If parents over time amassed a quarter-million dollars, they could afford outright the cost of raising a child born in 2013 — with enough left over to throw in a fairly decent used car in which said child could drive into adulthood. The annual reckoning by the U.S. Department of Agriculture sets the average cost to raise a child, birth to age 18, at $245,340. That includes housing, food, transportation, clothing, health care, child care, education and miscellaneous.