Almost half of US families can't afford basics like rent and food | Hacker News Reader

Almost half of US families can't afford basics like rent and food

money.cnn.com

45 pointsllamataboot102 comments

If "Nearly 51 million households don't earn enough to afford a monthly budget that includes housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cell phone"

Is true does that mean those households do without those things? Or are they subsidized via other methods? Medicare/medicaid for health insurance for example. Such programs often have income maximums that households may be attempting to optimise for.

We often hear about millions not making a living wage but the fact that we don't have millions of corpses makes that claim less effective as it exposes it as rhetoric. Or perhaps millions are dying from exposure and malnutrition as is claimed and I can't find that data.

They end up shuffling between homelessness, homeless programs, and family / friends.

A good portion of the children pass through the foster care system and the adults end up in jail or prison for various stretches.

It's a very expensive system, and people's lives are wasted even if they are not out right killed.

I’m sure many people do shuffle through homelessness and homeless programs, but it’s certainly not half the country.

Seriously, unless next week’s headline is “millions of Americans have been dying of starvation and nobody noticed,” the article has no connection to reality.

> They end up shuffling between homelessness, homeless programs, and family / friends.

51 million people? A sixth of the US?

51 million households, assuming 4 per household roughly 200 million or 2/3rds.

I'm not buying it.

The cohort being reported on here groups single individuals and multi-person familes alongside each other as a household, if I'm understanding correctly.

> ALICE is a United Way acronym which stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. It represents the growing number of individuals and families who are working but are unable to afford the basic necessities of housing, food, child care, health care, and transportation. [0]

[0]: https://www.oshkoshunitedway.org/ALICE

51 million households, so almost half of the US. Even less believable.

EDIT: Why is this downvoted? The article states "Nearly 51 million households..."

There are 128m households in the USA, but yeah, it's about 40%.

Average income in the Netherlands is 40k USD. If being poor in the US is double that... Maybe the complete lack of healthcare and social housing makes up the difference?

Per capita or per household?

debt. going hungry. going without shelter. going without health care. going without cell phone. going without transportation. it's not rocket science. it's just poverty.

I live in a poor area of Southern California. I'd say the majority of the town receives state benefits. There are also stands that give away free cell phones and service (some state program). I have no idea how it works, but its there.

I have similar programs near me for all the items mentioned. I wonder if this metric actually means anything, if you did a similar survey in Europe I suspect you'd find many that can't afford private health insurance but since healthcare is often provided by the state that is meaningless as a barometer of human suffering.

Anecdotally, I've seen very nice cars in areas with subsidized rent-- nicer than my working-class area.

There's a saying in diplomacy that, "All aid is military." Meaning, feeding a dictator's citizens only enables him to buy weapons with money he would have otherwise spent on food. This just being an expression of the fungibility of money.

However, in California, at least, the various medicals, unemployment, etc., monitor your income pretty closely. If people are subsidizing their income with these programs, it would seem to imply there's an untracked (cash) economy with which to do that. All of my income comes in as 1099* I can't hide a cent.

I would argue that there are worse things than the sweet release of death.

Living without dignity might be one of them.

That being said, I'm not sure how I feel about having "cell phone" in that list of things that are considered necessities.

Cellphones are cheap computers these days. It's very hard to participate in today's economy, much less its education system, without internet access.

OTOH cable television is an unnecessary, overpriced drain when most people can receive OTA programming.

Land line phones are more expensive, and require a stable address; public phones are scarce and getting scarcer.

Mobile phones are a necessity.

You don't need a phone 24/7/265.

As far as cost, looks like land line service is 15-30$ a month with things like caller ID, call waiting and voicemail. That's generally much cheaper than any mobile phone with a data plan and doesn't require a phone that costs hundreds of dollars. Even MVNO solutions like Mint start at 45$ every three months before tax and sim shipping.

You also don't need payphones to be abundant, From 1990 to 1999 (ages 5-14) I used a payphone maybe a dozen times and nearly all of those were to have discussions with friends that I didn't want my parents to hear so I rode my bike 2 blocks to Little Caesars and used the phone in their parking lot. And I don't think a single time after that yet I didn't have a cellphone until 2004. I still rarely talk on the phone, I will go months without using a single minute.

I will listen to voicemails a few times a week but I will either go see the person or if it is a business I need to call back I'll do so at my convenience, not when they want to talk to me.

A person on the internet is arguing that a landline with caller ID, call waiting and voicemail is sufficient.

