EPI’s Family Budget Calculator measures the income a family needs in order to attain a modest yet adequate standard of living. Compared with the federal poverty line and the Supplemental Poverty Measure, EPI’s family budgets provide a more accurate and complete measure of economic security in America. These fact sheets offer a full picture of the cost of living in each county and metro area in the United States.
For a two-parent, two-child family in
, it costs
per month
( per year)
to secure a modest yet adequate standard of living.
Here’s a breakdown of how much it costs for a two-parent, two-child family to get by in
:
Housing:
per month
• /year
Food:
per month
• /year
Child care:
per month
• /year
Monthly costs range from
for a single-child family to
for a family with four kids.
Transportation:
per month
• /year
Health care:
per month
• /year
Other necessities:
per month
• /year
Taxes:
per month
• /year
Among the
counties in
,
has the
highest cost of living.
But median family income here is the
highest,
so when cost of living is calculated relative to median income, the county ranks
.
Among the 100 largest metro areas,
has the
highest cost of living.
But median family income here is the
highest,
so when cost of living is calculated relative to median income, the area ranks
.
Budgets for different family types
Here’s how monthly budgets in vary by family size and composition.
The Family Budget Calculator shows you the cost of essentials including housing, food, child care, transportation, and health care in each county or metropolitan area in the United States. You can use this information to understand how much income is needed to afford these essentials in any particular area in the U.S.
How does EPI’s Family Budget Calculator compare with the Supplemental Poverty Measure or the federal poverty line?
The Family Budget Calculator is not a measure of poverty. Poverty measures—particularly absolute poverty measures like the official poverty rate or the Supplemental Poverty Measure—are meant to capture material deprivation (e.g. not enough food or insufficient shelter). The Family Budget Calculator is a higher standard as it is meant to capture the costs of securing a modest but adequate lifestyle, but it is hardly lavish (our calculator does not include savings, for example).
How can I compare the affordability of two or more communities in the Family Budget Calculator?
To compare multiple locations with the Family Budget Calculator, click the + Add comparison to the upper right corner of the calculator. A new set of fields for the location and family type you’d like to compare appears. You can compare up to 3 locations at one time.
Is there a printable version of the Family Budget Calculator?
Yes! You can print a fact sheet for any location in the United States. Visit Family Budget fact sheets and enter the county or state you are interested in.
Does the Family Budget Calculator provide a ‘living wage’ for each area?
The Family Budget Calculator can help in constructing living wages, and we provide a user guide for exactly this purpose.
But the proper level of any community’s living wage is not a question the data can definitively answer because a whole host of factors influence a family’s ability to meet their budget. Policymakers, living-wage advocates, and others must therefore weigh various considerations as they use the data to construct a meaningful local living-wage standard.
One common benchmark for setting living wages is that an adult should be able to support themselves and one child with full-time work.
To help inform decisions about what constitutes an appropriate local living wage, we have created this guide that takes you from our Family Budget Calculator data to a living wage.
Download our list of these living wage standards for all counties, states, and metro areas.
Where can I get the full dataset for the Family Budget Calculator?
If you are an academic, student, non-profit researcher or advocate, or a journalist, you may download and use all Family Budget Calculator related materials without requesting any further permission.
This is permitted under a non-commercial use Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
If you are a commercial enterprise looking to incorporate Family Budget Calculator data in any product that will be sold or as part of services and data you provide to paying customers, you may request commercial use by contacting EPI.
What is the methodology EPI economists use to create the Family Budget Calculator?
The Family Budget Calculator’s technical documentation outlines EPI’s methodology and defines the families, areas, and various components of the calculator. Any updates to the methodology are released at the same time as the calculator data.
No. Much of the source data used to construct the Family Budget Calculator has been changed over the years, and the EPI methodology for measuring costs has often had to change as well. Further, many people—particularly researchers—want to use the Family Budget Calculator as a price index over time. This is not an appropriate use—the Family Budget Calculator does not just measure prices, it also measures spending. The source data for the rent component, for example, are likely measuring the cost of apartments that change in size and quality over time. A similar issue holds true for health care—if any of the rise in health care costs constitutes quality improvements, then this cannot be used as a pure price index.
One could use the Family Budget Calculator as a rough proxy for price differences across areas and then anchor these to changes in region-specific price indexes from other sources if one wanted measures of price level changes over time across areas.
.