Almost 90% of Americans think families should have multiple children, but it's increasingly expensive to raise a child

• The annual cost of raising a kid has increased by about 19% between 2016 and 2021, per LendingTree.
• Still, most Americans think the ideal family consists of more than one child, a Gallup study showed.

Most Americans think the "ideal" family consists of more than one child, according to a recent study.

A Gallup poll of more than 2,000 US adults above 18 showed that 89% of respondents feel that the "ideal family has two or more children while just 3% of respondents said the ideal number of children is one.

The rest of the respondents either said zero is the ideal number or they have no opinion on the matter.

The breakdown of what people say is the ideal number of children showed: 44% say two children, 29% say three, 12% say four, 2% say five, and 2% say six or more children.

The survey doesn't go into what reasoning the respondents use to conclude that having more than one child is best.

A study by LendingTree, an online loan platform, showed that raising a small child is getting increasingly expensive.

Between 2016 and 2021, the annual "essential costs" to raise a child increased 19.3%, from $18,167 to $21,681, according to the study.

"Families are projected to spend $237,482 over 18 years to raise a child," the LendingTree study said.

The Gallup study acknowledged that Americans' ideal family size doesn't match up with their actual family size.

"Since the Great Recession, Americans have been increasingly likely to say larger families are preferable, but birth rates in the US have been declining, Gallup wrote. "This suggests that while they may see larger families as ideal, other factors are preventing them from implementing this in their own lives."