Media clips
-
Albright tries to get by on $31,000 a year. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank created to include the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions, a mother of two children like Albright would have to make $61,725 a year to have an adequate standard of living in Somerset County. For an adult with no children, that figure is $33,522. The Institute’s Family Budget Calculator takes into account geographic differences in cost of living and factors in a range of expenses, including housing, food, transportation, child care, health care and other basic necessities.
Daily American March 19, 2018 -
The Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., looked at data on the cost of living for 10 family types in all 3,142 counties and 611 metro areas to determine where areas fall in terms of affordability. Greater Baltimore was found to have the 35th highest cost of living, and 15th highest median family income. Of course, that’s under EPI’s standards, which measures only what’s required for families to have an adequate standard of living and does not include extra expenses such as paying off student loans or saving for college or retirement. Using the data they collected, EPI created its “Family Budget Caculator,” which allows the user to compare the monthly and annual cost of living for families of various sizes. It also shows how much those famililes spends on housing, food, child care, transportation, health care, taxes and other necessities. (whole story)
Baltimore Business Journal March 19, 2018 -
A recently released study questions whether workers hired through temp-for-hire and staffing agencies is shrinking that premium. According to the study by the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute, since 1990 real wages for production workers have risen by only 0.1 percent annually. The research points to government data that estimates there are about 1.2 million temporary workers in manufacturing. And nearly one-third of all manufacturing production workers rely on food stamps or other government help “to make ends meet,” the paper says.
Dayton Daily News March 19, 2018 -
“Kudlow is obviously coming in knowing there is a president who will make very sudden moves on things like tariff policies,” said Heidi Shierholz, the Economic Policy Institute’s senior economist, and a former chief economist at the Labor Department under President Obama. “So he knows what he’s walking into.”
PBS News Hour March 16, 2018 -
The cost of raising a family looks very different depending on where you are. It will cost you about $58,906 a year to raise a four-person family in Brownsville, Texas, for example, but if you move to San Francisco, California, that expense more that doubles, to $148,439. That’s according to the Economic Policy Institute’s newly updated family budget calculator. The calculator shows the income a family needs in order to attain a modest yet adequate standard of living across the U.S. In other words, it measures “what families need to get by,” says EPI Senior Economist Elise Gould. (whole story)
CNBC March 16, 2018 -
Did you know that a family of two adults and two children living in L.A. County needs to earn $7,691 a month, or just over $92K a year to meet all of its living expenses? Elise Gould is a Senior Economist with the Economic Policy Institute. “When you look at what it really costs to get by in Southern California, it takes a lot of money.” The Family Budget Calculator breaks the $92k down this way: A family of four will pay $1,663 a month for housing, $830 for food, $1,223 for child care, $1,159 for transportation, $795 for health care, $1,006 for other necessities and $1,016 for taxes. That’s a lot more than L.A. County’s median family income, which is just $66,203 per year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. (whole story)
KABC March 16, 2018 -
Deeply disturbing is the reality that 50 years later, Black people still suffer the brunt of systemic racism and inequality. When we look at data provided by the Kerner Commission report and compare it to today’s reality, it is shocking how far we haven’t come. In a must-read follow-up briefing by the Economic Policy Institute titled 50 years after the Kerner Commission, researchers Valerie Wilson, Janelle Jones (who appeared on WURD to discuss it) and John Schmitt observed that: (key findings listed)
Philadelphia Citizen March 16, 2018 -
According to the Economic Policy Institute, “The substantial progress in educational attainment of African Americans has been accompanied by significant absolute improvement in wages, incomes, wealth, and health since 1968. But black workers still make only 82.5 cents on every dollar earned by white workers, African Americans are 2.5 times as likely to be in poverty as whites, and the median white family has almost 10 times as much wealth as the median black family.” When it comes to home ownership — a well proven method of attaining and passing down generational wealth — the news is even more dire. With EPI also finding that in terms of family wealth, “One of the most important forms of wealth for working and middle-class families is home equity. Yet, the share of black households that owned their own home remained virtually unchanged between 1968 (41.1 percent) and today (41.2 percent). Over the same period, homeownership for white households increased 5.2 percentage points to 71.1 percent, about 30 percentage points higher than the ownership rate for black households.”
Atlanta Black Star March 16, 2018 -
Wages have increased relative to where they were during the Great Recession, but the gaps between rich and poor, and between black and white, have widened. To put that into context, wage gains since the financial crisis indicate that most workers are merely catching up, not getting ahead, according to a report released by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Bankrate March 16, 2018 -
Aside from debt, the other primary culprit Americans say keeping them from saving is stagnant income. “A big reason why so few Americans save for an adequate retirement is too-low pay,” said Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute, pointing out that median wages for most workers have barely budged. “Those are totally linked.” … “I worry about 2019 — lots of people not getting refunds or even owing money. I think that is a potential problem,” Bivens said, and a Bankrate survey from last year illustrates why this could be a problem: Nearly one-third of respondents — a record high — said they would spend their refund on necessities like gas and groceries. “I’m a little worried that the IRS is being encouraged to be really aggressive… to make the tax cuts seem really impactful for political reasons,” Bivens said.
NBC News March 15, 2018