The cost of having a child in the UAE has risen to a staggering US$43,426 according to research by Money magazine. Money's editor Diana Milne totalled the entire cost of raising a child from pregnancy to school age in the Emirates and was staggered at the result."Expats are in for a quite a shock when it comes to calculating just how hard raising a family in the UAE will hit their bank balances - particularly those from countries where education and healthcare are free," she noted.
Even before a child is born parents must dig deep to pay for pre natal and maternity packages at the UAE's private hospitals, with maternity packages starting from US$816 and rising to as high as US$1,905 for a normal delivery.
A Caesarean delivery can cost up to US$4,574 - and where a child is born prematurely parents must fork out around US$816 a day just to keep the baby in a special care baby unit. British mother of three, Bonnie Scott-Laws who lives in Dubai, said the price of care for premature babies was a particular concern: "Imagine if you're worried to death about your premature baby. The last thing you want to have to think about is having to take out your credit card.
"Next on the list are nursery school fees, which range in price from around US$1,225 to US$16,33 per term.
Pamela Samandan from Dubai, an American expatriate and mother of five-year-old Ethan, described the fees as "exceedingly expensive".
"Kindergarten seems to be just as expensive as school."And slightly more expensive given the fact that Ethan is only there from 9am to 12noon every day."
However school fees are by far the greatest concern for expatriate parents who spent a massive US$545million on private education last year alone. The figure is set to reach the US$817million mark this year - with private schools charging from US$2994 a year to US$16,335 per year for older children.
"Here private schools are a business and that's the reality," said Scott-Laws."The cost is rising every year and that's really bad news for some families."
David Mclaughlin, principal of the Cambridge International School, part of the Gems Education Group, said fees structures are usually indicative of which countries teachers are recruited from."Within Gems it's a pricing structure that is dependent in a sense on where you recruit teachers."It is more expensive to recruit teachers out of the UK than it is to recruit more locally based teachers," he claimed. Source
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