Media clips
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If that was the Bush administration’s view, it may have had a point. According to research by economist Thomas L. Hungerford of the Economic Policy Institute, there is no evidence in the data since 1947 that the corporate tax rate affects economic growth. This conclusion is disputed by conservative tax analysts, but as I have pointed out previously, there is no evidence that cutting the tax on dividends had any impact whatsoever on economic growth.
The Fiscal Times July 12, 2013 -
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.”
The Atlantic Cities July 12, 2013 -
We Need Some Money: Living modestly in the D.C. area requires $88,615 for the average family of four, according to a new study by the Economic Policy Institute. That makes this the second-most expensive region in the country, behind only New York (finally, a category where every Washingtonian is happy to cede the top spot to Gotham). The median household income for the region is slightly less than that figure, and the median income for the District is more than $25,000 less.
Washington City Paper July 12, 2013 -
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