Living Wage Calculator

A living wage is defined as the income that a full-time worker requires to cover or support the costs of their family’s basic needs where they live. It often exceeds the minimum wage, which is the lowest pay rate allowed by law, and the poverty wage, which is the minimum amount of pay that would put a worker below the poverty line.

The Living Wage Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created a living wage calculator to factor in the cost of basic needs in different localities. The calculator features geographically-specific costs for food, childcare, health care, housing, transportation, other basic needs – like clothing, personal care items, and broadband, among others – and taxes at the county, metro, and state levels for 12 different family types. 

What is the living wage where you live?

Impact: Measuring the Difference We Make

Impact is a buzzword, particularly in the nonprofit space. What is our impact? Are our programs having impact? The challenge is that “impact” means different things to different people, and social science has a strong opinion. Impact indicates causality and can only be determined through rigorous evaluation. 

An inherently empirical term, impact is the difference in a specific outcome resulting from a particular intervention versus the outcome that results without that intervention. You could think of it like a math problem:

(Outcome with Intervention) – (Outcome without Intervention) = Impact

We often hear of impact defined as an intervention’s results (without evaluation) or even as a measure of output, such as the number of meals served. The danger in the disassociation between impact and causality is that we are setting ourselves up to connect the wrong dots, coming to an inaccurate conclusion because we omitted the science.

As you plan future projects, consider the science behind impact and how you want to measure success. Remember: ACT Rochester is here to help! 

For technical assistance feel free to email actrochester@racf.org

Curated Op-Ed: Gentrification’s Roots in the Post-Industrial City

NextCity’s February 1, 2024, opinion editorial about the roots of gentrification uses the city of San Jose in the Silicon Valley as the setting for a story of business development and incumbent residents. Rochester is mentioned, along with Detroit, as the urban case trajectory to avoid, where economic collapse and population decline have plagued the city. 

The article is a great reference for the sociology of the post-industrial city and provides important historical information. 

Common Sense Reform for School Discipline from The Children’s Agenda

Local advocacy organization The Children’s Agenda published a brief on school discipline reform. Using statewide data, the brief highlights the relationship between restricting punitive disciplinary practices and improved student achievement and graduation rates. Based on their analysis, The Children’s Agenda recommends a concrete policy change: limiting suspensions to 20 days. 

Approachable and informative, the report uses both facts and figures to lay out the deficiencies of current policy and the inequities of suspensions and expulsions.  A particularly helpful table on page 11 illustrates how far behind New York State is on restricting early-grade suspensions compared to other states. According to the table, Ohio has a 10-day limit on suspensions, California has a 20-day limit, and Wisconsin has a 15-day limit. 

The Children’s Agenda brief urges us to face local (and regional) expulsion and suspension policies. It is also an opportunity to think about our communities and what it would take to make this policy change successful for children and our schools.

To learn more about the Solutions Not Suspensions bill in pursuit of the recommended reforms, go to https://www.solutionsnotsuspensionsny.org/sns-bill.

Social Capital

On a community level, we can use social capital to make sure that all social networks are engaged and that none are isolated. In this way, it becomes a key for advancing equity and economic mobility. Consider social networks… which networks are connected to resources, and which are isolated?

If we are intentional about identifying networks and isolated networks, unemployed or underemployed individuals can become connected and are then more likely to find job-training programs, mentors or new opportunities. Families can find quality after-school programs for their children or day programs for their elders or loved ones with special needs.

The Power in a Few Degrees of Separation

The idea behind six degrees of separation is that any two people on the planet can be connected to each other by six or fewer social connections. In our region, it can often feel more like two degrees of separation.

It’s like living in a giant small town, where everybody knows everybody else. But it is also where our networks of friends, colleagues, family – really anyone we have social interactions with – mobilize information and resources. Who we know and how resources circulate is how social capital intersects with upward mobility…

How to Swim in an Ocean of Data

This year, an estimated 147 zettabytes of data will be generated worldwide. To begin wrapping your mind around that, consider that a zettabyte is equal to a trillion gigabytes.

Having even a fraction of that information at our fingertips can either help or complicate decision-making, especially in public policy. 

Please consider these posts context and complimentary narrative to the zettabytes of data.