Affordability 101: How the System Fails Families
The big-picture explainer on why the essentials keep getting more expensive.
Affordability 101.
12 min read · Web
5
Essentials squeezing families at once: food, rent, Rx, care, power
every state
Rural and urban, red and blue, the squeeze is everywhere
policy
The through-line: these are choices we can change
The big-picture explainer on why the essentials keep getting more expensive. This explainer pulls together what families across the country are actually paying — and lays out where the system is failing them.
The squeeze on groceries isn’t an accident or a force of nature. It’s the product of specific choices about how our economy works and who it works for. Understand the choices, and you can change them.
What we found
- No single line item explains the squeeze — it's all of them, all at once.
- Paychecks that don't keep pace turn a hard month into an impossible one.
- The good news: what policy made more expensive, policy can make affordable.
Two incomes, three kids, and we still run out of month before we run out of bills.
— The Ruiz Family, Reno NV
Methodology: figures shown are illustrative sample data for this design mockup. The published report draws on public price indexes, wage data, and first-hand accounts collected from families across all 50 states.
More research.
View all- Data Tracker
What Families Actually Pay: Grocery Basket Tracker
A monthly look at the real cost of a week's groceries across metro and rural markets.
Updated monthly · PDF + CSV
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