angst over not having kids. I’ve lost at least one very close friend in part because I chose to have kids and he chose not to. The costs also don’t really help evaluate the goals or the choice to have kids or not. The reason to have them usually isn’t primarily financial, and for most people the reason not to have them also isn’t primarily financial, even if there’s a secondary influence like costs.