Middle Class: Bay Area residents have to earn a lot more to reach that threshold - 2 jobs for a combined $77k income

Here's a six-paragraph excerpt from today's San Francisco Chronicle article by Jean Ross, The Middle-Class Equation: Bay Area residents have to earn a lot more to reach that threshold--2 jobs for a combined $77K income:

To be middle class requiresan income that is at least large enough to make ends meet without helpfrom public programs. You need to earn enough to pay for the basics - asafe place to live; transportation to and from to work; child care whenparents are at work; food; health care; and taxes.

Yet defining middle class can be elusive. Clearly, families need toearn more to stand on their own in San Francisco than in Arkansas.

So, in order to inform the current policy debates, the CaliforniaBudget Project - a nonprofit research group based in Sacramento -calculated the income needed for families to buy the basic necessities.We found that in California, and in the Bay Area in particular, thecost of a basic family budget often exceeds the earnings of twofull-time workers earning the state's median wage...

So here's where ourcalculation ends up: A single adult in the Bay Area without job-basedhealth insurance needs to earn $29,633 a year to cover the basicbudget. A two-worker family must earn $77,076 a year.

Put another way, in the Bay Area it now takes two parents, eachworking full time for slightly more than state's median hourly wage,just to reach the threshold of a middle-class life. In families withjust one earner, he or she must earn far above the median wage to coverthe same budget.

Households near these middle-class thresholds don't live indesperate poverty, and millions of lower-income families are far worseoff. Many do, however, face daily insecurity, living paycheck topaycheck. Consumer debt statistics indicate that others make ends meeton borrowed money.