Joint Fiscal Office releases updated basic-needs budget: childcare subsidies lower family costs, housing drives single-adult increases

Montpelier, Jan. 15, 2025 — The Joint Fiscal Office presented its updated 2024 basic-needs budget to the Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs Committee on Wednesday, showing changes to methodology, the formal inclusion of child-care subsidies in many household calculations and a new official category for a single person in shared housing.

The report, prepared by the Joint Fiscal Office (JFO), calculates monthly and annual budgets for seven household configurations and converts those costs into a wage required to meet basic needs without public assistance. Patrick Chardin of the JFO said the update reflects inflation since 2022 and several methodological changes the Joint Fiscal Committee approved.

Why it matters: The basic-needs budget is a reference used by policymakers and employers to understand what wages are necessary for Vermonters to meet essentials such as housing, food, transportation and childcare without public assistance. The report informs debates over wage policy, tax credits and social programs.

Key findings and changes

- Methodology and scope: The JFO said it uses national datasets (Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer-expenditure survey, NHTS for transportation, HUD for housing) and adjusts for Vermont specifics. The report covers seven family configurations (single adult; single adult with child; two adults with and without children; and variations where one adult is not a wage earner). The JFO included a new “single person shared housing” category to reflect roommates and shared two-bedroom units.

- Childcare subsidies and taxes: The report treats childcare subsidies as a public good and includes them in budget calculations; JFO also included a recently enacted payroll contribution for childcare in tax calculations. Patrick Chardin said including subsidies reduced calculated budgets for many households with children.

- Telecommunications and personal-care additions: The JFO shifted telecommunications assumptions to 100 percent cell-phone/mobile service (instead of a blended cell/landline average) and added a category for personal-care products (soap, toothpaste, shampoo) after advisory discussions.

- Urban vs. rural: The report presents separate figures for Chittenden County (designated urban) and the rest of Vermont (rural). JFO staff said some committee members expressed concern about that binary segmentation and asked whether more granular census-tract or town-level distinctions are feasible given available survey data.

- Wages and inflation: Compared with 2022, some household types (notably single adults) saw increases in required wages driven largely by housing, food and health-care inflation. Households with children showed some decreases in required out-of-pocket budgets where childcare subsidies applied.

Representative numbers and assumptions

- The report models seven household configurations and uses the assumption that household members are working-age adults unless otherwise noted.

- Childcare subsidy eligibility in the calculation extends up to 575 percent of the federal poverty level (the JFO’s parameter for applying assistance in the model). The JFO also uses a 5%-of-income savings assumption in the budget.

- The JFO noted the single-person shared-housing calculation assumes a two-bedroom rental split 50-50 for the single occupant’s portion of rent and half the Internet bill.

Committee questions and next steps

Committee members pressed for more granular data, asked for clearer transportation assumptions (public transit vs. private vehicle ownership) and suggested the report should show the roommate/shared-housing figures alongside a single-person private-unit scenario to help policymakers compare policy choices. Patrick Chardin offered to return with further charts and to provide printed copies of the full report. Members asked JFO to prepare additional comparisons and to supply the underlying data or citations for specific line items in advance of a follow-up session.

Ending

The committee paused the presentation for a break and scheduled follow-up work to examine detailed tables and to discuss policy implications, including how housing costs and childcare subsidies shape the transition from single shared housing to family households. The report will be posted to legislative reports and the committee expects to reconvene on the material in the coming weeks.