One monthly cash benefit, calibrated to where the cost lands
The schedule is calibrated to the actual cost of raising a child: most expensive in the first years, most expensive in high-cost places, and lighter as older instruments (Skills Wallet, Bridge Year, Baby Bonds vesting at 18) progressively take over. Aggregate envelope at full deployment: $250–300B/yr.
Monthly amounts at the national-average locale
Amounts shown at the US national-average locale. Multiply each cell by the local BEA Regional Price Parity, capped [0.85, 1.25] — up to 1.25× in San Jose / Manhattan / Boston / San Francisco; floored at 0.85× in rural Mississippi, McAllen TX, and parts of Appalachia.
Why it is shaped this way
The Universal Child Allowance is a single monthly cash flow on the federal benefit card. No paperwork, no caseworker, no receipts, no approval gate, no eligibility cliff. The household decides how to spend it — food, rent, daycare, a car repair, a winter coat. Trust the household to allocate the money to its highest marginal use.
Every American household with dependent children gets the same architecture, on the same rail, at the same monthly cadence. No income test means no enrollment friction, no marriage penalty, no eligibility cliff. Means-tested programs miss ~15% of eligible recipients through paperwork attrition alone. Universal reaches everyone the program is meant to reach — a delivery-efficiency argument, not an entrenchment one.
The Universal Child Allowance flows from birth (or naturalization) through the end of age 17. At 18, the Baby Bonds tranche opens and is drawn down in quarterly vests through 21. By that point earned income, Skills Wallet, and (where relevant) Bridge Year accruals carry the household forward.
The Universal Child Allowance compensates caregiving prospectively — making care work visible and economically supportable as it happens. The Dignity Floor (Social Security 2.0) is the retrospective form of the same logic: paying the country's debt to retirees, mostly women, whose decades of unpaid care work weren't compensated and didn't accrue Social Security credits when they did the work. Same architectural principle; one looking forward, one looking backward.