Clarification of Answer by
aziphirael-ga
on
30 Jun 2002 04:10 PDT
Hi edwin-ga
Thanks for the clarification of what you wanted out of the questions.
I'm not sure whether I would be suitably qualified to provide the
answers to your questions. But I spent half a day browsing across the
web looking at various sources, as well as looked at the various
geographical magazines I have in my library at home here; National
Geographic and Geographical.
The problem as pointed out sparky4ca-ga in his comment is that such
calculations are very hard to work out and depends a lot on the
context of which country as well as the age to which you want to help
this child. For example in the United States the costs of raising a
child born in 1999 will be $117,390 - $233,850 over a 17 year period
and dependant on social status.
[ http://www.usda.gov/news/releases/2000/04/0138 ]
I am presuming from your post that basically it is enough money to
save a child from hunger and disease, based on a developing world
context. I’m also not sure whether you want to work out education
costs as well.
I have put down my findings below. However, I don't think this is what
you are looking for. My suggestion would be to reject the answer that
I have given and ask it again; hopefully somebody who perhaps knows
the right sources can give you a better answer. Certainly I apologise
for not providing you with the correct information in the first place.
I decided that the best place to start was to check out Unicef, which
is a good source for information regarding the state of the world's
children. I also searched on the web for papers or studies into the
economic costs of raising children in the third world. However, I
wasn’t able to find much apart from plenty of documents discussing
plans and actions for the future.
In the end I turned to searching the web for various key phrases such
as “The Cost of Raising a Child”.
I found the following mid-term paper:
[ http://dcc2.bumc.bu.edu/richardl/ih820/Mid-term_papers/GAVIfinal%201.doc
]
The paper talks about the costs of vaccination programs and in one
section has the following statistic:
"One child can be fully immunized for $17 dollars.[5] For each dollar
spent on immunizations society saves up to $29.[5]"
We can use the figure to get an idea of the medical costs. What now
need to be factored in are the costs to prevent starvation. This
proved trickier to find. The best I was able to do was to search for
studies which attempts to calculate the costs of raising children.
A Journal Paper I found which attempts to answer these questions also
details various methodologies to measure child costs. In particular
they used Rural Bangladesh as the case-study:
[ http://www.unescap.org/pop/journal/1993/v08n1a2.htm ]
The paper provides a variety of methodologies in which to factor in
raising children cost as defined below:
"The total cost of rearing children has two basic components: time
cost and monetary cost. Two methods are commonly used to evaluate
child costs. The first method is a direct cost-accounting procedure."
"The second method of measuring child costs is based on consumer
demand theory. The starting point under this approach is the
definition of a measure of welfare, or utility structure, for the
household.1/ Deaton and Muellbauer (1986), for example, estimate the
additional income needed to compensate a household for the loss of
consumption due to the addition of a child"
Another Paper that was highlighted by the journal was entitled:
"On measuring child costs: with applications to poor countries"
However, I was unable to get access to the journal paper as it
requires a subscription. I will put the details below in case you
decide to chase it up.
[ Deaton, A.S. and J. Muellbauer (1986). "On measuring child costs:
with applications to poor countries", Journal of Political Economy,
vol. 94, No. 4, pp. 720-744. ]
Finally I've highlighted with the following link an organisation
working in Africa helping destitute children which you may be able to
obtain the kind of information you need. This seems to allow you to
donate directly to a cause, in this case destitute babies and children
in Madagascar, without the money going through the coffers of a
charity:
[ http://www.akanyavoko.com/ ]
Again I'm sorry that I have been unable to find that information you
needed. I also feel that I'm not qualified to make a calculation of
the costs, there are many variables to take into account, and somebody
with better knowledge may be able to answer your question.
Thanks and regards,
Aziphirael-ga
Search Terms Used:
The Cost of Raising a Child
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&q=The+Cost+of+Raising+a+Child&btnG=Google+Search
children the costs third world
://www.google.com/search?q=children+the+costs+third+world&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&start=30&sa=N
calculating costs of children third world
://www.google.com/search?q=calculating+costs+of+children+third+world&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&start=10&sa=N
