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2025 Living Income Standard: The cost of meeting the basics across North Carolina
In every county in North Carolina, people want to meet basic needs for themselves and their children without stress. To build an economy that works for everyone and not just the wealthy few, we need to understand what it actually takes to meet those needs. Approximately every two years, we calculate a Living Income Standard…
2025 Living Income Standard Methodology
View the 2025 Living Income Standard dashboard The 2025 Living Income Standard (LIS) captures how much income working people and families need to afford basic expenses. BTC develops an LIS for every county in North Carolina approximately every two years. We use actual cost data to estimate how much money families need to pay for…
2025 Living Income Standard
To open the dashboard full-size in another browser window, click here. To download a spreadsheet of the 2025 Living Income Standard data, click here. To read the methodology, click here. Some folks are having issues with downloading PDFs from this dashboard. If you are having those issues, try opening this link and downloading the PDF…
Inflation halts in July, but most working parents still can’t afford the cost of basic necessities
For the first time in a hot minute, we got a bit of good news about inflation Wednesday, Aug. 10. Overall consumer prices in July held steady nationally compared to the month before for the first time since May of 2020. It’s a heartening sign for people struggling to make ends meet. Annual inflation in…
Economic County Snapshots 2022
The NC Budget & Tax Center publishes Economic County Snapshots every year that include indicators for each county in NC on employment, poverty and income, housing, health, education, and supports for working families — all of which come from a variety of sources.
Here’s what it takes to make ends meet in your NC county
The 2022 Living Income Standard (LIS) strives to capture how much income a working family with children needs to afford basic expenses.
Methodology for the 2022 Living Income Standard
The 2022 Living Income Standard (LIS) strives to capture how much income a working family with children needs to afford basic expenses.
Living Income Standard 2022
The Living Income Standard is a measurement that gives a more accurate and comprehensive picture than more traditional measures of what it takes for a family to make ends meet in each of North Carolina’s 100 counties.