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We are Inexpensive.   The annual expense of involvement in our Troop is about $1,000 per year.  That includes annual national dues, our council program fee, summer camp and fees for troop participation (campouts, etc.).  That is under $100/month, which in my experience as a parent is indeed quite inexpensive.  You cannot name another youth organization that provides anywhere near that deal for a quality year-around experience.  My Sea Scout Ship is a bit more (around $1,200/year).  So yes, we are inexpensive.   Our unit always supported the Friends of Scouting effort, so our families continue to contribute the same amount to support the Council (now as a program fee instead of a Friends of Scouting contribution).       

You don't mention your academic background on your profile, so apologies if this is telling you something you already know, but if Scouting America funded the researcher (as implied by "engaged" in the press release), then they weren't independent. I looked for the funding and conflicts of interest sections in the paper that I would expect to find, but either they're behind the paywall or weren't included. Either way, it's not clear to the public that the researcher really was independent. It's well-known that studies often end up biased in favor of the funding source in social sciences (see for example https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6187765/)  so whether Scouting America funded them is key to know when it comes to claiming their impartiality. I also noticed this fairly unique statement: DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT The data that support the findings of this study are available from the BSA, but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. This is highly irregular. I would expect to see the opposite, along the lines of "due to space restrictions, the complete data set could not be included here, but can be accessed online at <url>." It says that the data supporting the findings are available, but also says that they aren't publicly available without clearly specifying what a colleague should do do get the data. How would someone replicate their study? Will Scouting America provide the data to someone else to check the original researcher's work or not? Unclear. Even if the answer is actually yes, it's not clear to the public that Scouting America is actually letting the sunlight in here. This particular point seems a little weak.

Scouting empowers young people to leadership through its methods: Scout Oath and Law, Patrol method, etc.

100% this. Our council just announced that they'll be doing a council fee that matches the national fee so now before one single activity, it is $170 to be a scout. As far as I can see, this gets you zero fun. My family has two scouts and two leaders. We're looking at $470 before a single camping trip, rank patch, anything.  Maybe the small expense was once a draw (When my boys started in 2018, it was $33 for national, $42 pack fee and that wasn't even very long ago!) but that's in the past. 

I will challenge this one.  If your scout is active, scouting has significant cost.  If your scout and you are both involved, it's very significant.  IMHO when both scout and parent are active in scouts, the cost is at least the same as most sports; if not more.