Take this with a grain of salt. MIT's Living Wage Calculator for someone in the Manhattan area calls for $7k annual expense for transportation. In Manhattan. So

Take this with a grain of salt. MIT's Living Wage Calculator for someone in the Manhattan area calls for $7k annual expense for transportation. In Manhattan. So I think they are attempting to make a granular data set out of a course one. Where the data gets really suspect is how it tries to predict demand for social services. Except we already know this data. New York's SNAP Participation rate is 84%. So we are not expecting to find millions and millions of new people eligible. To the broader point, MIT's Living Wage Calculator uses an average of costs across the income bracket and does not account for any welfare or social services. I do not think it is an accurate tool other than for course comparisons between regions. Programs like Title IX, Medicaid, SNAP, etc exist to help make up these differences. And I think these type of studies are kind of belittling these very effective programs by ignoring them.