This infographic was submitted to us by Beckon Media Inc. in partnership with California Cryobank. They provided this description:
Every year it gets a little more expensive to raise a child. It cost over $200,000 today to raise a child from birth to 17!!
The concept for this infographic is based on the cost of raising a child in 2011 vs. 1960, the first year the U.S. Department of Agriculture first provided estimates of child-rearing expenditures.
The USDA puts out a great Annual Report called Expenditures on Children by Families each year, and after reviewing this document we began focusing on one specific area that sounded very interesting, which was Expenditures on children 1960 versus 2011.
The statistics have been broken down into budgetary components, we have also taken inflation into account by providing the 1960 amounts in 2011 dollars.
Under each budgetary component we have listed a possible expense that a family would incur and compared the cost between 1960 (with inflation) and 2011.
This infographic makes use of very clear data visualization and lots of white space to make the information easily accessible. I like how the pie charts are self-referential: each new “slice” starts where the last “slice” left off, so the viewer can see how much of the total cost of raising a child has already been accounted for by the previously listed costs.
It’s interesting to see all the costs adjusted for inflation — The Game of Life cost more than double what it does today, and Barbie nearly four times more! Since it’s common to reminisce about how cheap things were “back in the good old days,” it’s funny to see that in reality, some things were proportionally much more expensive. Not so for key items like gas, shoes, education, and mortgages, though…
In all I’d give this infographic an A! Although it sticks to traditional pie charts and bar graphs, they’re used to good effect, and the illustrations, data, and overall design style are all quite unique.
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