The headlines are inescapable: Gas and grocery prices, housing, health care, and child care costs are all climbing and squeezing Americans’ household budgets.

Recent research supports these concerns. The Urban Institute’s True Cost of Economic Security (TCES) measure shows that nearly half of all people in the US live in economically insecure families. The share of people who are economically insecure varies considerably across the country, with people struggling even in low-cost areas.

Easing the affordability crisis and increasing economic security requires policies that both reduce costs and boost workers’ earnings.

How We Measure the True Cost of Economic Security

The Urban Institute’s TCES sheds light on what families need to thrive in the US and compares those needs with the actual resources families have.

What sets the TCES apart from other measures like the ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) measure, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator, and the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator is the variety of costs it captures, its comprehensive approach to assessing family resources—including the value of homeownership—and its adjustment of survey data to account for underreporting of certain resources.

TCES sets a standard for what it costs families to be economically secure—not just get by. The TCES provides a comprehensive view of families’ localized costs, including paying for adequate food, clothing, housing, health care, child care, caring for a family member with a disability, transportation, student debt service, savings for unexpected expenses and retirement, and additional miscellaneous costs.

The TCES’s assessment of family resources is equally comprehensive, accounting for earnings, tax credits, all types of regularly received unearned income, the value of in-kind transfers and subsidies, and the value long-time homeowners derive from having no mortgage payments or payments below the cost of renting adequate housing.

A family that earns enough to be secure according to the TCES measure isn’t “rich,” but is able to afford rent without doubling up, can maintain their vehicle, buy new school clothes for their children, and purchase sufficient nutritious food, while still putting away some money for retirement or an unexpected expense. A family with resources below costs isn’t necessarily poor, but at the very least, they are in an economically precarious position, one lost shift or one missed paycheck from having to deplete savings, incur debt, put off paying rent or utility bills, or skip meals.

Read the full article about the U.S. affordability crisis by Gregory Acs, Ilham Dehry, and Jonathan Schwabish at Urban Institute.