The United Ways of Iowa and United for ALICE recently released a new report Alice in the Cross Currents: Covid and Financial Hardship in Iowa. The report is an update to United Way's analysis of Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed (ALICE) households across Iowa. It also provides major new insight into how low- and moderate-income families saw their situations change through the COVID-19 pandemic.
The report's key finding highlights the financial struggle facing many Iowa families:
According to United Way, 36% of Iowa households do not have the financial resources to afford a basic budget for financial survival.
While we often speak of people in our community who live in poverty, the ALICE report authors argue the government's official poverty measure falls short of identifying all the people struggling financially. ALICE households earn more than the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) yet still struggle to meet basic household expenses. The FPL, developed in the mid-1960s by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration, provided the first measurement of poverty in America.
The FPL operates under the assumption that a household spends about a third of its income on food. The USDA developed the Economy Food Plan that meets the nutritional needs of an individual at the lowest possible price. The FPL takes this number and triples the amount to produce poverty thresholds. There have been some changes since the inception of FPL, but these basic calculations form the poverty thresholds today.
The ALICE threshold provides an alternative--and arguably far more complete--measure of financial hardship by updating the assumptions of what financial hardship constitutes in the 21st century. Rather than a blunt tripling of an economical food basket, the ALICE Household Survival Budget includes housing, childcare, transportation, healthcare, taxes, technology (including a smartphone), and food. For a family of four, the 2021 FPL was $26,500, and the ALICE threshold was $61,308, providing a much higher threshold that better reflects financial hardship in Iowa.
Federal Poverty Limit, Iowa, 2021 | ALICE threshold, Iowa, 2021 |
$26,500 | $61,308 |
The ALICE report found 36% of Iowa households were below the ALICE threshold. A single person working full-time to exceed the threshold would have to make more than $12.10 per hour compared to $36.65 per hour for a family of four. In Polk County, 23% were below the ALICE threshold, and 9% were below the FPL.
In addition, the report sheds more light on who is struggling in Iowa communities.
Many workers in the most common occupations were below the ALICE threshold, including half of waitstaff, fast food, and counter workers.
Financial hardship was not evenly distributed across the various races of Iowa households, with 60% of Black households below the ALICE threshold compared to about 30% of White households.
The family form strongly affects financial hardship with over half of Single-Female-Headed (with children) households below the threshold compared to 14% of married (with children).
The Polk County Housing Trust Fund partners with many organizations and developers to create affordable housing for struggling families. We want to thank the United Way for its leadership and the creation of a novel measurement of financial hardship. You can find additional cost of living calculators and other local housing data in our Housing Policy Reading Room.
Here We Grow now provides an interactive map highlighting local data from around the metro. Using the map, you can view several data layers that offer insights looking at the whole region, or your own neighborhood.
Here's some of what you can find.
Development Nodes: These views help us recognize areas in the community that are important cultural and commercial centers that are suited for a variety of housing and business development.
Tomorrow Plan Nodes: The Tomorrow Plan defined “nodes” as the “economic and cultural focal points of a region” that are economically important and “should include a wider range of housing types than are typically available in conventional residential areas.” The plan identified nodes that function on a neighborhood, community, and regional level, as well as downtown.
PlanDSM Nodes: These areas are recognized by the City of Des Moines comprehensive plan, PlanDSM, as places where Des Moines can create “increased housing and transportation choices, reduced infrastructure and maintenance expenditures, and the creation of vibrant places to serve neighborhoods and the city as a whole.” They are also identified on the neighborhood, community and regional level.
Work and home areas by income: We provide four views showing where our area's low income and hourly workforces live and work. These views are based on LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics from the US Census Bureau. The maps give you a chance to visualize where people live and work in your community, in this case using two income ranges:
Earning $1,250 or less each month equates to incomes up to $15,000 annually.
Earning $1,251 to $3,333 monthly equates to incomes of $15,000 to $40,000 annually.
DART Transit Routes: Transit is an important way for workers to navigate between homes and jobs; bus routes tend to operate on some of the regions’ most important commercial corridors. DART’s fixed bus routes are shown, current as of June 2021.
Median year housing built: Uses data from the 5-Year 2019 American Community Survey to show the median year housing structures were built, summarized by decade. This view provides some insight into the region’s historic development patterns.
Mapping social and economic opportunity: These two views provide a related sense of where economic and social opportunity are located in our region. They use different underlying methodologies, but interestingly they tell a consistent story about where opportunity is located in our region. Here We Grow’s equity priority encourages us to take action so that families are not sorted into high and low opportunity areas merely based on their income.
Des Moines MPO Environmental Justice Areas (2020): The Des Moines Area MPO publishes environmental justice maps. MPO analyses 7 “degrees of disadvantage” that may apply to a given area; areas with multiple degrees of disadvantage may be said to require special attention to ensure environmental justice and equity goals are upheld.
Iowa Finance Authority Opportunity Areas: The Iowa Finance Authority identifies these areas using a US Department of Housing and Urban Development methodology. Areas identified score highly on a variety of factors measuring economic and social opportunity, including poverty measures, labor market engagement, job access, mobility, school proficiency, and community health.
Housing wage by zip code: This measure is created by the National Low Income Housing Coalition as part of its annual Out of Reach assessment of the hourly wage a person needs to earn to afford a modest two bedroom apartment. In this map, areas of higher housing cost are highlighted in red, and users can select a zip code to view a variety of data, including the wage a person would need to earn, labeled as the “housing wage”, to afford a one or two bedroom apartment in that zip code.
Finally, our interactive map also allows users to display municipal boundaries as well as the outline of the planning area used to create the Tomorrow Plan.