FAMILY ECONOMIC SECURITY

(Visit http://www.cppp.org/fbe for the full report and interactive website, which includes budget data for the metropolitan areas, family profiles, fact sheets, and policy recommendations.) It’s been well documented that the federal poverty level doesn’t accurately measure today’s cost of living. But what does it really take to get by in Texas? The Family Budget Estimator: What It Really Takes to Get By in Texas, released today by the Center for Public Policy Priorities, finds that what a 2-parent, 2-child family needs to earn to afford housing, food, child care, health care, transportation, and other basic needs without relying on government assistance ranges from $29,982 a year in the Brownsville/Harlingen area to $45,770 a year in the Fort Worth/Arlington area. This is between $9,332 and $25,120 more than the poverty level and assumes that the family has employer-sponsored health insurance.

(Visit http://www.cppp.org/fbe for the interactive website, which includes budget data for the metropolitan areas, family profiles, fact sheets, and policy recommendations.) It's been well documented that the federal poverty level doesn't accurately measure today's cost of living. But what does it really take to get by in Texas? The Center for Public Policy Priorities' Family Budget Estimator Project provides a realistic picture of what it costs families to live in each of Texas' major metropolitan areas by estimating housing, food, child care, health care, transportation, and other basic expenses without relying on public assistance.

For an economy in its fifth year of recovery, the new Census Bureau figures paint a disappointing picture nationally and in Texas. The poverty rate in Texas is unchanged at 16.3 percent in 2005-06, while median income edged up to $44,922, leaving Texas about where it was when the recession bottomed out in 2001. “Despite five years of economic growth, Texas’ poverty rate has stagnated,” said Frances Deviney, Senior Research Associate at the Center for Public Policy Priorities. “While it’s encouraging that conditions haven’t gotten worse, it’s discouraging that we still have 3.7 million Texans living in poverty.”