MW Here's the exact amount of money you need to make to be financially secure
By Venessa Wong
In today's economy, about half of households are financially insecure. It's even worse for those who have children.
The yearly thresholds for achieving financial security range from roughly $62,700 for one-person households over age 65, to $169,300 for families with two or more adults and three or more kids.
As lawmakers consider ideas to boost support to parents - from greater access to IVF to free child care - amid a decline in the U.S. birth rate, new research from the Urban Institute shows that America's families face significant financial challenges, making them less likely than households without children to be economically secure.
Financial precariousness is common in the U.S.: Polls have found that 17% of Americans have no emergency savings and 38% of people ages 65 and older do not have a retirement savings account.
In a report published this week, the Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank, found that 49% of all people lived in families that did not earn enough to have economic security in 2023. The rate was 56% for families with children, due in part to the high share of single-parent households and families with three or more children that do not earn enough to thrive. Households with two adults and no children had the lowest rates (33%) of financial insecurity.
The median yearly thresholds for achieving financial security ranged from $62,700 for one-person households over age 65 to $169,300 for families with two or more adults and three or more children. The median annual financial resources for these households, however, were $51,900 and $144,800, respectively, indicating a shortfall for many families.
Related: A $100,000 salary no longer buys you a middle-class lifestyle. Here's why it costs so much more now.
The cost of economic security
The Urban Institute researchers defined the threshold for economic security as the amount needed to "pay for reasonable levels of housing, food, healthcare, caregiving, transportation, technology and debt service, as well as precautionary savings needs and federal, state and payroll tax liabilities." The calculation included a savings rate that amounted to 10% of a family's expenses for householders younger than 65, and assumed those ages 65 and older were no longer saving. "Conventional measures of economic insecurity, like the poverty rate, only capture acute need and shed no light on the hardships of millions of people who struggle to pay their bills and save for the future - people who are economically insecure and not poised to thrive," they noted.
This report aims to spotlight the share of families who "make ends meet by cutting back in certain areas (e.g., living in cramped quarters, making do without paying for formal child care) and by forgoing saving for the future." For these households, "the promise of economic security and a better future is just out of reach."
They set median thresholds for economic security by family type, and compared it to the median resources for those households (including earnings, tax credits, all types of regularly received unearned income, and in-kind transfers and subsidies).
For families with children, the yearly cost of economic security was $144,700, and 56% of people in these families fell below the threshold, a higher share than for other household types due to greater housing, food and child-care expenses.
There was a noteworthy gap between two-parent households and single-parent households: 48% of families with two or more adults and two children fell below the $149,600 yearly threshold for economic security for that household type. Meanwhile, 87% of single parents with two children fell below the $102,700 threshold for that household type.
For households younger than 65 with no children, the annual threshold for financial security was $95,900, and 44% of people fell below the threshold.
Here is a more detailed breakdown of how different household types fared:
Among households with a resource gap, the average shortfall across family types was tens of thousands of dollars. Over 40% of families below the threshold had resources between 75% and 100% of the threshold, meaning they "are coming close to economic security, largely getting by, and meeting most regular expenses, but they are not primed to thrive," the report said.
Read more: Yale is offering free tuition if your family makes less than $200K. Here's what that says about being middle-class today.
Moderating inflation in 2023 helped ease financial pressure on American parents, but "an adult's paycheck doesn't go up when they have a child. And tax credits and transfer income don't offset the costs of children," Greg Acs, vice president for the Tax and Income Supports Division at the Urban Institute and lead author of the study, told MarketWatch.
To support parents, the government could "provide more direct aid to families by expanding tax credits to those with children and working families with low to moderate incomes, increasing subsidies and tax credits for child care, and offering generous subsidies to families purchasing health insurance," the report said.
The Urban Institute's analysis also showed that in terms of geography, the chances of an individual falling below the economic-security threshold is lower for those living in metro areas (48%) than for those in non-metro areas (54%). While costs were higher in metro areas, the family resources available to meet those costs are also higher, according to the report.
Meanwhile, the report also found that homeowners, who generally had both higher costs and higher resources than non-homeowners, had a lower rate of being economically insecure (39%) than renters (74%).
More on MarketWatch: Most Americans can't afford life anymore - and they just don't matter to the economy like they once did
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-Venessa Wong
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March 20, 2026 16:04 ET (20:04 GMT)
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