Can you afford a modest standard of living?

As publicly traded companies confess the ratio between the pay of their CEOs and their median worker, a left-leaning policy research firm is offering a look at how the other half — or the other 99 percent if you are really riled up about income inequality — scrapes by.

The Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute’s family budget calculator looks at 10 different family profiles, comparing median family income with the cost of living based on the metro region or county. The database covers all 3,142 U.S. counties and 611 metro areas.

It should be no surprise that the exercise leads the EPI to conclude that nowhere in the country do minimum wage workers — even those in places where the minimum wage exceeds the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour — earn enough to meet the requirements of a family budget. That’s the case whether the family is an adult with no children or two spouses with up to four children.

The minimum wage was enacted in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act and was intended to provide a minimum standard of living to workers as the nation struggled to recover from the Great Depression. It was last raised in 2009.

EPI says the calculator “is a stark reminder that many workers in low-wage jobs do not earn enough to meet their family’s basic needs.”

Pittsburgh fares relatively well by EPI’s measure, but still leaves families holding the short end of the stick.

A family in the Pittsburgh metro region with two parents and two children has a monthly cost of living of $6,564, or $78,769 per year, according to EPI. That’s sixth-lowest among the country’s 25 largest metro regions.

But the median family income in our region is $74,476. That leaves the hypothetical family with a $4,293 budget deficit, although it still makes Pittsburgh the sixthmost affordable of the 25 large cities.

Full-time workers earning the minimum wage are even worse

off than a family earning the median income. Someone who is paid the $7.25 hourly federal minimum wage and works 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year earns $15,080.

That’s just under 20 percent of the annual expenses faced by EPI’s hypothetical Pittsburgh family of four. Raising the hourly minimum wage to $15 would cover only $31,200, or about 40 percent, of that family’s $78,769 annual expenses.

EPI constructed a budget that, in the research group’s mind, provides a “modest yet adequate standard of living.”

The budgets are tied to county level expense data, often based on 2017 costs. The health care portion assumes the family obtained coverage through the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act and not through their employer. It also includes out-of-pocket costs.

EPI’s budget makes no provisions for three common monthly expenses: student loan payments and saving for college or retirement. The policy group said it excluded those costs because it wanted to keep the budgets modest.

The $6,564 monthly budget for the hypothetical Pittsburgh family includes $1,414 for child care, $1,173 for transportation, $884 for housing, $850 for taxes, $832 for health care, $751 for food and $660 for other necessities.

The $78,769 cost of living for the two-adult, two-child Pittsburgh family compares favorably with what the same family needs in Centre County, the home of State College ($87,575); the Philadelphia metro region ($92,163); and the Harrisburg/Carlisle metro area ($94,665).

Metro areas where EPI says it is less expensive for the same family of four to live include Erie ($74,411) and Cleveland ($72,220).

By way of comparison, “a modest yet adequate standard of living” for a family of four in the Washington, D.C,.metro area carries a budget of $105,539.

The policy group hopes its family budget calculator will help those advocating raising the minimum wage or other measures that would make communities more affordable.

“Raising the minimum wage would be a useful thing for a lot of people, but that’s not the only policy to look at,” said Zane Mokhiber, an EPI research assistant.

He said other measures to consider include more generous family leave policies and extending medical benefits to more people.

Adherents of trickledown economics maintain that the bounty created by tax cuts and the subsequent shower of dividends and share buybacks will eventually rectify the problem that EPI documents. It’s a lot easier to believe in trickledown economics if you’re a CEO making 300 times more than your average worker. Minimum wage earners struggling to attain a standard of living can’t afford the luxury of harboring such illusions.