The sky-high costs of raising kids in China

Beijing

CHINA's Communist Party rolled back its long-standing one-child policy last month in an attempt to halt a declining birth rate but population economists are expecting another equally powerful deterrent to kick in: the soaring cost of raising kids.

Their projections are borne out by middle-class Chinese like Liu He. A project manager in Beijing's thriving technology industry, 38-year-old Liu and her husband together make 40,000 yuan (S$8,952) a month. About 40 per cent of that goes toward their three-year-old daughter. There are fixed costs like food, kindergarten and a nanny besides savings for future painting and piano lessons, and even college in the US some day.