ALICE report shows more people living on the edge in Fitzwalkerstan

The United Way released its annual ALICE report this week. This report not only looks at how many people in a given area are in poverty, but also breaks down costs for specific counties and regions to show which people are struggling, even though they may be above the poverty line. And as you'll see, there are a lot of people in Wisconsin that are stuck in that situation.

To back up, let’s look at what the United Way defines as someone falling under the “ALICE” level.

ALICE is a United Way acronym that stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.

ALICE is your child care worker, your parent on Social Security, the cashier at your supermarket, the gas attendant, the salesperson at your big box store, your waitress, a home health aide, an office clerk. ALICE cannot always pay the bills, has little or nothing in savings, and is forced to make tough choices such as deciding between quality child care or paying the rent. One unexpected car repair or medical bill can push these financially strapped families over the edge….

ALICE earns above the federal poverty level, but does not earn enough to afford a bare-bones household budget of housing, child care, food, transportation, and health care. The United Way ALICE Reports use new measures to provide a more accurate picture of financial insecurity at the state, county, and municipal level.

is one of several states that the United Way looks at in-depth with its ALICE report, and the report shows how much it costs for the typical Wisconsin family to be financially comfortable enough to be out of the ALICE zone.

These numbers change depending on where in the state you live (more on that in a second), but overall, more Wisconsinites lived on the edge in 2016 than they did in 2010. The dark color in this picture represents those under the poverty line, and the middle color represents those at the ALICE level.

Breaking it down to the county level, you can see a higher level of individuals in peril in northern and western Wisconsin, generally in more rural and remote areas. . In many of these cases, the main increase isn’t due to people falling into poverty, but instead involves people just hanging on in the “ALICE” range.

A good example of this was in Douglas County in the northwest corner of the state. Poverty stayed around the same levels there for all years measured in the 2010s, but the percentage of people “on the edge” in the ALICE area went up by 7% as the number of households dwindled.

Adams County shows this pattern to an even higher extreme, with a 12% increase in the ALICE range.

A similar pattern appears in Rusk County, with slightly higher poverty levels.

Even Waukesha County, which tries to think of itself as immune to the difficulties of the poor, is seeing an increase in people that are threatened. Another 6% of country residents have fallen into the ALICE range since 2012.

A big culprit of increasing financial peril in the burbs and bigger cities seems to be the rising price of child care and housing for parents with 2 small children. Note the differences between the 5 most-heavily populated counties in Wisconsin, and the two most rural counties I have brought up as examples.

Child care survival costs per month, 2016 ALICE survey
Dane County $1,895
Milwaukee Co. $1,774
Waukesha Co. $1,709
Racine County $1,471
Brown County $1,330

Rusk County $1,231
Adams County $1,159

Housing survival costs per month, 2016 ALICE survey
Dane County $936
Milwaukee Co. $907
Waukesha Co. $907
Racine County $888
Brown County $756

Rusk County $674
Adams County $658

This shows how dealing with the high cost of housing and child care is an especially relevant concern in those larger metro areas, and how the higher wages that those communities pull aren’t necessarily leading to a much higher quality of life. And if the wages aren’t higher in those communities, then the stresses become very high.

On the flip side, the ALICE report assumes the costs of food and health care needs will be the same regardless of where you live, so the rural areas are in extra need of assistance here, as wages tend to be lower. Given the increase of people into the ALICE zone in small-town Wisconsin, it sure seems like taking the expanded Medicaid that allows people with incomes up to 138% of poverty to have near-$0 health care premiums would have been a great solution.

But instead, Scott Walker and the GOP Legislature decided to sabotage the ACA to turn the people against the program. Instead of being suckered into resentment due to this cynical sabotage and voting for the GOP, maybe rural Wisconsin shouldn’t vote for politicians like Sean Duffy, Glenn Grothman, Leah Vukmir and Scott Walker who will eradicate the ACA and Food Stamps, and turn their current ALICE-zone existence into flat-out poverty (just a thought).

The ALICE survey likely goes a long way toward explaining why so many people don’t feel much better off than they were 8 years ago, despite stats showing many more people employed than we saw in 2010. And lower taxes and corporate deregulation aren't going to do anything to get people out of the ALICE zone. The cost of staying afloat continues to rise, often well above any small increase in wages that people have seen in the same time period.

If there’s any kind of economic downturn in the near future, it seems likely that a lot of people that are just getting by today will go over the edge very quickly. Are we going to be ready for that, and be able to handle those social costs? Sure doesn’t seem like it, especially with safety nets at high risk of being shredded in deficit-ridden, GOP-run America (hell, VP Mike Pence even admitted last week in Milwaukee that electing Leah Vukmir to the US Senate will allow the GOP another chance to repeal Obamacare and leave people at the mercy of soulless insurance companies).

So we need to elect Dem politicians in November that will actually try to improve the security and financial futures for these people in the ALICE zone, or else much of Wisconsin is in real danger of having a large number of their people in desperate straits, with little hope of getting out of it if they stay in the places that they currently live in.