Data-Driven Viewpoints: See How Much Money A Family Needs to be Secure in Your Town

Sunday, July 7, 2013

See How Much Money A Family Needs to be Secure in Your Town

What follows is a Family Budge Calculator put out by the Economic Policy Institute. www.epi.org/resources/budget/ The example shown here is for a two parent family with two children living in the capital city of New Jersey, Trenton. A typical family there needs over $75,000 in income per year to be financially secure. That means each parent would have to work full-time and be making at least $18/hour. Or, if only one parent worked, they would need to be pulling in $36/hour for their family to be financially secure. This is a long ways from minimum wage.

Family Budget Calculator

EPI’s Family Budget Calculator measures the income a family needs in order to attain a secure yet modest living standard by estimating community-specific costs of housing, food, child care, transportation, health care, other necessities, and taxes. The budgets, updated for 2013, are calculated for 615 U.S. communities and six family types (either one or two parents with one, two, or three children).

As compared with official poverty thresholds such as the federal poverty line and Supplemental Poverty Measure, EPI’s family budgets offer a higher degree of geographic customization and provide a more accurate measure of economic security. In all cases, they show families need more than twice the amount of the federal poverty line to get by.

Family Type:

State:

Area Name:

Trenton-Ewing, NJ MSA (NJ)

Two Parents, Two Children

Item	Cost
Monthly Housing	$1206
Monthly Food	$754
Monthly Child Care	$1258
Monthly Transportation	$607
Monthly Health Care	$1519
Monthly Other Necessities	$502
Monthly Taxes	$447
Monthly Total	$6292
Annual Total	$75508