> Taking the upper end, we'd get 100k as the required livable wage to match this household income Unfortunately, not quite. If both parents make 100k, your ta

> Taking the upper end, we'd get 100k as the required livable wage to match this household income Unfortunately, not quite. If both parents make 100k, your tax burden is higher than if one of them makes 200k and one 0 (because of the social security cap). More importantly, your child care expenses are much higher. So are your food expenses, typically; this part is correctly reflected in the data table you linked to. In practice, I would expect a two-earner household, both earning 100k, to have 10-30k/year more in expenses than a one-earner household; the range mostly depends on how much child care costs. 100k for a single person is certainly pretty comfortable, even in San Francisco. Much more comfortable than 200k for a family of 4, I suspect, because housing is so much simpler.