{"id":77520,"date":"2018-05-19T15:47:38","date_gmt":"2018-05-19T22:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=77520"},"modified":"2018-05-19T15:47:38","modified_gmt":"2018-05-19T22:47:38","slug":"almost-half-of-us-families-cant-afford-basics-like-rent-and-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/05\/19\/almost-half-of-us-families-cant-afford-basics-like-rent-and-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Almost half of US families can’t afford basics like rent and food"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Tami Luhby<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Courtesy CNN<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The economy may be chugging along, but many Americans are still struggling to afford a basic middle class life.<\/h2>\n

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, according to a\u00a0study<\/a>released Thursday by the United Way ALICE Project. That’s 43% of households in the United States.<\/p>\n

Related: Unemployment is below 4% for the first time since 2000<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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The figure includes the 16.1 million households living in poverty, as well as the 34.7 million families that the United Way has dubbed ALICE — Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. This group makes less than what’s needed “to survive in the modern economy.”<\/p>\n

“Despite seemingly positive\u00a0economic signs<\/a>, the ALICE data shows that financial hardship is still a pervasive problem,” said Stephanie Hoopes, the project’s director.<\/p>\n

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Is protectionist US the biggest threat to global economy?<\/div>\n
Future US trade policy will have major impact beyond domestic economic growth.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Related: How Joe Biden would fix income inequality in America<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

California, New Mexico and Hawaii have the largest share of struggling families, at 49% each. North Dakota has the lowest at 32%.<\/p>\n

Many of these folks are the nation’s child care workers, home health aides, office assistants and store clerks, who work low-paying jobs and have little savings, the study noted. Some 66% of jobs in the US pay less than $20 an hour.<\/p>\n

The study also drilled down to the county level.<\/p>\n

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. This would require an hourly wage of $42.46. But in Washington State, only 14% of jobs pay more than $40 an hour.<\/p>\n

Related: Seattle passes a smaller version of the ‘Amazon tax’<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Seattle’s City Council just passed a\u00a0controversial tax\u00a0<\/a>on big businesses to help alleviate the city’s growing homelessness and affordable housing problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Tami Luhby\u00a0\u00a0Courtesy CNN The economy may be chugging along, but many Americans are still struggling to afford a basic middle class life. 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, according to a\u00a0studyreleased Thursday by the United Way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}