It costs nearly $20,000 to give birth in the US, study finds

The study examines costs associated with pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care

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A new study has revealed the cost of having a baby has reached $20,000 for people who can get pregnant in the United States.

To conduct the Kaiser Family Foundation study, researchers used data from the IBM Health Analytics MarketScan Commercial Claims and Encounters Database, which contain health claims from more than 2m women from 2018 through 2020.

The information was then limited to women between the ages of 15 to 49 who were continuously enrolled in large employer private health plans. The study says it used claims from almost 2,267,2000 women to cull data.

Results showed that US health care costs associated with pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care have reached an average of $18,865. While insurance plans covered about $16,011 of these costs, new mothers were still found to pay about $2,854 in out-of-pocket expenses.

Additionally, researchers found that those in group plans who become pregnant are subject to about $19,906 more in both in-patient and out-patient costs when compared to those who do not give birth. However, women who give birth spent about $1,040 less for prescription drugs than women who did not give birth.

In regards to out-of-pocket costs, pregnant women were found to pay $2,924 more on in-patient and out-patient care than women who were not pregnant. Out-of-pocket charges are also $2,854 higher for pregnant women who are the same age as non-pregnant women.

The study also looked at how much mothers pay when giving birth, with the average cost of a vaginal delivery found to be $14,768, with $2,655 paid out of pocket. The average cost for a caesarean section is $26,280, with $3,214 of that money paid out of pocket.

Out-of-pocket costs related to pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care are also more than $500 higher for women who get a caesarean section than women who have a natural birth.

The nonprofit organisation notes that there were a few limitations to the study, including how researchers can’t control women’s health statuses before becoming pregnant.

The company also only included baby-related spending that happened through a health care provider, so any care that was paid entirely out of pocket was not documented. For example, many fertility treatments were not involved in the study because they were not covered by insurance.

This isn’t the first study to explore the costs that come with having a child. According to the US Department of Agriculture’s report of 2015 data, which was adjusted due to inflation in 2022 by CNBC, everyday expenses for a child could go beyond $200,000. More specifically, in 2022, the cost of raising one child from birth to age 17, in a middle-income home with two adults and two children is nearly $286,000.