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Hearing that Washington is an expensive place to live is nothing new, but the price of residing in the nation’s increasingly pricy town can be put into clearer context thanks to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute. A two-parent, two-child family, for instance, needs $88,615 to get by comfortably, if not lavishly, in the D.C. region.
The Economic Policy Institute takes into account the monthly cost of housing, food, child care, transportation, education, and other various expenditures in a family budget calculator. Figures are available for metropolitan areas across the United States, but only one—New York City—appears to be more costly than the D.C. metropolitan area.
EPI looked into 615 metropolitan and rural areas around the country. The cost of living in the D.C. region, which includes the District and several counties in Maryland and Virginia, is 40 percent higher than the national median of about $63,000.
DCist July 12, 2013 -
Of course, earning $34,000 in the U.S. won’t get you very far in most parts of the country. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that a family of three needs an income of at least $44,617 a year to cover basic living expenses in the cheapest parts of the country. In Wichita, Kansas, where the commercial is currently being aired, according to Think Progress, a family of three would need to make $53,721 to get by. That’s far more than $30,000 a year that two parents earning minimum wage would make.
The Huffington Post July 12, 2013 -
Policy experts at the protest emphasized that wage increases were necessary for workers toiling at or near the minimum wage in the city. The low-wage workers who were demonstrating — many of whom work restaurant and retail jobs inside federal buildings — were joined by representatives from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, and the D.C. Fiscal Policy Center, a nonprofit tax research group.
The Huffington Post July 12, 2013 -
A family of four needs to earn $88,615 a year to enjoy a modest existence in the greater Washington D.C. area.
That data comes from the family budget calculator recently updated by the Economic Policy Institute. It takes into account local costs in vital areas such as housing, food, child care, transportation, health care and other necessities.
The costs for the area, which includes D.C. and nearby communities in both Maryland and Virginia, are 40 percent higher than the national median of $63,000. New York City was the only metropolitan area with higher median annual outlays for a family of four at $93,502.
According to the EPI, this data underscores the inadequacy of existing measures of poverty, which use the cost of living on a national level and do not take into account regional variations.
WAMU July 12, 2013 -
The median household income for a two-parent family of four in the Cleveland area is about 80 percent of what they need to have a modest standard of living, according to data released Wednesday.
While median family income in the Cleveland area is $49,715, a family of four needs to make $62,050 in order to be moderately middle class, said Amanda Woodrum, a researcher for Policy Matters Ohio, a nonprofit research institute.
The Cleveland data complemented a July 3 brief, “What Families Need to Get By,” published by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC. The median household income data come from the federal government. Income then was compared with basic family budgets that Policy Matters and EPI constructed, primarily using government data to support a variety of things included in most monthly household budgets, including housing, food and “decent” childcare. For example, childcare for two children in the Cleveland area costs nearly $1,000 a month, according to Policy Matters.
Cleveland Plain Dealer July 11, 2013 -
Last month, the City Council held a hearing on working conditions in the fast-food industry. What it revealed is troubling — fast-food restaurants are flourishing in New York City, but wages in the industry have remained pitifully low and stagnant.
Despite the fact that fast-food jobs grew at over 10 times the rate of other jobs in this city in the last decade, most workers are still making somewhere around minimum wage, which in New York State is $7.25 an hour.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that’s too little to survive in one of the world’s most expensive cities. In fact, a brand-new release of the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator shows that New York City’s cost of living is the nation’s highest.
The annual budget for a two-parent, two-child New York City family is $93,502 — about 40% higher than that of a similar Detroit family. That’s because child care here is more expensive than anywhere else. Housing costs are high, as are taxes and health care.
New York Daily News July 11, 2013 -
The Economic Policy Institute has just updated their cost-of-living budgets to reflect how much a family needs to earn to get by in 2013.
Looking at over 600 locations and estimating community-specific costs, EPI found that families need more than twice the amount of the federal poverty line to have a secure yet modest living standard.
“Our family budget calculations show that the real costs for families to live modest — not even middle class — lives are much higher than conventional estimates show and virtually impossible for families living on minimum-wage jobs,” said Elise Gould, the Economic Policy Institute director of health policy research.
The Huffington Post July 11, 2013 -
“At this pace, it will be more than five years until we get back to the prerecession unemployment rate,” Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote on Friday. “The numbers show that we have made surprisingly little progress over the last four years undoing the damage caused by the Great Recession.”
Shierholz’s entire post is worth your time, but we’ll highlight two tidbits for you: Shierholz pointed out that the employment-to-population ratio, coming in at 58.7% with Friday’s report, is still well below the 63.3% figure from December 2007, the month the recession started. Excluding young people and people near retirement age, so as to get a better take on the prime-age working population, she says the ratio for people 24-54 stood at 75.9%, up from a low of 74.8% at the end of 2009, but below the more than 80% rate of early 2007. “In other words, we are four years into the recovery, and we have climbed only about one-fifth of the way out of the hole left by the Great Recession.”
Wall Street Journal July 11, 2013 -
The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning nonprofit group, has released the 2013 version of a budget calculator on its website – www.epi.org/resources/budget/ — that factors in the “real costs for families.” It lists families with one and two parents for up to three children in each case.
Winston-Salem Journal July 10, 2013 -
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI):
The real costs for families to live modest, economically secure lives are much higher than conventional estimates show for all cities across the country. For minimum-wage workers, it is nearly impossible to meet basic family needs.
Put another way, the number of people truly living “in poverty” may be much larger than the government’s figure of 16%.
The EPI adds:
Like most of the old Southern states from Louisiana to Alabama and north into Kentucky, poverty remains high, and income and education much lower than the national average.
Elise Gould, EPI director of health policy research said when commenting on the new “What Families Need to Get By: The 2013 Update of EPI’s Family Budget Calculator” that:
“The fact that hardworking families are struggling to afford their basic needs makes clear how critical government policies are to ensure that our families can afford such basic necessities like food, child care, housing, transportation, and health care.”
Wall St. 24/7 July 10, 2013