Ann Arbor named sixth most expensive place to raise a child in United States

ANN ARBOR – Raising a child is expensive, and raising one in Tree Town will cost you almost $32,000 per year, according to a new study.

Finance website SmartAsset took a look at 381 metro areas around the United States to determine the most expensive places to have a child.

The 2023 study found that Ann Arbor comes in at number six, with parents paying $31,670 per year.

Of that amount, childcare alone costs an average of $22,154 per year. Food and housing cost parents $1,807 and $2,580 per year, respectively.

To find their rankings, staff Smart Asset calculated the additional costs of childcare, food, housing, transportation and healthcare, among other necessities, when a two-adult household raises a child.

Tree Town is not the only Michigan metro area to be named in the study. The Kalamazoo-Portage area sits in eighth place with child-raising costing around $30,786 per year. Detroit and its metro area are number 14, with child-related costs equally to a whopping $28,917.

These are the 10 most expensive cities to raise a child in:

1. San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA
2. Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA
3. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
4. Barnstable, MA
5. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH
6. Ann Arbor, MI
7. Trenton-Princeton, NJ
8. Kalamazoo-Portage, MI
9. Napa, CA
10. Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA

Take a look at all of the findings here.