PARENTS spend an average of close to half a million yuan (US$60,000) on raising and supporting a child until he or she reaches age 30, according to a report recently released by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

In this report, written under the direction of Xu Anqi, the head of the survey team and a leading scholar in family studies, the cost of raising a child is put at 490,000 yuan (US$59,250). The result is based on a survey covering more than 700 families randomly selected from 36 communities in the city¡¯s Xuhui District.

¡°The survey was designed to identify components of child-rearing costs ?such as food, clothing, education, medical care ?and whether these components are rationally proportioned,?said Xu.

It was found that an estimated 250,000 yuan (US$30,000) was spent on rearing a child before age 16 and the cost climbed to 480,000 yuan (US$58,000) if the child received higher education. Another 10,000 yuan (US$1,200) was spent on supporting the offspring until he or she reached age 30.

Since its release, the report has generated heated discussions about its reliability and validity.

Xu stressed that the figures only represented one relatively well-off district in Shanghai and cannot be used to draw inferences about the entire city, not to mention the whole country.

Educational expenses

According to the report, education costs account for 22 to 41 per cent of child-rearing costs, peaking during a child¡¯s higher education period.

The expense of pre-school education has surpassed that of the nine-year-long compulsory education in primary and junior high schools. The highest pre-school education spending recorded was more than 20,000 yuan (US$2,400), the report notes.

Even during the compulsory education period, parents spend far more than the amounts prescribed by the Shanghai Education Commission (9,000 yuan or US$1,088 for primary school, 12,000 yuan or US$1,451 for junior high school). The extra expense goes on study aid books and additional training courses of questionable benefit.

¡°We have only one child, of course, we hope to provide a good environment for him, his school must be a good one which can guarantee educational quality,?said Jane Xu, a young mother whose son is 4 years old.

The boy now is studying in a key kindergarten hosted by East China Normal University. The fees are more than 400 yuan (US$48) per month. In some private schools, the fee is much higher.

If things go according to Xu¡¯s plan, her son will go to key schools and then study abroad. Tuition costs will be extremely high.

¡°For a child, I think any investment is worthwhile. If you don¡¯t invest in a child, how will he survive in such a competitive society in the future??she said.

¡°The ideas of modern parents are totally different to those of the elder generation,?said Sun Baohong, deputy director of the Institute of Youth and Juvenile Studies of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

¡°Before, families with a child of college background were very rare, but now entering college is almost the lowest standard, so of course the cost of raising a child is much higher than before,?Sun said.

The birth of private schools, also called ¡°aristocrat schools? increases the cost of raising a child, the expert said.

Since the beginning of the last decade, private schools have appeared, normally with quality teachers and good educational equipment. But the tuition fees in such schools can be several times higher than those in public schools.

For example, the annual tuition for one well-known private school in Xujiahui is 5,000-6,000 yuan (US$605-725). Tuition for an average public school comes to about 1,500 yuan (US$180). Despite these financial obstacles, however, young parents are competing hard for places for their children.

Simply unaffordable

Even in Shanghai, not everyone can afford such expenses.

The average income per capita in Shanghai was over 16,000 yuan (US$1,935) in 2004.

¡°That means children from families of low income have different educational opportunities,?Sun said.

A China Newsweek story mentioned this issue. The famous scholar Yang Dongping told the media that nowadays the country¡¯s educational resources were more concentrated in cities, and in these cities the resources were more concentrated on a few key schools. He said this trend was becoming more serious.

Another scholar, Li Chunlin from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, echoed the opinion that some schools consider education as a business, so enrollment will definitely incline to rich and powerful people.

In a survey of students?family backgrounds undertaken by Beijing University of Science and Technology, 45.1 per cent of students were from families of workers and farmers, while 38.5 per cent of students?parents were officials, intellectuals or from the military. Yet officials and intellectuals account for only about 5 per cent of the country¡¯s overall population.

Experts have called for a fair education environment in which educational resources are available to ordinary people, not just to powerful groups, thus weakening the trend toward polarization.