Self-Sufficiency Standard Updated
What does it really cost for a family in Massachusetts to meet its most basic needs? Federal guidelines used nationwide place a family of three with a yearly income of $15,260 above the poverty level. But The Self-Sufficiency Standard for Massachusetts, first developed in 1998 and just updated, paints a very different picture of what it takes for families in selected areas of the state to live above the poverty line.
What is The Self-Sufficiency Standard for Massachusetts? This tool, first developed in 1998, provides a means to determine if a family’s income is enough to meet its basic needs, including the minimum costs of housing, child care, food, health care, transportation, clothing, utilities, and taxes. It does not include expenditures on any luxuries or frills, or savings for college or retirement. And it is adjusted to allow for differences in costs, such as housing, that exist in different areas of the state. It has been developed through a partnership that has included Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW), Dr. Dianna Pearce at the University of Washington, and the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union.
The latest version of The Standard reveals startling numbers that stand in stark contrast to the notion that a family of three can make ends meet in Massachusetts on an annual income of $15,000 without any governmental or other assistance. For example, for a family that includes a single parent, one school-age child and a pre-schooler, residing in Suffolk County (which mainly consists of Boston), last year it would have taken $51,284 to pay the bills for the essentials listed above. For the same family in Worcester, the price tag would have been $47,017. And in North Adams, near the New York and Vermont borders, $34,875 would have been required.
Despite the economic downturn, these numbers have risen sharply since 1998 in most areas in the state examined by the new report, typically by about 20 percent. The costs of housing and child care take up the largest slices of a family’s budget, and these have risen substantially; so, too, the cost of health care has substantially increased, especially for those who lack insurance through an employer.
“An uncertain economy, a lack of available jobs paying sufficient wages, time limits on current supports, and major changes in welfare and workforce development policy have given new urgency to the question of self-sufficiency,” the authors of the report concluded. “As many parents leave welfare and enter the labor market, they join a growing number of families who are unable to stretch their wages to meet the costs of basic necessities.” They also pointed out that public and private work supports can help families move toward self-sufficiency.
Those who successfully pressed for welfare reform in the late ‘90s argued that the existing system actually perpetuated poverty—locking those low-income people who relied on it into a “culture” without the incentives to ever attain economic self-sufficiency.
But the world of jobs and of new opportunities for learning and advancement that they contended were the alternative—if only those in the system were somehow released from welfare to take advantage of them—have proven elusive as the economy has declined, and as many supportive public safety-net programs increasingly have fallen victim to severe state budget crises and disinterest on the part of federal officials. Meanwhile, costs of many key necessities of life have continued to rise—dramatically, in some instances—in the Bay State. But wages have not climbed much, and job opportunities continue to shrink. And although “welfare as we knew it” is vanishing in America, poverty, whether one calls it that or not, and by whatever reasonable and realistic standards one uses, seems to be on the rise again.
The full report on the updated Self-Sufficiency Standard for Massachusetts contains much more information, and is available at the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union Web site.
(Spring 2003)
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