More than half of children in Tennessee, and 76% of children in south and central Chattanooga, live in households that cannot afford the local cost of living, according to a new report from the United Ways of Tennessee.
The latest Alice Report – which takes its name from asset limited, income constrained, employed – was released this month and focused specifically on young people in the Volunteer State.
The report attempts to provide a clearer picture of the number of people financially struggling in an area, comparing the cost of living to wages and other costs in a place rather than using the federal poverty line as the metric. When households do not earn enough to afford the basic costs of child care, food, health care, housing, a phone, taxes and transportation – or are below the federal poverty line – they are considered an Alice household.
A 2019 United Way report found that nearly 40% of Hamilton County households were struggling financially and were below the Alice threshold in 2017.
The new report measured the number of children in Alice households across the state, finding that more than 826,000 children, or 55% of all children in the state, lived in households struggling to meet the local costs of living. The vast majority of those children, 71%, were of school age, between 5 and 17 years old.