Raising A Child In India Costs Rs. 13 Lakh/Year? Viral LinkedIn Post Ignites Debate Between Netizens

Viral: A Mumbai-based man's LinkedIn post has ignited a string of arguments regarding how expensive it is to raise a child in urban India. Ankur Jhaveri, in his LinkedIn post, provided a calculated breakdown of child-raising costs in metropolitan India.

From uniforms and books to coaching and extra-curricular activities, he carefully calculated the cost with the help of his cousin who is a teacher at an international school.

Math Behind Raising A Child 

Ankur revealed in his post how he was ignorant of child-raising costs in India until he met his cousin, a teacher at an international school. Then he presented his calculation of all costs that he could think of.

"The fees of a typical international school is about 7-9 lakhs a year. And that’s just tuition fees. Add to it the cost of uniforms, books, private tuitions and other stuff - another 2 to 4 lakhs a year. That brings the total cost for education to about 12 lakhs a year," said Ankur in his post.

Then he added some extra cost of coaching or extra-curricular activities, clothes, birthday parties, leisure expenses, etc. which brought up the total cost to nearly Rs. 13 lakhs, assuming monthly expenses are 8-10k.

He further calculated how much a parent needs to earn to sustain this education and lifestyle, "Now, assuming you would spend about 30% of your income on your kids - this means your net salary should be about 43-44 lakhs."

But income tax cannot be ruled out when calculating living costs so he wrote, "Assuming you pay 20% of your salary as tax (blended), this means your gross salary, to afford this lifestyle for your kids, should be about 55 lakhs. So..to send your kids to a good school, an Indian needs to have a gross salary in the range of 50-60 lakhs."

Netizens were shocked that this was just the cost of sending one child to a good school. According to his analysis, the total expense will substantially shift if you have more than one kid.

Ending his post he penned his point of view of the situation, "I always used to wonder why people these days don’t want to have kids. Now I know why…"

Netizens Question ROI 

Users online quickly took the post up to discuss some other related aspects as well. One of the users emphasized that the academic fee keeps increasing, usually double the inflation. He added how the crippling cost does not offer a good return on investment.

Another pointed out that Ankur's calculation was flawed considering usual education in any decent school costs around Rs. 1.5 lakh. The user mentioned that the quoted cost was not low, but the cost stated by Ankur is a little misleading.

One said, "This is the present cost. What about the future cost of any professional degree or course especially if planning abroad."
"Every school is good if a kid wants to study..," quoted another.

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