More than a quarter of Colorado’s families can’t afford the basics

More than a quarter of Colorado households, about 430,000, don’t earn enough income to cover basic costs such as food, shelter, transportation, health care and child care, according to a new self-sufficiency standard report Tuesday from the Colorado Center on Law and Policy.

Two-thirds of those families don’t meet the official poverty definition, leaving them largely hidden and beyond the reach of programs designed to offer financial support.

“Not only do governmental poverty statistics underestimate the number of households struggling to make ends meet, but it creates broadly held misunderstandings about who is in need, what skills and education they hold, and therefore what unmet needs they have,” according to the report, which was prepared by the Center for Women’s Welfare at the University of Washington.

The study found that 8 percent of Colorado households meet the federal poverty definition, which for a family of two is around $16,460 and below, regardless of the county. That ratio is based primarily on the cost of food and doesn’t capture rising costs in other areas, which have shot up dramatically in all 64 Colorado counties since 2001.

“For a family with one adult, one preschooler, and one school-age child, the income needed to be selfsufficient increased on average by 78 percent across the state. This contrasts with the median wage, which only increased by 43 percent over the same period,” said Bob Mook, a spokesman for CCLP, a group that advocates on behalf of low-income residents in the state.

A more comprehensive measure of living costs from the University of Washington found that closer to 27 percent of Colorado households aren’t making enough income, based on the county where they lived.

Latino households lacked adequate incomes at the highest rate, 47 percent, followed by black households at 46 percent, Asian and Pacific Islander households at 29 percent and whites at 21 percent.

The cost of raising children, especially for child care, was a big contributor to income insufficiency. About six in 10 households headed by a single mother lacked adequate income, a ratio that rose to three out of four if the single mother was nonwhite.

For example, a single adult living in Boulder County needs $30,369 a year or an hourly wage of $14.51 an hour to survive. But add a preschooler and a school-age child into the mix, and that same household will need $78,926 or $37.37 an hour.

In Huerfano County, one of the state’s poorest, a single adult needs $19,175 a year to cover basic costs, the equivalent of $9.08 an hour. That jumps to $51,748 a year or $24.50 if a preschooler and school-age child are included in the household.