United Ways in Connecticut are digging deep into the latest United Way ALICE Report release, titled ALICE in Focus: Children to better understand what the people in our community face on a daily basis.
ALICE is an acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. ALICE households work hard, often multiple jobs, but they don’t earn enough to afford the basics needed to live and work in the modern economy.
A staggering 304,982 children in Connecticut — 42% of all children — lived in a household with income below the ALICE Threshold of Financial Survival in 2019.
For decades, policymakers and community stakeholders have relied on the outdated Federal Poverty Level (FPL) to understand the extent of financial hardship in their communities. According to the FPL, 13% of children in Connecticut (97,404) lived in poverty in 2019. Yet United For ALICE data shows that another 29% (207,578) — more than twice as many — were also growing up in hardship, in households that earned above the FPL but not enough to afford the basics in the communities where they lived.
Read ALICE in Focus: Children.
