National Economic and Employment Data
The National Fund hosts an interactive data dashboard to better understand and work toward racial equity.
M.I.T. has an interactive calculator showing the living wages for different types of households in different geographies.
The U.S. Census has an interactive dashboard to search through all their data, organized by the type of data, location, and year(s).
Data From Throughout our Website
This page compiles all the data throughout the website in one convenient location. Sources are linked for each graph, table, or piece of data, and the insights we gain from the data are listed as well.
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The Cliff Effect happens when a working family or individual tries to increase their income, and they lose so much in public benefits that their annual income decreases. It is a structural flaw in our welfare systems, and traps people in poverty.
Benefits Chart
Explanation: It shows the approximate hourly rate where government benefits begin to drop off. For example, this hypothetical single parent would experience a reduction in their Child Tax Credit when they increase their wages to $18 an hour (indicated by "Child Tax Credit" being crossed out at $18/hour).
Important insights: Due to this loss of benefits, higher earnings actually cause a decrease in net resources when the parent earns between $14/hour and $24/hour. For example, if this hypothetical parent gets a raise from $16 an hour to $18 an hour, they would experience a decrease in their net income because they would lose more in benefits than they are gaining in wages.
Source: This chart is based on calculations from a UMass Boston Center for Social Policy report, and numbers are pulled specifically for a hypothetical single parent with two young children in Massachusetts.
Cliff Effect Wages Graph
Insights: Income actually stays the same or decreases between around $20,000 a year and $50,000 a year in income. That means while a person is majorly increasing their salary, their resources are decreasing because they lose more in benefits than they gain in salary.
Explanation: The red line on the graph shows net financial resources, which is income and public assistance minus taxes and average expenses. That means when the line is at $0, the family is just breaking even. Below $0, they do not have enough money to afford their basic needs. When the line is flat, the amount of money a family has is staying the same even as when their income increases because of how much they lose in benefits as income increases. When the line goes down, the money available to a family decreases even when their income increases.
Source: This graph was generated by the Massachusetts Economic Pathways Coalition using the Policy Rules Database Dashboard, a tool created by the Atlanta Fed. It shows a hypothetical family's net financial resources changing as their income increases and access to public benefits decreases.
