An analysis billed as digging deeper than whether Americans can afford food and shelter has found that for most, their income falls short of what is needed to achieve a "minimal quality of life." The Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity tracked costs for expenditures such as child care, higher education, leisure activities, health care, professional clothes, and the tech devices people need to do their jobs, CBS News reports. The research organization found that a basic standard of living is out of reach for the bottom 60% of US households.
"The middle class has been declining—we just haven't recognized it fully," LISEP Chairman Gene Ludwig said, saying such a gap can even risk social unrest. "The American dream is not that it's given to you—it's that if you work hard, you have a chance to get ahead and achieve the things in life that you want to achieve," Ludwig added. For many, buying power is falling, the report says: Households that earned an average of $38,000 per year in 2023 would need to make $67,000 now to afford the expenses the group tracks.
"Traditional headline economic indicators like GDP and unemployment tell us the economy is thriving, but they don't reflect the lived reality of most Americans," Ludwig said. He expects the gap between income and the money needed for a minimal quality of life to keep growing, because the price of goods and services is rising faster than wages are. (More cost of living stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
