FAMILIES MUST EARN FOUR TIMES MINIMUM WAGE L.A. COST-OF-LIVING BRUTAL FOR POOR.

Byline: MUHAMMED EL-HASAN

Staff Writer

A couple supporting its family on minimum-wage jobs might be able to pay for rent, food and perhaps clothing. But what about child care and transportation for the four-person family?

Add the need for health care, and that family might be unable to sustain itself.

L.A. County families must earn two to four times the minimum wage just to make ends meet, says a study to be released today by the California Budget Project.

Each parent in a family of four must make $17.80 an hour working a 40-hour job to "earn the basic family budget," according to the study titled "Making Ends Meet: How Much Does It Cost to Raise a Family in California?"

That would translate to $74,044 a year in income.

"It does point to the fact that even if you put in your 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, there still is a significant gap between what people make and what they need," said Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project.

The study, by the independent public policy center, also demonstrates the inadequacy of the federal poverty line when applied to California's high cost of living, Ross said.

Of the four household types noted in the study, a single parent raising two children faced the highest hourly wage need of $30 in Los Angeles County. That's exactly four times the minimum wage.

California's minimum wage is $7.50. The 2006 wage median is $17.42, the midpoint where half of wages were higher and half lower.

At Harbor Interfaith Services, a San Pedro social services agency for the homeless and working poor, 14,000 people received food, shelter or other services offered, said Caroline Brady-Sinco, the group's director of development.

"Especially with the holidays coming up, every year we register families that don't have enough money to put a holiday meal on the table, and every year the number of families just grows and grows and grows," she said. "Minimum-wage jobs are just not enough to survive, especially if you have children."

The minimum pay needs outlined in the study are based on full-time employment for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks per year. There is no allowance for unpaid days off during a year. The report assumes that families have two children each.

Other findings in the report include:

Part-time workers or those working only part of the year need to earn a higher hourly wage to make up the difference.

A two-parent family with only one parent working can live on less than a single-parent family or a two-parent family with both as wage earners, since one parent can stay home with the children. The basic family budgets assume that families use home-based child care, rather than more expensive center-based care.

The report's calculations also assume that families rent rather than own a home, and live in housing that "many would consider overcrowded for a three- or four-person household."

The report assumes families buy private individual health coverage rather than receive health insurance from an employer. Saving for later is excluded from the report's calculations.

"These estimates allow very little to no room for savings toward retirement or a child's college education," the report says.

Families that fall short of the report's minimum income levels can still get by. They might use friends or family for child care, receive health insurance from an employer, use public or private handouts or dip into their personal credit, the report says.

Economist Jack Kyser acknowledged that California's cost of living makes life difficult for minimum- wage workers. Yet Kyser cautioned against assuming that raising the minimum wage would solve the problem.

"You don't have a massive job loss if you raise the minimum wage. But over a period of time, business may start to look at ways to maybe reduce their reliance on minimum-wage workers," said Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. "If you increase (the minimum wage) by two to three times, then, literally, minimum-wage workers would be competing with more skilled workers. So you have to be careful because not only would you be hurting the people who earn minimum wage, but you'd be hurting the businesses, too."

Kyser suggested that gaining more education and skills can help such workers raise their standard of living while also filling a need in the economy.

The report's stated goal is to inform public policies that promote financial self-sufficiency by "boosting incomes or by providing help with access to necessities, such as child care and health coverage."

The report also suggests that more funding can go into training and economic development to help minimum-wage employers gain higher-paying jobs."We hope our basic family budgets provide a benchmark that policymakers, politicians and researchers can use to assess whether our public policies are appropriate to serve our working families," Ross said.