What kids cost

Carl Bialik over at the Wall Street Journal (see here) has an interesting post on what kids cost.

From the post:

"The real costs of raising a child for a moderate-income family"—including forgone income, college for those who attend, and the so-called opportunity cost of not investing the money—"would be closer to $900,000 to age 22 than the reported $300,000 expenditures to age 18," says John Ward, an economist and the president of John Ward Economics, based in Prairie Village, Kan., which consults on legal disputes for plaintiffs and defendants.

(The $300,000 estimate takes into account expected inflation. In 2011 dollars, the price tag for a middle income family is $234,900.)