According to the most recent data, over 4.2 million California households (nearly four in ten households) are not paid enough to afford basic necessities. Since the start of the COVID pandemic, a growing proportion of households overall have struggled to recover economically with Black, Latinx, Native Hawaiian /Pacific Islander and Native American families bearing the brunt of the inequalities produced by our lopsided economy. While these populations are close to 40 percent of the state’s population overall, they make up close to 60 percent of families who struggle to make ends meet. Between 2021 and 2023, the share of households who are barely scraping by increased by 8 percent, the biggest jump in seven years.

A more realistic measure of need than the federal poverty level, the Family Sustainability Index (FSI) — developed in partnership with the Center for Women’s Welfare — is a comprehensive analysis of financial precarity by using real-world factors, such as the actual costs of housing, childcare, food, transportation, utilities, and taxes, along with an analysis of other key data points.

This FSI calculator uses data from our report, Living on the Brink: The True Cost of Being Californian, to offer a detailed look at how much income is needed by family type in each California county to be sustainable.