{"id":1816,"date":"2013-07-03T15:05:45","date_gmt":"2013-07-03T21:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=1816"},"modified":"2013-07-03T15:05:45","modified_gmt":"2013-07-03T21:05:45","slug":"federal-poverty-line-doesnt-adequately-reflect-cost-of-living-in-america-analysis-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/federal-poverty-line-doesnt-adequately-reflect-cost-of-living-in-america-analysis-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Poverty Line Doesn’t Adequately Reflect Cost Of Living In America, Analysis Finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Jillian Berman, Huffington Post
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

Just because the government doesn’t define you as poor, doesn’t mean you have enough money to live.<\/p>\n

The federal poverty line for a family of four was $23,283 last year,\u00a0nearly one-quarter of what it takes<\/a>\u00a0to live in New York City and slightly more than one-third of what it takes to live in St. Louis, according a family budget calculator from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. In fact, EPI found that in 615 cities across the country it takes a total income at least twice the federal poverty line for any type of family with three children or fewer to afford basic expenses.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think anyone gets any sense of economic security from living at that line,\u201d Elise Gould, one of the paper\u2019s authors and the director of health policy research at EPI, told The Huffington Post. \u201cIt\u2019s a measure of absolute deprivation.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Click over to EPI’s budget calculator to determine how much it costs for a family to live in your city.)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

In determining the income required for a family to get by,\u00a0EPI\u2019s budget calculator considers<\/a>\u00a0the regional cost of housing, child care, health care, transportation and other basic needs. It illustrates the limits of the\u00a0Census’ official poverty measure<\/a>, which is determined using the cost of certain food staples nationally and adjusts with inflation.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0government launched an alternative measure<\/a>\u00a0of poverty in recent years, which includes costs like clothing, housing and the income received through tax credits and government benefits. Still, it doesn\u2019t take into account as many variables as EPI\u2019s measure and isn\u2019t as geographically specific.<\/p>\n

In order to be able to afford to live anywhere in the country, workers have to be making more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, according to EPI. There\u2019s nowhere in America where two parents earning the federal minimum wage, which amounts to about $30,000 per year collectively, can make enough to support a family of three or four, the analysis found.<\/p>\n

To put that into perspective,\u00a0it takes a combined income of $44,617<\/a>\u00a0for a two parent, one child household to cover basic needs in Simpson County, Mississippi, the region with the lowest cost of living for that type of family, according to EPI\u2019s calculator.<\/p>\n

That measure doesn\u2019t account for the fact that some states have a minimum wage that’s higher than $7.25. Still,about 3.6 million workers<\/a>\u00a0earned the federal minimum wage or below last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.<\/p>\n

Raising the minimum wage would help families at least get to EPI\u2019s level of basic economic security, but as Gould notes, the\u00a0measure still only allows enough money<\/a>\u00a0for a family living very basically and essentially paycheck-to-paycheck.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of those things which would put people more solidly in the middle class are in our budget,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is definitely a modest budget even though it is so much higher the federal poverty line.\u201d<\/p>\n

Check\u00a0out this chart from EPI<\/a>, which shows how much money it takes for a family of four to live in various cities:<\/p>\n

\"o-EPI-CHART-570<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Jillian Berman, Huffington Post click here for original article Just because the government doesn’t define you as poor, doesn’t mean you have enough money to live. The federal poverty line for a family of four was $23,283 last year,\u00a0nearly one-quarter of what it takes\u00a0to live in New York City and slightly more than one-third […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1817,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/r-FOOD-PANTRY-large570.jpg?fit=182%2C238&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1816"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1818,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1816\/revisions\/1818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}