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Doing the math What does it take for a family to “make ends meet” in Missouri? A group of Extension specialists consulted with a group of individuals who are living in poverty to explore that question from their perspective. Among other things, they said “…policy makers need to understand that even when low-wage workers do everything they are told and behave just like everyone else, they cannot ‘make ends meet’ without help.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics, through the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES), collects data annually from a large sample of individuals nationwide about their spending habits. The sample represents the total U.S. population. Knowing we had their data, we asked ourselves, “What if a family headed by a full-time, minimum-wage worker broke down their budget just like an average U.S. family does?” The “average” U.S. family earns $3469 per month (equivalent to $20.01 per hour) before taxes and spends $2961 of it. This pie chart shows what it goes for, broken down by the CES spending categories. What if a family headed by one full-time worker earning the minimum wage of $5.15 per hour used the same spending patterns?
Put another way, what if they sliced their much smaller pie the same way? Could they make ends meet and keep their family safe? This bar chart gives a line-by-line comparison of the two situations. The math is sobering.
For example, if a family at minimum wage spent the same 33% of their budget on housing, utilities, and childcare that the average family spends, they would have only $294 to cover all three items for the month (versus the $976 spent by the average family). At 19% of their budget, they’d only have $169 for transportation versus the average family’s $551. The most frequently occurring Missouri welfare case is a 28-year-old woman with two children under the age of six. In most “welfare-to-work” situations, $294 would not cover childcare, much less housing and utilities. Add transportation challenges and other factors to the mix and the difficulty of making ends meet at or near minimum wage is apparent. To download the PowerPoint presentation, Poverty At Issue: Making Ends Meet in Missouri 2001, go to: http://outreach.missouri.edu/cfe/poverty . It is a joint creation of University Outreach and Extension and Reform Organization of Welfare Education Association. Back
to Poverty at Issue-Winter 01-02 Table of Contents These publications may become outdated at any time due to
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