Getting By in Oregon: How Much Does It Take?

Getting By in Oregon: How Much Does It Take?

One of my standing Google Alerts brought me this item.  It is a paper, just published, showing how wages in Oregon compare to a barebones cost of living for families of various configurations.  It uses the Self-Sufficiency Standard methodology, which I respect.

Its first table shows the Federal Poverty Guideline for various configurations of family, and then, for each Oregon County, the median household income and the Self-Sufficiency Standard (SSS) necessary for each family configuration.  That is, the amount a family needs to meet its own most simply defined needs -- housing at the HUD Fair Market Rent; home-cooked food at the USDA Low-Cost Food Plan level (about $2 per person per meal); health care; transportation (a paid-off car for each adult); childcare suitable to the ages of the children, plus an allowance of 10% more for all other expenses, plus the taxes which would be due locally to net out to that income.  Table 1 shows how widely the median incomes and costs of living vary across Oregon.

In Baker County: 

• a single adult can live frugally but adequately on $15,927
• an adult with an infant and a preschooler needs $29,255
• two adults with an infant and a preschooler need $37,530
• the median household income is $38,524

In Washington County, a similar lifestyle costs more:

• a single adult can live frugally but adequately on $22,646
• an adult with an infant and a preschooler needs $58,915
• two adults with an infant and a preschooler need $67,074
• the median household income is $57,561

Table 2 shows the proportion of households who live below the Federal Poverty Line and below the SSS:

• Baker County -- 13.2% below FPG; 27.9% below SSS
• Washington County -- 6.7% below FPG; 25.7% below SSS
• Coos County -- 14.5% below FPG; 32.6% below SSS
• Multnomah County -- 10.3% below FPG; 23.5% below SSS
• statewide:  9.7% below FPL; 27.1% below SSS

Table 4 shows that among Family Households with Children,

• Married couple families -- 6.0% below FPL; 28.1% below SSS
• Male householders, no spouse present -- 3.0% below FPL; 45.2% below SSS
• Female householders, no spouse present -- 8.0% below FPL; 60.7% below SSS

Table 6 shows that among households without children (61.3% of HH), 8.2% are below the FPL and 21.2% below the SSS and that
among households WITH children (38.7%), 12.0% are below the FPL and 36.5% below the SSS.

It shows that among households with two workers, 11.9% are below the SSS if there are no children, and 20.4% are below the SSS if there are children.

What it doesn't tell us is what percentage of Oregon's children are growing up in households with insufficient income to meet the families' most modestly defined needs, or what effect that might have on their lives. 

And of course it is beyond the scope of this study to show what percentage of Oregon's household income belongs to the top 1% of its residents, or what percentage of its household wealth belongs to the top 1% of that spectrum.   (The Federal Reserve Board's triennial "Survey of Consumer Finances would need to have a much larger sample size to provide us that data.)  

Or why and how it has come to be this way.  For that, one might have to turn to the ideas of Henry George.

It is about low wages.  It isn't that labor is not productive; rather, labor is getting a small share of the pie.   The reasons for this are clear to those who have read Progress & Poverty.

Comments

[Emily P.]

Thanks for visiting the Metropolitan Knowledge Network! I'm one of the main people working on the site. We are happy to see that the self-sufficiency data is making its way out into the world.