NJRCL Report

New Jersey is one of the wealthiest states in the United States; as of 2004, according to the U.S Census Bureau, New Jersey has a median household income of $57,338; in comparison to the United States median household income of $44,334, New Jersey is a rich state. Yet, as Diana Pearce tells us in her report, "New Jersey's high median income translates to elevated prices for basic necessities that burden lower-income residents" (9). For low-income people that reside in New Jersey, the cost of living is very strenuous to adequately meet their basic needs. To show the effects of New Jersey's high median imcome on low-income residents, we will take a look at the real cost of living in Essex County, one of the less well-off counties in the New Jersey, and make connections between the NJRCL report and the six families in Unequal Childhoods, a book that i'm reading for class.

In order to analyze the real cost of living in Essex County, we will use Pearce's Self Sufficience Standard of Living--how much is needed for a family of a certain composition in a giving place to adequately meet their basic needs---without public or private assisstance (9). Looking at the self-sufficiency for Essex County, we see that housing, the cost of rent and utilities, consumes a great share of the total budget. However, if a member of the family is an infant preschooler, a great share of the total budget is consumed by child care. This measurement is different from the federal poverty measurement. First, the federal povery measurement assumes that a great share of the total budget will go toward food. But, looking at the self sufficiency standard for Essex County, food makes between 9-13% of the total budget (15). Second, transportation, which the federal poverty measurement doesn't pay that much attention to, makes between 6-12% of the total budget, almost the same percentage of total budget consumes by food. Most of the Essex County residents expenses are going toward housing and child care, not food as the federal poverty measurement assumes. Last, if we look at the poverty median income of residents in Essex County and compare it to the self sufficiency standard for Essex County, 230% of the residents in Essex County would be considered poor because their incomes are not suffience enough to provide the basic needs to live in New Jersey. Scary isn't it? On my next post