Photo by Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie
Hearing that Washington is an expensive place to live is nothing new, but the price of residing in the nation’s increasingly pricy town can be put into clearer context thanks to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute. A two-parent, two-child family, for instance, needs $88,615 to get by comfortably, if not lavishly, in the D.C. region.
The Economic Policy Institute takes into account the monthly cost of housing, food, child care, transportation, education, and other various expenditures in a family budget calculator. Figures are available for metropolitan areas across the United States, but only one—New York City—appears to be more costly than the D.C. metropolitan area.
EPI looked into 615 metropolitan and rural areas around the country. The cost of living in the D.C. region, which includes the District and several counties in Maryland and Virginia, is 40 percent higher than the national median of about $63,000.
Estimates for other household configurations are no more encouraging. A single parent with one child needs to make $70,235 to enjoy a moderate lifestyle. That sum goes up by about $15,000 with each additional child. In fact, the difference between a single parent with three children and a two-parent, three-child household is not that wide. A single parent with three kids needs about $104,000 to get by, according to the EPI, while the two-parent family needs to make about $106,000.
“Our family budget calculations show that the real costs for families to live modest, not even middle class, lives are much higher than conventional estimates show, and for families living on minimum-wage jobs, it is virtually impossible to make ends meet,” Elise Gould, an EPI researcher, tells WAMU.
In March, a study by the National Low-Income Housing Coalition concluded that a worker earning D.C.’s minimum wage of $8.25 per hour would have to work 132 hours a week to afford an average two-bedroom apartment. The D.C. Council yesterday passed a bill mandating that some large retailers pay a “living wage” of $12.50 an hour, but it is possible that Mayor Vince Gray will veto it.
