Family Bottom Line
THE FAMILY BOTTOM LINE
Opportunity@Work has released The Family Bottom Line – a report that provides a way to compare how Nebraska families are faring economically relative to where they live.
Key findings in the report include necessary income estimates for ten different family types across population density regions in Nebraska. Additional findings in The Family Bottom Line include budget and expense breakdowns of basic needs such as child care, housing, food, transportation, health care, miscellaneous expenses and taxes, as well as the number of hours one must actually work to simply maintain The Family Bottom Line.
This report was a collaborative effort between:
- Dr. Catherine Huddleston-Casas – Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln in the Child, Youth and Family Studies Department
- Annemarie Bailey Fowler – Opportunity@Work and Research Coordinator at Voices for Children in Nebraska
- Jon Bailey – Director of the Rural Research and Analysis Program at the Center for Rural Affairs
- Erin Kampbell – Statewide Project Coordinator at Community Action of Nebraska
POPULATION in FOCUS
In writing The Family Bottom Line, Opportunity@Work felt that it was critical to have the voices of hard-working Nebraskans be heard. As a result, we partnered with Community Action of Nebraska to author the Population in Focus portion of the report.
Community Action of Nebraska (CAN) serves all 93 counties in Nebraska and between 2007 and 2008, CAN facilitated a series of focus groups and surveys across the state to gain insight and assess what the greatest needs were among clients and non-clients. Feedback received through the focus groups and surveys are the basis for the Population in Focus report.
FACT SHEETS
While in the process of researching The Family Bottom Line, the report authors worked hard to avoid the usual rural v.s. urban or east v.s. west view that many of us have of Nebraska. Instead, we evaluated all 93 counties in Nebraska, assessed the population density of each county and its relation to available resources, and ultimately found clear patters in the data that allowed us to collapse the counties into three regions in Nebraska:
- Metropolitan Nebraska (population of 25k – 1 million)
- Non-metropolitan Urban Nebraska (population of >25K)
- Non-metropolitan Rural Nebraska (population of <25K)
Fact sheets are available for each of these regions identified in the report.
Download: Metro Fact Sheet
Download: Non-metro Urban Fact Sheet
Download: Non-metro Rural Fact Sheet