The Impact of Raising Children on Retirement Security

The brief’s key findings are:

• The cost of raising children could make it harder for parents to save for retirement.
• On the other hand, if parents offset child-rearing expenses by spending less on themselves, they could still end up well prepared in retirement.
• The analysis uses the National Retirement Risk Index to look at what impact children actually have on retirement preparedness.
• The results show that children reduce household wealth and moderately increase the likelihood of retirement risk for older working households.