The Insane, True Costs of Raising a Family in America's Major Metros

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2013/07/insane-true-costs-raising-family-americas-major-metros/6172/



Poverty – or, more generally speaking, deprivation – is a notoriously difficult thing to define. Whether or not you experience it has to do with how many mouths you have to feed, where your family lives, whether you pay for child care, what your daily transportation options look like, even how society philosophically defines a family's minimum needs to get by. The federal poverty line, on the other hand, doesn't take into account most of these nuances. It is, by definition, a stark line, not a geographically sophisticated matrix.

And for a family of four, right now, it's $23,550.

In an effort to address the concerns of advocates and researchers, the federal government came out two years ago with a Supplemental Poverty Measure (although it isn't used to determine any federal benefits). But even that effort misses dramatic regional variation in costs like child care (the monthly cost for a one-child household in rural Mississippi is $334; in Washington, D.C., it's $1,318).

How, then, do you calculate what it really costs for a family to have some minimum level of security? The Economic Policy Institute offers a more comprehensive calculator, one that was recently updated for 2013 and that now includes 600 communities across the country and six family types. The EPI Family Budget Calculator includes geographically adjusted costs for housing, food, child care, transportation, health care, other necessities, and taxes, in search of what it takes to achieve a "secure yet modest living standard."

[Laelth]

1. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[DhhD]

8. The House Republicans voted for a Farm Bill with Food Stamps removed.

[Laelth]

10. Indeed. And that was very reckless, as I argued elsewhere.

Here, if you are interested: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3228611

-Laelth

[marmar]

2. k/r

[chervilant]

3. Then, 'scholars' like Kaplan pontificate

that people aren't "taking to the streets," because we're trained to feel "helpless and jaded." Besides this being a "blame the victim" approach (a la William Ryan), it fails to address how few of us have the resources to protest, or how many of us ARE protesting -- with nary a cricket chirp from ANY media.

Poverty is our slavery du jour, rendered ubiquitous by the sheer number of us adjusting to just getting by on a meager paycheck and the constant threat of unemployment and homelessness.

[xchrom]

5. +1

[MrScorpio]

4. Kickage! nt

[nashville_brook]

6. add to this wage theft, no sick days -- working poor live in Kafkaesque America

[zeemike]

7. It has been a long slow slide into poverty

And that is a fact.
In the 70s one worker could support a famly...now that is imposable and usually it takes two incomes to do that.
By any standards it means we have lost half or our ability to support a family.
But for the 1% life is fantastically good...and getting better.

[truebluegreen]

9. Heck, in the late 50s a not-very successful insurance saleman

(who shall remain nameless) could support his wife and 4 kids, own a home, own a cabin by the lake, own a waterski boat, ski every weekend in the winter and buy a nice pre-owned car every year or two.

Those were the days when you used to see billboards bragging about the highest standard of living in the world.

[zeemike]

11. Same with the tradesmen

an electrician or a plumber could do quite well for himself and put some money away for his kids education and retirement.
But Reagan changed all of that.

[truebluegreen]

12. Yep. Craftsmen in general...

carpenters' wages, even for the best in an expensive resort town, didn't move up for decades...not if you wanted the job.

And I was talking to a (self-described) hippy-dippy potter the other day, who used to have a thriving business in the 70s and still would, but now the average person can't afford his work.

Costs kept rising, wages didn't.