Crossroads United Way shares and discusses new data regarding struggling households
INDIANA -- On Thursday, Crossroads United Way held a round table discussion regarding new ALICE data; ALICE stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, meaning a household or individual who, while working full-time, still struggles financially and lives paycheck to paycheck.
The number of households that fit this description in Elkhart and St. Joseph counties is currently on the uptick, as inflation outpaces wages, and the cost of living continues to rise. Currently the number according to United Way is 1 in 3. For more info, click here.
The first half of the roundtable event was spent going through and explaining the new data, while the second half was the roundtable discussion. Community leaders answered questions from participants, and everyone was invited to collaborate and brainstorm different ideas on how best to use this information to move forward.
The set theme of the discussion was initially Literacy - meaning financial and digital literacy as well as traditional. With the new ALICE numbers, the discussion and collaboration centered on how best to use the new information to help the greatest number of households.
Matthew Siskis the Director of the Civic and Geospatial Analysis and Learning Lab in the Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society at the University of Notre Dame. He explained to ABC57 why the ALICE numbers are important. "It is a measurement that is supposed to be a more realistic view of populations that are struggling, than just the federal poverty level. The number (of households that fit the ALICE category) is reasonably high, particularly within Elkhart and St. Joseph County, largely because of this sort of gap between the real cost of living and the federal poverty limit, which is relatively low, and is set for the entire country. So, because there's that gap there, we have a good number of individuals and households that are falling sort of in there. They have a job, have employment, but are one paycheck away, one broken down car, one medical bill away from real financial problems."
Jill Yoder is the Director of Community Engagement and Volunteerism at Crossroads United Way: "I think the biggest takeaway today is that we have so many working households, and despite the long work weeks, we're still falling a little bit short on income, because the cost of living is really outpacing wages, and knowing that all of us are seeing this as working households needing more services and skills, to kind of go from surviving to thriving is the best part of what we were able to do today."