New report: Nearly 19 percent of Iowa households falling short of basic needs

The second in a three-part report on the cost of living in Iowa states that nearly 19 percent of Iowa working households do not earn enough to meet basic needs without public support.

Iowa Policy Project on Wednesday released part two of its Cost of Living in Iowa report, which found that around 114,000 Iowa families - with one or more full-time wage earners in the family - fail to make enough to cover the cost of basic amenities like food, health care, child care and transportation.

'Almost one in five Iowa working families do not earn enough to achieve self-sufficiency,” IPP research director Peter Fisher, author of the report, said in a Wednesday media call.

The average basic needs gap, or the difference between before-tax income and the income needed to be self-sufficient, is about $16,500 per year. That gap sits at a little more than $10,000 for single persons, but climbs to almost $20,000 for married couples with children and nearly $23,000 per year for single parents, according to the report.

'Obviously the single parent has the same kinds of expenses as a married couple with kids ... but it's only one wage earner, and that makes it really tough to get by,” Fisher said. 'That's a pretty big hurdle to overcome, a pretty big gap to fill with public support programs.”

MORE: Read the full Iowa Policy Project report

Of the 114,000 working households in the state, nearly 44,000, or more than a quarter, were single-parent families.

IPP's report used data from the American Community Survey, which included a sample of about 30,000 Iowa households. The report focuses on working families and excludes senior households and those without any adults working at 30 hours per week or more.

The findings in IPP's report are comparable to those in United Way of Iowa's Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed (ALICE) financial hardship study, which was released last week.

The ALICE study, which focused on the cost of housing, child care, health care, transportation and food, actually puts the number of struggling households higher than IPP's report. According to the study, 381,266 households - 31 percent - struggled with financial needs in 2014.

According to the report's county-by-county data, 35 percent of Johnson County and 24 percent of Linn County households fall under the ALICE threshold.

Released this April, phase one of IPP's report found that a single Iowa resident must make at least $13.16 an hour - almost double the state minimum wage of $7.25 an hour - to meet basic living expenses.

The basic-needs wage jumps to $21.52 an hour for a single parent with one child.