By Headlines Team 
Where a child is born may matter almost as much as how many children a family raises, according to a new nationwide report from Birth Injury Lawyer on the cost of parenthood, which finds that the share of household income families devote to raising children swings wildly from state to state, ranging from roughly a quarter in the most affordable states to nearly half in the least.
The report, compiled using SmartAsset’s 2025 Cost of Raising a Child data, U.S. Census Bureau income figures, and CDC birth statistics, calculates that the average American family now spends an estimated $471,948 raising a single child from birth to age 18, a figure that has grown 185% over the past 25 years. But that national average masks enormous regional variation, both in raw dollar terms and, more strikingly, in the proportion of family income it consumes.
Vermont tops the list of states where child-rearing costs hit hardest relative to income. Families there spend an average of $38,272 annually raising a child under five, a figure that consumes 46.3% of the state’s $82,730 median household income, meaning a typical Vermont family with one young child devotes nearly half its earnings to that child’s basic needs. Connecticut ranks second (43.5% of income, $41,808 in annual costs against a $96,049 median income), followed by Massachusetts, the most expensive state in raw dollar terms at $44,221 per year, which ranks third on the proportional burden scale at 42.2%.
The report’s authors note that Massachusetts’ presence near the top of the list, despite the state’s high wages, illustrates a critical finding: income alone doesn’t protect families from the financial strain of parenthood. New York, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Washington, New Jersey, and Hawaii complete the ten states facing the steepest proportional burden, each devoting between 33% and 46% of median household income to child-rearing costs.
At the other end of the spectrum, Mississippi requires the lowest raw dollar outlay at $19,178 per year, followed by Alabama, Kentucky, South Dakota, and Georgia. But the report cautions against reading these figures as a simple affordability map. When measured against each state’s median household income, several of the “cheapest” states reveal a more complicated picture: Mississippi’s low costs still consume 32.4% of the state’s median income, while Louisiana and Arkansas, despite ranking among the least expensive states in dollar terms, post income burden percentages of 35.7% and 35.2% respectively, higher than several states on the “most expensive” list.
Only two states, South Dakota (27.5%) and Georgia (26.6%), combine below-average raw costs with a genuinely low proportional burden, offering what the report describes as the closest thing to true child-rearing affordability in the country. The gap between the most and least expensive states is stark: Mississippi families pay less than half of what Massachusetts families pay annually, a difference of $25,043 per year, or more than $450,000 over 18 years.
“The conversation around the cost of raising a child usually focuses on what families spend. The more consequential question is what they give up,” said a spokesperson for Birth Injury Lawyer “Whether a family lives in Vermont or Georgia, the financial pressure of raising a child, and the toll it takes when something goes wrong, doesn’t disappear because the state average looks better on paper.”
The report arrives as U.S. birth rates continue to fall, with the national fertility rate dropping to a record low of 53.1 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 in 2025. Finances were cited as the top reason for limiting family size by 43% of respondents in the most recent American Family Survey, more than double any other factor, a trend the report’s authors say tracks closely with the state-level cost data.
For families already navigating one of the country’s most expensive states to raise a child, an unexpected birth injury can compound an already significant financial burden.
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