How much does it really cost to raise a child in Australia in 2026?
The honest numbers, where the money actually goes, and the one big category you can bring down without your kids missing out.
The short answer
There is no single agreed figure, and any headline number deserves a raised eyebrow. The most careful recent estimate comes from ANU economist Ben Phillips' modelling of the HILDA survey, which put the cost of a first child for a working-age couple at roughly $17,000 a year, or about $300,000 across the first eighteen years, in today's dollars.
Older studies swing wider. A 2013 University of Canberra study put one child at anywhere from $237,000 to $548,500 over eighteen years depending on household income. The gap between those numbers is the point: what you spend is mostly a set of choices, not a fixed bill.
Where the money actually goes
The biggest lines are the ones you can't photograph: housing (a bigger place, or a bedroom that was going to be a study), childcare, food, and transport. These dwarf the visible baby spend, and they're largely fixed.
The Australian Institute of Family Studies, using budget-standards research, estimated a minimum healthy standard of living at roughly $140 to $170 per child per week for low-income families (AIFS, 2018). Notably, that same research documented how parents on tight budgets already cope: swapping school uniforms, buying home-brand, and shopping second-hand as a matter of course.
The part you can genuinely control
You can't negotiate your rent down because you had a baby. What you can control is the churn: clothing, prams, carriers, cots, toys and gear that a child uses for a matter of months before outgrowing entirely.
This is exactly where second-hand does the heavy lifting. A newborn moves through several clothing sizes in the first year alone, and most of those pieces are barely worn when they're outgrown. Buying them pre-loved, then passing them on when you're done, turns a one-way cost into something closer to a rolling deposit.
The reuse maths
If clothing, gear and toys make up even a modest slice of your yearly child spend, halving that slice by buying and reselling pre-loved is money straight back in your pocket, on things your child uses for weeks, not years.
References
These are the most-cited Australian sources. The AIFS and NATSEM figures pre-date recent inflation, so treat them as a floor rather than a current bill.
- Australian Institute of Family Studies, New estimates of the costs of raising children in Australia (2018)
- SBS News, The cost of raising children in Australia (ANU / HILDA modelling, Ben Phillips, 2023)
- Finder, Life insurance and the cost of raising children (2013 University of Canberra / NATSEM figures)
Related reading
Cut the churn, not the childhood
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