H.some money Should a family of four live in Seattle without financial support? Cheeky answer: about $2,000 more than they currently have. It really depends on who you ask.
Those sticking to statistics might point to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Federal Poverty Guidelines. In 2022, HHS allocated her $27,750 to her family of four in the mainland United States. That number is laughably low, but it’s the eligibility criteria many government programs rely on. Food stamps and free school meals. Local health departments and children’s health insurance. Head Start and Job Squad. Each calculates whether someone is eligible for assistance based on a percentage multiple of the scrape-the-bottom minimum.
Naturally, there are also critics. “That’s way too low,” says Lisa Manzer, director of the Women’s Welfare Center at the University of Washington. “It doesn’t provide a definition of what a family needs.”
According to what is called the self-sufficiency standard, the magic number for a family of four is $86,192.61. More specifically, her two adults, a preschooler, and a school-age child who live in Seattle. $104,543.12 for 2 adults and 2 infants. If those children were teenagers, $55,340.01. The vastly different amounts reflect the vastly different needs that modern families have, says Manzer.
early 1990s, proponents of Wider Opportunities for Women, a national nonprofit, have noticed an alarming trend. They secured minimum-wage jobs, but they still couldn’t afford childcare or food. “Despite being employed through these training programs, they were experiencing considerable financial hardship,” Manzer says.
Dr. Diana Pearce, WOW’s project director at the time, established the Women’s Welfare Center at UW. Her job is to find new ways to calculate basic needs: more precise goals. I see where this is going.
Pearce’s self-sufficiency standards were launched in 1996, 33 years after the first official poverty standards were published. It includes various basic expenses such as housing, childcare, food, transportation, medical expenses, essential expenses such as clothing, and taxes. Standards also vary by state and by specific county, and vary based on the number of people and age composition of the household. To date, it has been calculated for 41 states and 719 different family structures. Pierce called this the “feminization of poverty”.
Compare this to the simplest term, the Federal Poverty Guidelines, which uses the 1955 survey to calculate a household’s overall spending needs. At the time, the family spent about a third of their after-tax income on food. The US poverty line assumes the same thing when you add up food costs, which he triples and finds the total. Especially for single mothers, this calculation doesn’t hold true in today’s world, says Munzer. “The poverty measure essentially assumes that childcare is provided by stay-at-home moms.”
Molly Olshanski, the food economist and Social Security Administration researcher who created the government’s anti-poverty plan, knew its limits even in 1963, when it was first published. argued that it’s impossible to know how much is enough, but “you should be able to confidently argue how much is too little on average”. It was a measure of inadequacy, and quite different from Pierce’s original intentions for the standard.
Still, Manzer sees the subsistence standard as a “minimum adequate” budget for basic needs. It doesn’t include things like pet food or takeout, but it’s designed to evolve with your needs. The team updates each state’s standards approximately every three years. This is usually done when a price survey of the childcare market is released. Broadband Internet is the only recent addition. “For policy reasons, we need to set a minimum level,” says Manzer. “We have to protect what these numbers are.”
When Manzer breaks the self-sufficiency standards of policymakers and program directors, it’s a common occurrence. “We present data on individual costs, such as housing, childcare, and food. ‘Well, that’s too low. That’s too low.’ There is a disconnection. ”
Ultimately, Manzer hopes this standard, or something similar, will be adopted nationwide to tie eligibility for federal subsidies to a more realistic measure. But the support goes squarely at partners, says Manzer. “It just creates data.”
After all the math, the standard is already serving more families.In Washington, the Seattle-King County Workforce Development Council uses it to benchmark new customers and It sets targets for vocational training and highlights income disparities in the workforce across the region. Multnomah County, Oregon, has taken into consideration criteria prioritizing slots in the Universal Preschool Program.Colorado, Sea-Tac Arguing for Higher Minimum Wages
Resistance is slowly disappearing, Manzer said. “Ten years ago, fifteen years ago there was more of a backlash….and now where is it just [they say]”That’s too low.”
