Residents Suffer from New Jersey's High Price Tag
Posted April 14, 2008

Yesterday, a report hit the news waves detailing what Garden State residents have known for years: New Jersey is an unaffordable address.

According to The Real Cost of Living in 2008: The Self-Sufficiency Standard for New Jersey, issued by the Legal Services of New Jersey Poverty Research Institute, one in five New Jersey residents does not earn enough to afford the basic necessities of life and requires some form of public assistance to survive.

The report measured sufficiency based on expenses including housing, childcare, food, transportation, health insurance, taxes and tax credits, and miscellaneous costs such as clothing, non-prescription medicines, household needs, and telephones. And the findings weren’t pretty.

The state’s minimum wage of $7.15 per hour does not meet the self-sufficiency standard in any of New Jersey’s 21 counties. In the county with the lowest hourly requirement – Camden County – a single person can get by with $8.58 an hour (not “thrive” but just get by). In Bergen County, on the other hand, the hourly self-sufficiency wage stands at $14.32, followed closely by $14.25 in Somerset County.

The Star Ledger summarized several additional highlights (or lowlights!) from the report.

• Two adults with a preschool-age child living in wealthy Hunterdon County require an annual income of $72,200 to be self-sufficient. This is more than three times the federal poverty level, which stands at $21,200. In hourly terms, each parent would have to earn more than $17 per hour.
• A single parent with a preschool-age child and a school-age child living in Middlesex County would need to earn $61,149 per year, or $29 per hour, to be self-sufficient.

 

Even in less-wealthy Cumberland County, two adults with a preschool-age child would have to earn a hourly wage of $10.96 each or a total of $46,311 per year, and a single adult with a preschool-age child and a school-age child would have to earn $23.15 per hour or $4,075 per month.

Wherever you count the numbers, they simply don’t add up, and as the Star Ledger notes, this “one in five” statistic of those not reaching self-sufficiency amounts to 1.68 million adults and children whose incomes simply don’t cover their needs. 

According to report author Diana Pearce, Ph.D., the director of the Center for Women’s Welfare at the University of Washington School of Social Work, “It should be shocking and a wake-up call to people that we are increasingly not acknowledging that people are struggling.” She continues, “This is hard on people who are struggling because they have income over the poverty level, so you’re not ‘poor,’ and yet families can easily become homeless because you don’t have enough money to meet your rent or your food.”

While Dr. Pearce is right in her observation, the report is wrong in its recommendations. It sees a remedy in expanding government programs such as housing, healthcare, and food stamps. The report states, “’Work Supports’ – such as child care assistance, health care (Medicaid or New Jersey Children Health Insurance Program), housing assistance (including Section 8 vouchers and public housing), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance, Food Stamps, and/or Women, Infants and Children (WIC) programs – can help a working family achieve stability without scrimping on nutrition, living in overcrowded or substandard housing, or leaving children in unsafe and/or non-stimulating environments.”

Hold your horses!

The recommendations, if accepted, would have New Jersey spending even more at a time when the state is already drowning in debt and looking to taxpayers to foot the bill! The root of the problem in our state is not inadequate wages; it’s the astronomical cost of living. Property taxes are out of control; the sales tax jumped a penny in 2006; the governor wants to hike tolls, and the legislature just approved a payroll tax for paid family leave! If we want to help people afford New Jersey, the place to start is not more government but less!

Until our elected officials take control of their fiscal irresponsibility, New Jersey will remain an unaffordable address no matter how many feel-good programs the state puts in place.

 

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