Why are diapers so expensive?

Re:Why are diapers so expensive? by avar on Thursday April 05, 2018 @03:42AM (#16762744)

    > Do you think that back in the 50s and 60s
    > when your parents or grandparents were
    > buying the first mass produced disposable
    > diapers, they would have expected 60 years
    > later people would be forced to go back to
    > washable cloth diapers because they couldn't
    > afford regular diapers?

I tried looking up the real price of diapers since the 50s until modern day, and the only thing I could find suggests that this statement is outlandishly inaccurate.

Here's a document that quotes prices from the 50s in the US[1]:

    [...]Prices typically ran above—sometimes well
    above—ten cents per diaper, while cloth
    diapers sold for 1-2 cents each and diaper
    services typically charged 3-5 cents per
    diaper.

According to http://www.usinflationcalculator.com 10 cents per diaper in Today's money would be $1.03. I don't live in the US (although I do buy diapers), but looking at Amazon for even small packages you've got prices like $15 for a 40-pack of Pampers, which is $0.40 per diaper. It looks like you can easily get that price down to half of that if you buy bigger packages, buy non-brand etc.

So I think you can tell your grandparents in the 50s that accounting for the price of soap etc. their grandchildren are going to live in a country where disposable diapers are as cheap as cloth diapers. That doesn't sound so bad.

1. https://www.edana.org/docs/default-source/default-document-l...

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Re:Why are diapers so expensive? by rusk on Thursday April 05, 2018 @05:08AM (#16763138)

... their grandchildren are going to live in a country where disposable diapers are as cheap as cloth diapers. That doesn't sound so bad.

I'm going to regret sticking my head over the parapet on this one but ...

You're making the argument that it's great that diapers are a quarter of the price that they were, and isn't that great. But we're speaking in the context of how the poor can't even afford them at that price.

I've no stake in this argument. The dynamic of poverty and privilege is a topic that demands robust discussion. But I couldn't let such an obvious contradiction slip by ...

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Re:Why are diapers so expensive? by avar on Thursday April 05, 2018 @05:57AM (#16763351)

No, I'm not trying to make that argument. There's certainly people today that have kids and can't afford diapers in first-world countries even if they were say 1/4 of current prices.

I'm specifically responding to a part of the GPs comment that seems to be claiming that things have been getting worse since the 50s.

Which is not to say that anyone being unable to afford diapers can't be considered unacceptable, or that you could argue that social policies should be changed to amend that problem.

But it doesn't help anyone if the discussion isn't factually based. As far as I can tell poverty has been going down since the 50s[1] (with some bumps), and more generally, if you would present anyone in the 50s struggling to raise kids at their income level to swap with someone in 2018 at proportionally the same income level they'd take that swap in a heartbeat.

All of which is not to say that thing can't get even better, but there's no way to set sensible social policy for the future if we don't look at the data showing where we've already been, and what current trends are.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States

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Re:Why are diapers so expensive? by rusk on Thursday April 05, 2018 @06:59AM (#16763634)

I would have to seriously question your assertion that poverty has been on the decline since the 50s .. I've seen the stats you present, but also stats to the contrary so the case is far from closed.

What I do know is that the average industrial wage relative to the cost of living has been steadily declining with a marked plunge from the 80s onwards.

I will concede that the 50s is a poor comparison, as much of the western world was in the midst of a post-war economic boom at that time.

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Re:Why are diapers so expensive? by avar on Thursday April 05, 2018 @09:42AM (#16764806)

Yes that may be wrong, however it would have to have gotten much worse for someone buying diapers to be worse off than 50 years ago, since their price in terms of purchasing power has plummeted in the meantime.

I don't know about the average "industrial wage", but that sounds like a bad metric to focus on. Manufacturing in the US has dropped from around 25% during this time down into the single digits, so it's not as common a job as it used to be. If anything I'd expect the wage to have gone up, since those jobs are now more specialized.

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Re:Why are diapers so expensive? by ropeadopepope on Thursday April 05, 2018 @10:59AM (#16765487)

> If anything I'd expect the wage to have gone up

You'd think so, wouldn't you? The truth of the matter is most manufacturing companies are facing the same problem tech is right now: a "talent" shortage. The pay hasn't kept up with living costs in most areas. The days of buying a house and raising a family on an "industrial wage" are long gone. The pay is hardly enough to keep one person alive these days. As a result, nobody wants the jobs. The companies can't keep their assembly lines fully staffed, but they don't want to pay more either.

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Re:Why are diapers so expensive? by chrissnell on Thursday April 05, 2018 @10:15AM (#16765065)

You're quoting prices for a diaper service--one that comes to your house and picks up the dirty diapers, launders them, and gives you clean, folded diapers in exchange. This is a rich person's service. My parents didn't use a diaper service in the 1970s, they washed them in the washing machine like virtually everyone else. So, in today's money, those $0.01-0.02 cloth diapers would be about $0.10-0.25 in 2018 money each and let's say that soap would be another $3 in 2018 money. 40 cloth diapers and soap is about the same as that 40-pack of Pampers and you get to keep and re-use the cloth diapers. You're breaking even after one load.

Any parent here who has ever used cloth diapers can tell you: they save money. They should be teaching cloth diapering like they teach breastfeeding to mothers of newborns.

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Re:Why are diapers so expensive? by avar on Thursday April 05, 2018 @11:10AM (#16765603)

I mistakenly over-quoted the paragraph and included the sentence about diaper services, but the prices I was discussing were the retail prices quoted before that.

But yes, I'm willing to believe that cloth diapers were cheaper, and still are cheaper. But that's a digression from the main topic at hand, which is the question of whether or not disposable diapers are cheaper than in the 50s when adjusted for inflation.

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Re:Why are diapers so expensive? by chrissnell on Thursday April 05, 2018 @01:01PM (#16766675)

Honestly, I have no idea. My parents were struggling when I was born, but they were also living in the hippy-dippy 1970s when a "natural" choice like cloth diapering was the favored option. Either way, the diapers were cheap and they worked well--I potty-trained very early.

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