> You also don't need payphones to be abundant, From 1990 to 1999 (ages 5-14) I used a payphone maybe a dozen times and nearly all of those were to have discussions with friends that I didn't want my parents to hear so I rode my bike 2 blocks to Little Caesars

Ah yes. The needs of a child/teen are surely the needs of a grown person who will need to communicate with potential employers, banks, landlords, schools etc. which are all becoming almost exclusively online.

>Ah yes. The needs of a child/teen are surely the needs of a grown person who will need to communicate with potential employers, banks, landlords, schools etc.

I've been working, taxable above the board income (google it, lots of conditions for this including paper delivery which is what I did), since I was 12 years old. I've had a bank account since I was 8.

There is no realistic condition where the majority of the population needs to be tethered to a phone number 24/7/365.

If you have a job that requires you to be on call, certainly, but in that case your employer should be providing the phone or reimbursing the cost. Generally people in these situations are paid rather well also.

Things have changed a lot for many low wage workers since about 08 or so. Schedules are set no more than a few days in advance. They're communicated either by an app or by text message. They can be highly variable and it's expected that the employee keep up, or else miss a shift and be fired.

A cell phone is virtually required. (And never provided by the employer).

Cell phone could be necessary for many jobs (like deliveries). And cell phone + mobile data can be a cheaper alternative to computer + landline internet, which is pretty essential nowadays. Even if you argue you can do without, the money you'd spend on transportation to do in person what you'd otherwise do online would outweigh the price of a cell-phone. Not to mention the time you save, which can be used to avoid need to spend on childcare, or bring in more money with an extra job, or by using that time to cook, or... (haste makes waste).

>Cell phone could be necessary for many jobs (like deliveries)

Then it should be provided by the employer.

I don't know how old you are but, we got by without mass adoption of cellphones in the 90's just fine. You had an answering machine, people called you and if they didn't get you they left a message and you got home and pressed play.

We also survived just fine without GPS and digital maps, people actually knew how to look at maps and write down directions.

The only time I can even think of when someone would need to install a location app would be for gig economy stuff. Ride share and food delivery apps are often break-even at best when maintenance/upkeep is factored in and are not valid income sources for low-income individuals (if they even have a vehicle that meets the insurance requirements of the company).

You don't even need to own a computer or have internet access at home, libraries exist. They have computers and internet for public use with the general requirement being a (free) library card. Businesses like FedEx Office also offer computer access for a modest fee https://www.fedex.com/en-us/office/computer-rental.html .

> Then it should be provided by the employer.

Unfortunately they don't live in should-be land. And when an employer asks them to send them a CV via e-mail, or to install the app which they use to send delivery pick-up/drop-off locations, "I didn't need these things in the 90s!" won't fly.

I'm guessing there are welfare programs that make up the difference? Subsidised housing, food stamps etc.

I strongly recommend viewing the actual source information instead of the cnn article

https://www.unitedforalice.org/home

The 51 million households aren't literally on the verge of starvation, they are "Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed" (ALICE) which is similar to being paycheck to paycheck in that they can survive but not thrive:

>When funds run short, cash-strapped households are forced to make impossible choices, such as deciding between quality child care or paying the rent, filling a prescription or fixing the car. These short-term decisions have long-term consequences not only for ALICE families, but for all of us.

one of the most important key stat is defining housing spend to be "no more than one-third of income"

if you make >3x your rent i'd say you are cruising in life.

In big cities and successful metropolitan regions I'd agree. It's a consequence of how quickly housing costs have outgrown all other costs in cities that the "one-third rule" doesn't really apply anymore. On the other hand if you live in a small town, it's quite possible to make 3x your rent and still be struggling.

Also, these people are more wealthy than people (in the same income percentile), say, 100 years ago. This makes me wonder if capitalism always progresses to such a point that a large portion of the population lives in misery.

Another article discussed here recently claimed that US median worker real wages have barely increased at all over the last 40 years. But, yes, you are right, there was plenty of progress and growth from the 1920s to the 1970s (when the spectre of communism was haunting the world, and the top marginal tax rate in the USA was between 70% and 90%).

The methodology is described here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ne0s04q4wfhuih6/19UW_ALICE_Project...

The standards they use are not lavish (renting an efficiency apartment for a single person or 2BR for family of 3 or more, home daycares, "thrifty" meals), but there are some statistical quirks that make this headline a little misleading. They set the housing budget at "the 40th percentile rent", health care at "average health care expenses", and transportation at "average transportation expenses". This is like saying 40% of households are below the 40th percentile, which is kinda duh.

