WA households can’t afford basics, even if they’re not poor, report says

SEATTLE – Over a quarter of households in Washington earn more than the federal poverty threshold but still struggle to afford necessities like housing, child care, transportation and more, according to a recent report on affordability in Washington.

Often, these households don’t qualify for social assistance programs like food stamps or Medicaid because their incomes exceed eligibility limits. Meanwhile, they have to contend with high costs of living and may even go without necessities to make ends meet.

These households represent an underrecognized kind of hardship: economic precarity that falls outside the technical definition of poverty, as set by the federal poverty level.

The federal poverty level “is an outdated instrument that does not consider the wide variation in cost of living by location,” wrote the authors of the report. As a result, measurements based on the federal poverty level “sharply underestimate the true extent of financial hardship in the U.S.”

The report was published in May by United for ALICE, a research organization affiliated with United Way, a network of nonprofits that advocate for community well-being. “ALICE” is an acronym for “asset limited, income constrained, employed.”

Federal poverty guidelines are a set of thresholds that determine whether a household qualifies for various kinds of government benefits based on income and size. Critics of these thresholds say they are too low, especially in high cost-of-living regions.

“We know there’s huge regional variation from Seattle to Mississippi,” said Stephanie Hoopes, national director of United for ALICE. “Even within Washington state, the cost of living in Pierce County is different than some of the rural counties.”

The authors of the report sought to calculate what they referred to as a “survival budget,” the minimum cost of living in each state that would allow a household to afford all basic needs, including housing, child care, food, transportation, health care and utilities, plus some room for unexpected expenses. Average costs of basic needs in Washington were drawn from a variety of federal, state and nonprofit sources using 2023 data.

“The survival budget is that bare minimum,” Hoopes said. “It’s really not a great budget, it’s just day-to-day. We developed that because we really wanted to understand who’s ultimately struggling.”

According to the report, a single adult in Washington under 65 would have needed to earn $32,436 before taxes in 2023 to afford a survival budget. In comparison, federal guidelines in 2023 set the poverty threshold for a single-person household at $14,580 for the contiguous states and Washington, D.C.

A family of four, including one infant and one preschooler, in Washington would have needed to earn $109,500 before taxes in 2023 to have a survival budget. Federal guidelines in 2023 set the poverty threshold for a family of four at $30,000.

The study laid bare the vast gap between poverty as defined by official measures and economic hardship as it’s experienced.

In Washington, 10% of households earn less than the federal poverty threshold. According to the report, 28% earn more than the federal poverty threshold but less than the minimum cost of basic needs in Washington. Combined, 38% of households in the state don’t earn enough to afford all necessities.

“It’s obviously several times the poverty level,” Hoopes said.

In King County, a single adult under 65 would have needed to earn $50,256 before taxes in 2023 to afford necessities, significantly more than the state average. A family of four with two young children would have needed to earn $138,612.

The study also looked at which occupations were hardest hit by high living costs. Cashiers, fast food workers and cooks were among those who struggled the most to afford a survival budget.

While the share of Washington households living in poverty has stayed relatively steady in the decade leading up to 2023, the share of those making more than the poverty threshold while struggling to cover basic needs has risen by 7 percentage points.

That might seem counterintuitive. Over the past few years, low-wage workers in Washington have seen significant pay increases. The minimum wage almost doubled between 2010 and 2023, the duration of the study. But in the same window, costs of living also went up, sometimes outpacing wages, the study found.

By 2023, some households in Washington found themselves financially worse off than they had been a decade prior, based on how costs climbed relative to earnings.

“People thought they were starting to get ahead,” Hoopes said. “Then they would kind of turn to the side and see they weren’t making progress.”