How much does it cost the average Chinese family to raise a child? Most parents never bothered to calculate it until they were recently shocked by a Shanghai-based academic who said parents spend 490,000 yuan (US$59,036).

Many young people in my office were shocked when they heard the figure. I also could not help thinking about one of my colleagues who was still on maternity leave after giving birth to twin boys. She may spend almost 1 million yuan (US$120,000) before her sons finish school.

But a bigger surprise came later when I asked some older colleagues whether they thought the figure was close to reality, and if not, how much they have spent on their children. "The only thing I can say is our family has spent no less than that," one of them said. "Our child goes to college in Australia."

Schooling is where much of the money is spent, according to the findings of Xu Anqi, a researcher with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

Xu found that if, as in most cases in Chinese cities, there is one child in a family, his or her education demands 46 percent of the family's total expenses for secondary school, 51 percent for high school, and 52 percent for university. Sending a child to study abroad costs much more.

It is no surprise that so much of the money is spent on education. It is education that has pushed up the cost of raising children to a level that people who grew up in the 1970s and 80s have trouble to imagine. Surrounding today's Chinese children are no longer the kind of schools that we were once familiar with, where youngsters had access to all facilities, for free, although many facilities were dilapidated.

Nowadays, with many new schools and new facilities, education has become more expensive. Although it may not be prohibitively so for everyone, the aggregate cost for several years seems hard to believe and for many is impossible to pay.

In a separate study by Zhu Qingfang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, all sorts of unauthorized charges by Chinese schools have amounted to 200 billion yuan (US$24.1 billion) in the last decade. Apart from tuition, a student must pay 10,000 yuan (US$1,200) in various fees to his or her university, as opposed to only 200 yuan (US$24) in the late 1980s. That is a 50-fold increase.

Although it is unclear how much the Shanghai research applies to the whole country, the study does reveal some truth, at least in where its data is obtained. Xu said it came from more than 700 households in the Xuhui District of Shanghai.

The study shows that, according to 2003 prices, it costs around 250,000 yuan (US$30,120) to raise a child from birth until the age of 16. If the child goes to university, as most urban youths do, the total cost is driven up by 140,000 yuan (US$17,000). And after their graduation from college, parents still need to spend another 100,000 yuan (US$12,000) on helping them to afford housing and wedding expenditures.

There are many things that are not included in these figures, such as the gifts the child receives from relatives and parents' friends and the additional spending of a household when expecting a baby. Parents also make many financial sacrifices for their children, for example, working less to care for the child.

In all, an average household will spend 40 to 50 percent of its total income on bringing up a child. This is a rate that "is certainly excessive," as the researcher was quoted by the China News Weekly.

The report about Chinese families' child-raising costs reminds us once again of the worrisome state of the nation's school system, especially the need for some kind of mechanism to keep charges down.

Judging from some figures, it seems that many households are helping the government pay for the school system by paying more for their children's fees. In 2003, education expenditure by governments at all levels was 345 billion yuan (US$41.7 billion), equivalent to only 3.28 percent of China's GDP. It even showed a small decrease (0.04 percentage points) from the previous year.

In China's long-term plan, the share of its education budget will be equivalent to only 4 percent of its GDP in 2007.

But, according to a report in China Youth Daily, the average of all governments' education spending was 5.2 percent of the global GDP in 1985 - 5.2 percent in developed countries, and 4.5 percent in developing countries.

Although letting parents pay more for their children's education seems to be a clever way to eke out limited public funds, it tends to erode the authority of the government on the one hand, and on the other, makes the school system out of touch with the rest of society. Richer and more thrifty parents are also spending vast sums on educating their children overseas.

China's education system has been attracting criticism for some time, just like the telecommunications industry did during its monopoly years.

The report about spending 490,000 yuan on raising a child is, in a way, yet another example of the criticism.

(China Daily April 1, 1005)