The cost of living for a Hamilton County family of four with two children in child care went up $8,220 from 2022 to 2023 and drove a 2 percentage point increase in local poverty, according to a report released Monday by the United Way of Greater Chattanooga.
The nonprofit’s 2025 ALICE update — which tracks the number of families who are asset limited, income constrained and employed — found that the county population grew from 2022 to 2023, as did the number of local households one catastrophe away from poverty, as well as the number of households in poverty.
Jessica Pilcher, the director of United for Working Families at United Way, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that the cost of living increased $11,000 from 2021 to 2022.
“You are looking at almost a $20,000 increase for a family of four within two years in our area,” she said Friday. “Things are not matching up.
“We have about 32% of workers in Tennessee in the most common occupations who are not being paid wages that can afford the basics,” she added. “So they’re not meeting that survival budget, and that survival budget is just continually increasing because of the cost of food, child care and housing.”