In practice, families that don't make a lot of money (or that do make a lot of money but want to save up a shit-ton and retire) make do with a bunch of cheap alternative living arrangements. Instead of paying full rent, multiple families double-up or triple-up in a housing unit. Multiple generations live together. Grandma takes care of the kids instead of paying for childcare. They shop in budget produce markets. They just don't go to the doctor and hope it's not serious. They walk to work, and the kids take the bus to school.

Most of your comment is spot on, I thought I'd just nit-pick a bit. In America, it's generally only the rich that have the luxury of walking to work; the rich can afford to live where it's convenient. The poor live where it's cheap, which is rarely close to where they work.

At least with census data there has been a well known gap for some time between data on income vs. data on consumption, with the latter generally being higher. Census poverty data does not count a number of benefits including food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

This is quite a disingenuous title for CNN. The actual study reference in the article (and not even directly, one must go to the linked website and dig around for it) identifies a new subgroup of the US population that are "asset-limited, income-constrained, and employed," or ALICE.

Nowhere does it say in the study that these people cannot afford rent and food.

These people's financial stability is more tenuous, yes, but they can afford rent and food. What a silly and dishonest conclusion made by CNN.

"asset-limited, income-constrained, and employed"

AKA have no savings and have minimum wage jobs. The USA needs universal healthcare for all.

>"For instance, in Seattle's King County, the annual household survival budget for a family of four (including one infant and one preschooler) in 2016 was nearly $85,000."

An $85,000 "budget" is needed for a 4-person household's "survival" in King County? Otherwise they're dying? Maybe United Way's underlying data explains this better, but CNN's conclusions don't seem well explained or supported.

Edit: What's weird is if you look into the ALICE project's website, their number appears to be $74,052, not $85,000. [0]

Also definition of Survival Budget is on that page, but the definition of "survival" is a bit different than a standard dictionary.

[0] https://www.unitedforalice.org/washington

>"households don't earn enough to afford a monthly budget that includes housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cell phone"

Literally the first line of the article.

Yeah, but dig into the specifics. OP's link allocated $586 a month for food - my family is bigger than the example, and we spend about half of that on groceries. We'll eat out to make up some of the difference, but if we're getting fast food once or twice a week, I wouldn't say we are in a "survival" scenario.

Child care is also assumed here, but is not necessary in a two-parent home. Take that off the board and you free up around $15k, as well as some of the tax money as well. And does that tax estimate include the $2k/kid child tax credit?

What is "Miscellaneous"?

The hourly wage assumes a 2000-hour work year. So theoretically two people could work $15.50/hour jobs and meet this requirement, or you could knock the food budget in half, drop child care, and get the total hourly wage down to $21.50 an hour. That could be one parent working 20 hours a week at $10/hr and another working 40/week at $17/hr. Or someone could earn extra hours to get some spending money. I do that to supplement my family's income.

I dunno. "Survival" is such a strong word, and I'm really skeptical that it applies here.

> What is "Miscellaneous"?

It's defined in the report.

"10 percent of the budget total (including taxes) to cover cost overruns."

Thank you for this! Seems like a reasonable thing to include.

I’m not sure why you’d expect any reasonableness from CNN. It’s clear they only care about clicks and focus on the outrage segment.

I'm not sure whether you are arguing in good faith or not, so I'd say just bypass all the 'survival' stuff you are stuck on and essentially replace it with 'middle class'.

Now you may also be pedantic and say that middle-class is supposed to be the middle, so 50% is about right.

But what you can't argue with is that nearly half of Americans simply cannot build any wealth or get out of any debt and likely can't meet the basic standards of education/transportation/food/housing that we used to assume was the birthright of any American (1).

And that this is much higher than it used to be, and it is getting worse. And that literally most of the basic working class of the US - nurses aides, childcare workers, etc are often literally one missed paycheck away from the street.

1) May not apply depending on skin color

>nearly half of Americans simply cannot build any wealth or get out of any debt and likely can't meet the basic standards of education/transportation/food/housing that we used to assume was the birthright of any American

If one takes the median household income in the United States $75,938[0] in 2017, you're asserting that it is literally impossible ("simply cannot") to design a budget to build wealth, get out of debt, and those other items you mention? Some families are certainly in a dire circumstance, but I disagree that the median family can't build wealth and meet those other items if they budget responsibly.

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA646N

I don't think you can just swap out the word "survival" with "middle class". Survival is a really powerful word, "the state or fact of continuing to live or exist, typically in spite of an accident, ordeal, or difficult circumstances." So the claim is that you need $85k in King County in order to continue to live.

