It's also a very costly method that many people cannot afford. Doubly so if it'll impact the long-term career prospects of the parent that spends their time teaching.
If one of you stays at home with kids, all the costs of childcare and that partner's potential commute are removed.
Anecdotally, I've met people who homeschooled because they thought it was cheaper than their other options.
If you're in an expensive school district, then you receive little benefit from your relatively high school taxes, but so it goes.
Again anecdotally, one of the poorest persons I've ever personally known pulled her kids out of public school to homeschool them.
I thought she was unqualified (despite my pro-homeschooling bias), but she got them from remedial classes to gifted status in two years, IIRC (when she put them back in school).
> Anecdotally, I've met people who homeschooled because they thought it was cheaper than their other options.
This almost, but not quite, matches my anecdotal experience. Basically, from what I've seen, it's not that it's cheaper[1] to homeschool, it's two things:
1. They don't trust the childcare they can afford. You can hire a 16 year old to care for your kid for minimum wage, but a trustworthy adult costs more.
2. The work they could be doing does gain them some net income, but the net income isn't worth the effort. I.e. if you can work for $30/hour for 8 hours with a 2 hour commute, and childcare is $20/hour, that's $30 * 8 = $240, $20 * 10 = $200, $240 - $200 = $40, $40 / 10 = a whopping $4/hour. It's not cheaper to homeschool, but it's not worth it to work for $4/hour.
[1] I'm interpreting "cheaper" to mean "cheaper in terms of money"--if that's not what you meant, my apologies.
