By Janie Ginocchio<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You might be thinking, \u201cI only know one person named ALICE and she\u2019s my 86-year-old great aunt.\u201d That\u2019s surely true, but what\u2019s true, too, is that ALICE<\/a> is your waitress at your favorite diner, the lovely people who help you get your groceries to your car, the people who tend to your little kiddos while you\u2019re working, and many other people you encounter every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ALICE is an acronym that stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. The focus of the ALICE report is the number of working Americans who can\u2019t make ends meet. These are our neighbors and friends who are making tough choices each day about \u201cwhat to pay and what to forgo.\u201d Should we fill the gas tank or the refrigerator? Should we pay for the dentist or the needed prescription? These choices have a ripple effect on all of us. The stress of making these choices day in and day out impacts job performance, school attendance, and health. And, the ALICE report data shows<\/a> that \u201cmore than four in ten households in the United States [are] unable to stretch their income to meet their household needs\u2026 .\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ve been talking about how we define, measure, and talk about poverty for the last several months. We\u2019ve explored the shortfalls in our definitions, the pitfalls in our measurements, and the downfalls of our usual conversations around poverty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ALICE report helps us avoid these shortfalls, pitfalls, and downfalls by giving us another way to measure and talk about poverty. The authors of ALICE report study the real costs of living (specific to each county in each state) and the real number of people who don\u2019t earn enough to meet those costs after considering public and nonprofit assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n