> ...or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $26,000 (in 2025 dollars) annually before taxes.
I couldn't easily tell how they decided on a $26,000 "living wage" figure but in most of the US, even double that is not Easy Street.
The "True Rate of Barely Getting By" is ridiculously high in the US from what I can gather.
there is a cliff, such that a the 2 adults, 2 children on 22,500 gross income may have access to $48,700 after refundable tax credits, SNAP, housing, etc [linked in other comment].
However if that same household earns just $5,600 more annually nearly all of those transfers cease to be available and the total income accessible becomes $36,400. It really is a case where making more is too expensive. That's less than 110 extra pre-tax dollar per week across both adult earners, and so just about 1.35 an hour raise for each adult, or 2.70 for either one of them is a real loss of over 12,000 dollars. It takes nearly $5 an hour raise for BOTH adults at the 22,500 to become even minimally better than the loss of those transfers.
There is a significant number of households in the second quartile (at or slightly above 36.4K) than in the bottom quartile, and yet those are living on less than what has been defined as the 'survivable wage' by the 48.7K number
So yes, the "True Rate of Barely Getting By" is even higher than the number of households earning 26K would reveal.
And much of that assistance is not a guarantee: they'll have to jump through a number of hoops to get it, and making a single mistake on a single form, or having one non-liquid asset that's too valuable on paper, may mean they get disqualified. At best that means they need to start the process again; at worst it's all over and they cannot be considered, at least for a certain time period.
It is, simultaneously, important to know about that cliff, because it's real and it causes untold hardship, and really, really dangerous to view poverty as a road to "easy money" in the way your first sentence (likely inadvertently) implies.
Might need to change the labelling from 'living' wage to 'surviving' wage.
This number is before transfers, you really cannot just look at the raw income. A family of 2 adult 2 kid making $22,500 in raw income makes more like $48,700 after refundable tax credits, SNAP, housing, etc [1].
https://www.google.com/search?q=average+us+income+including+...
Take a step back.
A family of 4 with $22,500 in income is well below the poverty line in the US, which is ~$33,000/year.
But do you think a family of 2 adults and 2 children with a "feels like" income of $50,000 is still not scraping by in the US? That's basic survival at best.
As someone who grew up below the poverty line for much of my life — 2x the poverty line seemed like wealth to me. There are absolutely people getting by on “feels like” 50k a year.
There are not really frills, but in terms of “have shelter and food” it can work. Not everywhere is SF.
"Have shelter and food" is surviving. That's the point.
And speaking of food, the USDA says that over 47 million Americans lived in a food insecure household in 2024. That's 1 in 7 people. In the world's richest country that prides itself on being the land of opportunity.
> 47 million Americans lived in a food insecure household
This statistic looked suspect so I had to look it up. The study defined multiple levels of food insecurity. The big 47 million number included mostly households where eating patterns were not disrupted and people did not reduce their food intake.
So most “food insecure households” actually had enough food and maintained their normal eating patterns. That’s not what most people would think of from that statistic.
I do agree that we should continue working on food security for all, but if you think 1 in 7 people in the US are going hungry then you’re consuming some misleading statistics.
Food insecure is defined as "lack of access to an affordable, nutritious diet".
In the wealthiest country in the world.
I guess I've been living outside of the US for way too long because the idea that Americans would say "actually, it's not really that bad because they're technically not starving" shows just how far the country has fallen.
As someone who lived much of their life in real poverty, you can live a pretty decent life on $50k in most of the US. Yeah, you won’t be posting your vacations on Instagram but who cares. Many people live a decent life within these income constraints. There is an enormous amount of government subsidies if you are this poor.
Don’t exaggerate what is required for a decent quality of life in America. It doesn’t benefit anyone.
That’s not a decent quality of life. I know you may feel differently and find it hard to think about it objectively because you lived it, but you had a poor quality of life. It’s great that you’re doing well and you made it through, but don’t romanticize it.
> ...you can live a pretty decent life on $50k in most of the US.
Where? And what's the size of the household?
It's one thing to make $50,000/year as a single young person sharing an apartment with 2 other people. It's another to be a family of 4.
> Don’t exaggerate what is required for a decent quality of life in America. It doesn’t benefit anyone.
"Decent" is subjective, but we can look at hard numbers.
After taxes, $50,000 will be somewhere between $39,000 and $42,000 in much of the US. That's $3,250 to $3,500/month. The median rental price of a 1 bedroom apartment in the US is about $1,500. A 2 bedroom is somewhere around or north of $1,800. That means the median 1 bedroom apartment already eats up almost 50% of your after-tax income at the lower end.
According to BLS, the average spend on groceries in the US is now over $500/month. The average cost of a used car in the US is now over $25,000. A set of new tires will run you $400 to over $1,000. The average cell phone bill is $140/month.
Do I need to keep going?
Numerous studies show that over half of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck and almost three-quarters of middle income earners say their wages aren't keeping up with the cost of living.
What doesn't benefit anyone is to pretend that tons of people aren't struggling.
Sure sounds like they can’t afford a family of 4 on that income. They have control over both variables in that situation.
Of course two people with low incomes shouldn't have two kids. But (as detailed in my other comment) you need a 4 person household with 2 kids to get tax negative at $50,000/year. Even a 3 person household with 1 kid isn't tax negative in most of the US at $50,000/year.
So the other poster's argument that $50,000/year isn't so bad because of transfers, tax credits, subsidies, etc. doesn't hold up to real-world examples.
It's unavoidably true that 50% of Americans are going to be below the median. I understand why someone might feel frustrated or say they're struggling if they look at their home, car, groceries, etc. and see that 50% of Americans have better ones. But no economic policy can solve this. A meaningful analysis has to be based on some level of functional adequacy, not just comparing median expenses to below-median income.
> After taxes, $50,000 will be somewhere between $39,000 and $42,000 in much of the US
NO. WRONG. Read what I actually said. This was after transfers, at the OP's income range US income tax is NEGATIVE and puts you at the $49,000 I cited.
> NO. WRONG.
Yelling doesn't prove your point, and you conveniently avoided answering the most important questions, like where and what household size?
First, there is no credit that offsets payroll tax.
A single person with $50,000/year income is not negative. They'd have about ~$34,000 in taxable income and pay ~$3,800 in federal income tax. A 2 person household filing jointly with no kids would still pay about $1,800.
A family of 4 (2 children) with $50,000/year gross income gets a benefit and probably keeps all of that (or a bit more) in take-home after the standard deduction, child tax credit, EITC. At 155% of the poverty line, they're probably above the SNAP gross-income cutoff but they'd probably get ACA premium subsidies and reduced-price school meals.
But they're still living at 50% of the median household income for a family of 4 and you'd have to explain how you think 4 people living on $4,100/month is anywhere near decent or easy in most of the US. The median rent alone for a 2 bedroom in the US eats up over 40% of that amount.
A family of 3 (1 child) in most states will not be negative after payroll and state tax at $50,000/year gross household income.
Poor people pay payroll taxes, which usually is flat and doesn’t have a big deduction. At $50k, a single person is paying just as much if not slightly more in payroll as they are in income tax.
> Poor people pay payroll taxes...
Exactly. Only a few small groups are exempt from FICA.