THIS MAP SHOWS THE HOURLY WAGE YOU’D NEED TO AFFORD A 2-BEDROOM RENTAL IN EVERY STATE

[Igel]

65. Screwy numbers.

I'm in Texas.

It might be a nice average, combining lesser-quality units and some really tony units. Or perhaps it focuses on a sample that's not quite random. But at 16.60/hr I come up with about $800 for rent.

I've seen a lot of places for a less than that. Even two-bedroom apts.

Those who have trouble affording those apts., esp. two bedroom apts., are going to be, on average, below the poverty line. Esp. if they have kids.

One of the big problems with a lot of heart-wrenching poverty stories is that they only include earned income, and government support isn't earned. (Then in comparing the US with other OECD countries, in the fine print you find that government support is included in most other OECD income figures.) One funny news story I read in the last couple of years looked not at income among the bottom quintile but at expenses. A large proportion of families had expenses that far outstripped their income--not debt, not obligations, but actual $ spent on actual goods and services. The brain dead reporter speculated that it was the "underground economy". That might have been some of it, but in the income figures there was no tax credits, WIC, help with housing, etc., etc.