This report updates and enhances the true cost of economic security (TCES) for 2023. Our TCES measure takes a comprehensive view of the costs families must meet to fully participate in today’s society and economy and all the resources they have available to meet those costs, including their earnings, other private sector income, and government supports. Using 2023 data, we extend the original framework to incorporate new cost and resource elements related to homeownership and caregiving for people with disabilities. As before, we designed the TCES measure with accuracy and replicability in mind, using high-quality, publicly accessible data collected regularly to capture variations across states and metropolitan and rural areas, allowing us to explore differences by age, family structure, disability, work status, and race and ethnicity.

Why This Matters

Affordability has become a central issue in American political discourse and in the everyday lives of millions of Americans struggling to get by and get ahead. Political candidates as diverse as President Trump in 2024 and New York City Mayor Mamdani in 2025 focused on the high cost of necessities in their campaigns. The issue resonates with the public—as nearly four out of five Americans are pessimistic about economic conditions improving in 2026 (Ellis and Zitner 2025). Conventional measures of economic insecurity, like the poverty rate, only capture acute need and shed no light on the hardships of millions of people who struggle to pay their bills and save for the future—people who are economically insecure and not poised to thrive.

What We Found

We find that 49 percent of all people lived in families below the TCES threshold in 2023. Among the people in families below the TCES threshold, over 40 percent have resources between 75 and 100 percent of the threshold. On average, these families are coming close to economic security, largely getting by, and meeting most regular expenses, but they are not primed to thrive. In contrast, more than one in six people who fall below the TCES threshold (and about one in ten overall) have less than half of the resources they need to meet their TCES.

TCES thresholds vary by family, family composition, disability status, and location. These same characteristics, along with work status, race and ethnicity, and homeownership, affect the share of people living in families whose resources fall below the TCES:

• Among people in families with all adults under age 65 and with children present, 56 percent fall below the TCES threshold, compared with 44 percent of people in families with all adults under age 65 but without children, and 45 percent of people in families with at least one adult age 65 and older.
• Nearly three out of five children live in families with resources below the TCES threshold, compared with 47 percent of adults ages 18 to 64 and 44 percent of adults ages 65 and older.
• People living in families in which someone has difficulty independently performing self-care tasks, like bathing and dressing, incur additional costs related to care and are unlikely to have the resources they need to meet all their costs.
• Three-quarters of people in families with at least one adult over the age of 65 and at least one person with a self-care disability has resources below the TCES threshold; if all the adults present are under age 65, the share without adequate resources rises to 86 percent.
• Over 40 percent of people living in families with a full-time, full-year worker lack the resources to meet the TCES threshold. Although work alone is not enough to ensure families are poised to thrive, people in families without a full-time, full-year worker in which all adults are under age 65 are likely to struggle, as 84 percent fall below the TCES threshold.
• The chance that an individual falls below the TCES threshold is lower for those living in metro areas than for those in nonmetro areas (48 vs. 54 percent). Across regions of the country, the TCES rate ranges from a low of 46 percent in the Midwest to a high of 53 percent in the West. The TCES rate varies by homeownership status as well. Among homeowners, 43 percent of people in families with children and only working-age adults (that is, adults under age 65) do not have enough resources to thrive, compared with 83 percent of people in similar families that do not own their homes.
• Low resources rather than high costs characterize the places with the largest shares of people falling below the TCES threshold). In places with the highest TCES rates (that is, the highest share of people with resources below the TCES threshold), people face somewhat similar costs compared with those in places where more people are thriving, but they have, on average, relatively low resources. The resource differences largely reflect higher earnings and other market income for those living in low TCES rate counties.

How We Did It

To develop the TCES measure, we determined TCES thresholds—the resources families need to be economically secure—using the framework developed in the foundational TCES. This analysis newly captures costs associated with caregiving for someone with a disability.

To capture families’ resources across the nation, we use detailed demographic and economic data from the American Community Survey (ACS) enhanced by the Urban Institute’s Analysis of Transfers, Taxes, and Income Security (ATTIS) microsimulation model. The ATTIS model allows us to adjust for resources that are not included in the ACS or that families tend to underreport in surveys like the ACS. The 2023 TCES incorporates two additional resources, the estimated value of long-term homeownership and the potential resources associated with caregiving for a disabled family member.