California Budget Project Making Ends Meet 10 99 PDF Download

The hourly wage needed to earn the basic family budget for families with children is two to four times the state's minimum wage ($7.50 per hour).3 The hourly wage required by single parents and the employed parent in a two-parent family with one working parent also exceeds the 2006 median hourly wage ($17.42) for California workers - the hourly wage earned by the worker exactly at the middle of th. [...] For many families, homeownership remains a dream and California's homeownership rate, at 58.4 percent, was the second lowest among the 50 states in 2006.10 The income needed to purchase the median-priced home varies signifi cantly according to the region and the amount of the down payment a family is METHODOLOGY This report presents a basic family budget for four family types: a single adult, a si. [...] For food costs, the report assumes that the adults in the family are between the ages of 20 and 50 and that one child is under the age of 2 and one child is between the ages of 6 and 8. [...] Conservatively, the basic family budget's estimate for food away from home is half of the amount reported for families in the second fi fth (quintile) of the income distribution in the CES.19 Food consumed away from home includes lunches purchased out or the occassional family meal eaten in a restaurant. [...] For example, the basic family budget for a two-parent family with one working parent in Los Angeles County is $51,035, which is below the income limit for Healthy Families ($51,625 for a family of four in 2007).27 Enrollment in Healthy Families would greatly reduce the costs of health care and thus the income needed for this family (Table 7).