The United Way has just released a report entitled “Struggling to Make Ends Meet” that highlights the challenges many of our Bay Area families face in trying to afford basic necessities. These results are based on the California Self-Sufficiency Standard, which calculates basic cost of living by family in each county, taking into account costs including housing, food, child care, transportation and health care costs.
Some key data from the report, which is based on 2007 Census data:
- 18.8% of families in the city and county of San Francisco (or 45,697 households) do not earn enough income to meet basic needs.
- 81.6% of households with income beneath the self-sufficiency standard include one or more working adults.
- 62.8% of those with less than a high school diploma live below the self-sufficiency standard, which is 4 times higher than those with at least some college education.
- 43.7% of African-American households and 35.6% of Latino households in San Francisco earn incomes that are inadequate to meet basic needs.
These grim statistics highlight the importance of employment programs for San Francisco youth and reinforce the need for programs such as YouthWorks to promote educational attainment by all youth participants. Today’s youth need adequate preparation to access career pathways which include postsecondary education and prepare them for self-sufficient futures.
For the full report, see: http://www.liveunitedca.org