The Self-Sufficiency Standard Questions

1. Why does a preschool child add $20,000 to the costs of a single parent in some parts of California, and far less in many other places?
2. Why are rents so high in California and New York City? Are the apartments much fancier at the 40th percentile?
3. Why are rents so low in Philadelphia?
4. Why are rents higher in places where population density is high?
5. Does the song "New York, New York" talk about life in a high rent area? ("If you can make it here, you'll make it anywhere.")
6. Who gets the rent money?
7. Why do renters at the just-getting-by level pay such high taxes? They aren't paying property taxes themselves; those are embedded in their rent. How much of it is payroll taxes?
8. Only in the least expensive counties are people getting much in the way of tax credit money.
9. How many of us lack sufficient income to meet our most simply defined needs?
10. What does the rising price of gas do?
11. What will happen to rents in the low-cost counties when retiring baby boomers with little home equity to live on move in? Who will benefit from this? Who will be negatively affected?
12. Why are women willing to have a baby, even though their cost of living rises by $10,000, but reluctant to marry, even though their cost of living only rises it by about $7,000, and a husband is likely to bring income of more than that? (Maybe it is easier to manage on a tight budget with only one adult, rather than negotiating out the vicissitudes of tight-budget living with another adult.)
13. Might the large share of people whose incomes are below or near the Self-Sufficiency Standard — the just-getting-by level — have some bearing on divorce rates and the number of single parent families?

Some answers and links — and probably some more questions — will be added as time goes on.