Last week United Way of Florida released its ALICE report – Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed – which showed that almost 41 percent of Escambia households and 64 percent of the county’s African-American households are struggling financially.
According to Theodore Granger, president of United Way of Florida, the report by Rutgers University-Newark’s School of Public Affairs and Administration shows how difficult it is for Floridians to make ends meet.
He wrote in the cover letter for the report, “ALICE is a United Way acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. “Employed†is the critical word. ALICE represents those who work hard, but due to high costs and factors often beyond their control must live paycheck to paycheck. For many of them, a small emergency can quickly become a major financial crisis. Car repairs and health care emergencies, to name just a few, can plunge these working families over the edge into financial chaos. When this happens, both families and employers are hurt.”
The report uses a modest “survival budget†to set an ALICE Threshold to better understand the ALICE population in Florida; a population that is often overlooked. Nearly 1 in 3 Florida households make up this population – in Escambia County it’s 40.6 percent.
Granger said, “They work hard, live above the Federal Poverty Level, and still cannot consistently afford the basics of housing, food, health care, child care, and transportation.”
The ALICE thresholds for Escambia County are $40,000 for households under 65, $25,000 for 65 and older
Here are the stats for Escambia County:
Total Households 114,077
Those below ALICE Thresholds: 46,268 – 40.6 percent
Percent below ALICE by Race/Ethnicity:
Asian 44 percent
Black 64 percent
Hispanic 53 percent
White 34 percent
Seniors 32 percent
Read report.