Fairbanks among costliest cities to raise a child

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Alaska cities are projected to be among the most expensive places in the United States to raise a child born in 2013. That includes Fairbanks, which ranked 10th out of nearly 300 U.S. cities in a recent study.

Middle-income Fairbanks families can expect to pay $334,562 to raise a child from birth to age 18, according to NerdWallet, a San Francisco-based financial analysis company that took nationwide figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and adjusted them for the cost of living in 288 indexed cities. The USDA also factors in inflation in the average.

Juneau ranked 16th on the list with a child raised there expected to cost a middle-income family $321,205. Anchorage ranked 22nd with a cost of $311,524. Other Alaska cities were not included, because the Council for Community and Economic Research's cost of living index, which NerdWallet used to make the adjustment, did not include them.

Raising a child in Manhattan is projected to cost the most of any city on the NerdWallet list, an estimated $540,514, nearly $111,000 more than the second-place city, Honolulu, with a cost of $429,635. Cities in the Midwest and Texas ranked as the lowest-costing, and Norman, Oklahoma, and Harlingen, Texas, were estimated to be the cheapest at just less than $200,000.

The index-adjusted costs are based on the USDA's nationwide average cost of $245,340 to raise a child, factoring in expenses like food, housing, day care and education. Families were spending the same proportion of money on each of the expenses as in years past, the USDA said, but the overall cost had increased 1.8 percent from the previous year's study. The annual cost for a child born in 2013 is expected to range from $12,800 to $14,970, according to the USDA.

While the USDA's average is informative, it does not tell the whole story of child-rearing costs across the country, said Divya Raghavan, an analyst with NerdWallet. For a specific location, the cost of raising a child can vary by as much as $340,000, Raghavan said.

"The USDA, it's a nice ballpark figure to have, but our analysis gives a more concrete number, gives people a more accurate representation of what it'll actually cost them," she said.

It was not a surprise that cities in the northeastern U.S. and California would rank highest, but people probably underestimate the cost of shipping goods to places like Alaska and Hawaii that are passed onto consumers, Raghavan said.

The USDA also identified housing-related costs as the single largest cost related to raising children for a middle-income family, amounting to 30 percent of child-rearing costs for families nationwide.