Suck it down or blow it off. Your Choice.

I did a little math the other day with a rough, “necessities-only” budget. I figured a breadwinner would need to earn $15/hour at a 40hour/week job to pay for just the necessities. No income taxes. No savings. No vacation (just those blessed weekends!). This works out to something slightly over $31,000/year ($10K more than poverty, see below). One earner could, conceivably, do that, with some education, or some luck with a job in energy, or some such. But mostly likely it will have to be split between two earners. That is much more likely, isn’t it? $7.50/hour? What’s the minimum wage again?

Then I got curious, reading about populations and poverty levels. I took a look at some data from U.S Census Bureau and started thinking about doing some more math related to the poverty threshold for a family of four (my situation).

Just looking at Wyoming I found these numbers interesting:

Family of Four Poverty Threshold in 2009
just under $22,000/year

Per capita money income in past 12 months (2009 dollars) 2005-2009
$26,925/year

Median household income, 2009
$54,400/year

Persons below poverty level, percent, 2009
10.2%

So. Thinking this through a little, I figure “median” means middle. In that case, 50% household income falls below $54,400/year in Wyoming. Does this mean 50% of the population are living in families making between $0.00 and $54,400/year? We know, from the Census Bureau that 10.2% of the people are living below poverty level. What about this other 39.8% that are living below median? What percent are making between $22,000 (census.gov poverty) and $32,000 (izzaboo.com poverty)?

Huh. Wait! A shiny object called “per capita money income” is $27k. Look how rich we are! If you add up all the money we made and divide by us, we all made out okay because if you multiply the $27K by the four people in my household, we’re way above the median household income! Maybe I’ll buy a boat!*

But how can that be? If half of the households are making less than double the per capita income and 10% of the entire population is making less than the per capita income what are the 40% making? I would like to see the per capita money income of the population comprising the left side of the median.

When I’m not tired, or I’m actually making money by doing so, or have to make decisions using it, I’ll bother to download more of the data from the Bureau. Until then let’s just answer by saying: Usually Not Enough and leave it at that.

*Not really, because I would only be able to afford a boat that could hold as much water as that little statistic. And what fun is sinking, really?