Most children get less than €61 per month, 5% get more than €301

In a joint survey carried out of RTL Today and RTL Infos readers, we asked a series of questions regarding children's pocket money: how much they get, how often, and what they have to spend it on. We had 725 responses in total, and here are the results.

Most kids get their pocket money monthly

The two most fundamental questions as far as pocket money goes are – quite naturally – how often kids get it, and how much they get. Let's start by looking at the first part; with what frequency do our (and RTL Info's) readers give their kids pocket money.

As with the other questions, we broke the responses here down by age. There is no great difference between the ages in terms of how frequent the payments are; overall 38% give out pocket money monthly, followed by weekly payments at 25%.  A key takeaway however is that children age 16–18 are most likely to be given pocket money, with only 11% of respondents saying their kids in this age category do not receive any at all.

Young children are a bit more likely to get their pocket money weekly, however. 33% of parents of 12–13 year olds report giving them a weekly payment, compared to 24% of parents whose children are between the ages of 16 and 18.

Also interesting is the proportion who don't give their children any pocket money at all. 33% of the full sample don't give their kids pocket money, and as expected this figure is higher at the two age extremes in our sample: 70% of parents whose children are younger than 9 year of age don't give them pocket money, and the same is true for 22% of parents whose children are older than 19.

That latter number may not seem very high by comparison; but it's a doubling of non-payment compared to ages 16–18, where only 11% don't get any pocket money.

Comparing our English and French readers, there is no great difference here. Overall the payment frequency is quite similar; the main difference of interest is that 23% of English readers with kids between 9 and 18 report not giving their children any pocket money, compared to 30% of our French readers.

Most kids get €1–60 per month, older kids get more

Looking at the full set of responses, the vast majority of children get between €1 and 60 per month. Unsurprisingly, there is quite a big difference based on how old the child in question is.

Older children are likely to get a higher amount each month, as you would expect: 65% of kids between 9 and 11 get €1–20, which decreases to just 36% by the time they reach the 12–13 age bracket, and only 1% of youths aged 16–18 receive this smaller amount. For the latter, 41% receive €41-60, while 16% receive €81–100.

There is again a bit of a difference between our English and French readers – and it seems to pay to be a 16–18 year old whose parents read RTL Today, in that 64% of our readers give their teenagers more than €81 per month, compared to 31% of RTL Infos readers.

That said, our French friends are more likely to give their kids the top amount in our survey of €301 or more per month. Overall, 6% of RTL Infos readers reported giving their children an amount in that bracket, compared to 5% of Today readers. More interesting is that 13% of Infos readers report that children aged nine or younger are receipients of this generous monthly amount, compared to just 8% of Today readers. Similarly, 25% of Infos readers whose kids are 19 or older give them the max amount in our survey, compared to 20% of Today readers.

That extreme aside, the takeaway from our survey is 66% of parents give their children – regardless of age – a maximum of €60 per month.

Gender differences

Taking a broad view, there is no significant difference between children's gender and the frequency with which they get pocket money, nor how likely they are to get it. Overall, 27% of respondents said they do not give their boys pocket money compared to 24% of girl parents; similarly, the payout frequency is within one percentage point different.

In terms of gender difference in amount, we have to be a little bit careful in our analysis as we would need even more responses to draw strong conclusions. Still, what we can see is that boys, on average, receive more than girls.  However, the distribution is quite similar - and the main difference seems to be at the two extremes of our age groups.

Among those aged up to 11, 13% of boys and just 5% of girls reportedly get more than €301 per month. Similarly, among respondents whose children are aged 19 and over, just 17% of girls reportedly get €301 or more per month, compared to 32%of boys.

Interestingly for this older age group. the difference is starker among our French respondents – among them, 33% said they give their sons €301 or more compared to 15% of their daughters; for our English respondents, the corresponding numbers were 25% of boys and 20% of girls. Again there is a caveat here that the data sample at the age extremes was small.

What they have to pay for themselves

We also asked you what your kids had to pay for using their pocket money. Some categories have been left out of this summary as they contained too few responses - that is, very few children had to pay for, for instance, gym membership and fitness classes.

Perhaps not all too surprisingly, girls are far more likely to have to pay for makeup and accessories – that's something that 39% of them have to cover out of their allowance, compared to 6% of boys. On the flip side of that coin, boys are far more likely to have to pay for subscription services: that comes out of the pocket of 8% of boys, compared to just 4% of girls.

Interestingly, boys are also more like – 22% – to have to cover their own lunches, compared to 17% of girls.