This dataset contains metrics presented in the report Measuring the True Cost of Economic Security: What Does It Take to Thrive, Not Just Survive, in the US Today? and in the Urban Wire blog post, “How Many People in Your State Have the Resources to Thrive?” It also includes data for additional geographies that are not included in either product.

The dataset includes the true cost of economic security (TCES) rates for all people in the household population. (People living in institutions or in noninstitutional group quarters are not included in the analysis.) The dataset also includes TCES rates, median costs, and median resources for people in families with children and adults under age 65. The data are available for all states and for a portion of counties and public use microdata areas (PUMAs). There is sufficient sample in the American Community Survey to support TCES estimates for 365 counties and 1,207 PUMAs.

We developed a TCES measure to better understand the circumstances of families, the costs they must meet to fully participate in today’s society and economy, and all the resources they have to meet those costs, including their earnings, other private sector income, and government supports. The TCES uses publicly available cost data on housing, food, health care, transportation, child care, technology, student debt, savings targets, taxes, and miscellaneous expenses to generate TCES thresholds. The thresholds, which vary depending on the number and ages of people in a family and where they live, represent the resources families require to meet their financial needs and thrive. We pair this with data from the American Community Survey (2018, adjusted to represent the population and economic characteristics of 2022), enhanced using the Analysis of Transfers, Taxes, and Income Security microsimulation model, which allows us to get a thorough and detailed picture of families’ resources. We capture many resources, including earnings, tax credits, all types of regularly received unearned income (including cash transfers), and the value of in-kind transfers and subsidies.

We compare each family’s total costs with their resources to determine whether they have resources above or below the TCES threshold. The TCES rates represent the share of people in families with resources below the TCES threshold. In other words, the TCES rate measures the share of people in families who do not have the resources to be economically secure. This dataset provides the TCES rates for all people and people in families with children and adults under age 65. To provide additional context, we include the median annual costs and median annual resources for people in families with children and adults under age 65 for each geographic area.

For more information, please see the full report and technical appendix: https://www.urban.org/research/publication/measuring-true-cost-economic-security. This includes details on data and methods, such as the approaches for adapting county-level cost data for use with PUMAs that are not equivalent to counties identified in the ACS.

The data was corrected on May 27, 2025. In the state level TCES file, we corrected an error that inadvertently listed the incorrect median costs and resource values for families with children and adults under age 65. The TCES rates were not impacted.