Counting the cost-of-loving index

Believe it or not, most children live in high-income families. But it's care, not cash, that counts, writes Ross Gittins. Australia has 4.7 million children under 18, being brought up by 4.5 million parents. Have you ever wondered how much it all costs? Or how good a job we're doing? Dr Sue Richardson, an economist at Flinders University in South Australia, has. And she attempted to find out in her study, Society's Investment in Children. It's a kind of cost-benefit analysis. Of course, it's a highly imperfect exercise as she's the first to admit. We measure the things that are easy to measure usually because they can have a dollar value attached to them and tend to overlook the things that aren't, even though they're often more important.