Money
What children’s activities cost families: fees and equipment, travel and time off work, and the costs that never appear on a registration form.
About this subject
Registration is usually the first cost a family sees and often not the largest. Travel, equipment, lessons and camps add to it, and spending rises with a child’s age and with household income.
The national figures come from surveys of sports parents. They report averages rather than what a typical family spends, and the surveys we cite do not break spending down by level of play. Start with the cost of youth sports for what the surveys show and how they differ; recreational, club and travel sports covers what changes as a child moves up a level.
Questions we study
- What do activities cost a family beyond the registration fee?
- How do costs differ between recreational and competitive levels?
- How do families decide what an activity is worth to them?
Published on this subject
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Evidence review
The cost of youth sports: what the evidence shows