This isn't pedantry. If people are scraping by in that area with less family income, then this metric is flawed and either the numbers should be revised or it should be renamed.

“Almost half of US families can’t afford basics like rent or food” is simply false.

“Almost half of US families are middle class or below” isn’t a crisis, and implies that more than half of US families are upper class.

“Almost half of US families have little to no disposable income” may be accurate and a serious problem, but doesn’t get enough clicks.

This reminds me of the charity that published a press release saying the Great Barrier Reef had died, only to have scientists dispute the press release and call it unhelpful.

I am always curious of the discretionary spending when these reports come out. And they never seem to talk about it. What percentage of their income is going to things not needed to survive?

I don't want to make rash assumptions, but it sure seems like many people "live paycheck to paycheck" but still buy alcohol, watch Netflix, etc. I realize they've made the choice to be that way - as opposed to being pinched into it. Of course others are truly screwed, and simply must find ways to increase income.

How's that different then a standard definition of survive? Everything listed there is needed to survive.

If that's the case, you're literally saying that families of 4 in King County earning less than $85,000 are dying. I don't think this is the case.

Seems right to me. If you don't have housing, food, or healthcare, you're gonna die a lot quicker then someone that does. Sure, you can survive for a while homeless, or without healthcare, or even without food, but your definitely dying faster then people with.

Median household income in 2015 in King County was $75,302.[0] A conclusion that half of King County's households have died off by 2017 or 2019 (or about to) seems nonsensical to me.

[0] https://www.kingcounty.gov/independent/forecasting/King%20Co...

Well no, half aren't. The average household isn't a family of four. For the United States the average household consists of 2.53 people.

Additionally, this isn't just a family of four in the study. It's a family of four with two kids below public school age. Meaning that they need childcare. That's included. As they get older that $75k number would go down, probably.

Edit: looking at the study only 28% of people aren't "surviving" in King county. Keep in mind, they might have some stuff subsidized by the government or others.

Can't reply to the reply, but Miner -- that's a good point, median household size is lower than 4... though what we don't know is whether median household income for families of 4 is higher than the overall median, which it easily could be if that statistic includes more two-income households... so this looks unresolvable with the presented data unless you delve more deeply.

"Technology" is a cell phone budget. Could you survive without a cell phone?

Plenty of families have a child care budget of zero dollars, and survive.

If the alternative was death, could you cut your housing budget in half by sharing a place with someone, or by renting out a spare room?

I don't think you can survive without a cell phone, no. I recently broke my phone when applying for jobs, and had to rush to get it repaired, or I would've missed emails/phone calls that I needed to respond to in order to get hired. Once working, don't basically all companies now a days use email or text or calls to communicate with employees?

How do you work a job without childcare? This isn't just a family of four, it's a family of four with kids not old enough for public school. Someone has to cover that cost. This is just the cost to survive. Maybe some people are fortunate enough to have extended family that can provide child care, but if you don't you have something like that you have to pay that cost. This article doesn't say that these people aren't subsidized by the government or others. It's just the actual cost of survival.

You can survive living in terrible conditions, sure. But is it actually surviving? At a certain point death becomes a better option for many people then just "surviving". If you'd rather be dead then "surviving" are you truly surviving?

>I don't think you can survive without a cell phone, no.

Landlines are an option, as are cheap, no-data plans. I saw a plan for unlimited talk and text for $15/month. Spend double that on a monthly plan for a phone, and you've still cut the technology monthly cost in half. There might be a library nearby you can use for free Internet.

>How do you work a job without childcare?

7% of dads stay home, 28% of moms stay home. I don't now for sure but I'm guessing that those numbers climb if the stay-at-home-ish parent has a part-time job. This is not an insignificant figure.

>Someone has to cover that cost.

Others can and do cover that cost and thus survive with less income. I don't share the base assumption that every family should be independent on their own and thus would not be expected to survive if they aren't. Some people don't have family (or friends, I guess?) to help with childcare. This is unfortunate, and can be helped via various means of social welfare, but I don't think it needs to be the standard for everyone.

>You can survive living in terrible conditions, sure. But is it actually surviving?

Based on the definition of the word? Yes.

[0]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/24/stay-at-hom...

According to https://www.givingwhatwecan.org, an income of $85,000 in the US would put a household of four in the top 3.5% of the world's population.

Which is irrelevant.

Few things are to the selfish and self-absorbed.

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