More than half of the nation's working-age families with children earn $60,000 or less a year, according to a new report from the Hamilton Project that provides a snapshot of America's "struggling lower-middle class."
Out
of those more than 20 million families, about 40 percent have annual
incomes at or below $40,000 and a shocking 15 percent, or 5.6 million
families, earn between $1 to $20,000 a year, the report showed. The
majority of today's families, 76 percent, have annual incomes at $100,000 or less, while "fewer than 3 percent of families earn more than $260,000," according to the report.
The
report found that 49 percent of working-age families with children have
incomes below 250 percent of the 2012 federal poverty level, or $58,208 for a two-parent family with two children.
About 30 percent of families live between that 250 percent threshold and the official poverty line, which stood at $23,283 in 2012 for a two-parent family with two kids. As such, these families are considered to be the "struggling lower-middle class," the report reads, because their "proximity to the poverty line means that any unanticipated downturns in income could push them into poverty."
Low-income Illinoisans have the third-highest state and local tax burden in the nation, according to 
A recent report shows that women headed up 40 percent of Illinois' more than 404,100 low-income working families in 2012.
The
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a crucial
anti-hunger and anti-poverty tool, but a handful of reforms are needed
to boost the program's overall effectiveness, argues Diane Whitmore
Schanzenbach, an associate professor at Northwestern University's School
of Education and Social Policy.
Although
Illinois’ economy is “tepidly growing,” workers in the state are still
worse off than before the recession, labor experts at the University of Illinois say.