Georgia families hit harder by food and healthcare costs than the rest of the US

New research from a Georgetown University policy organization reports that people in Georgia are struggling more than the nation as a whole to pay for food and healthcare.

The new Family Economic Well-Being Index, out Thursday, reports that more than a third of Georgians are burdened or severely burdened by food costs and nearly half are similarly struggling to pay for healthcare.

Their hardship is not captured by traditional poverty statistics, said Lelaine Bigelow, executive director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality.

“While families in poverty face the greatest difficulty affording the basics, this struggle reaches well into the middle class,” Bigelow said in a statement. “Millions of people are working hard and still can’t get ahead of these costs.”

The center, based at the Georgetown University Law Center, used the federal government’s 2023 American Community Survey and other data to classify people in four categories based on their ability to cover four essential needs: childcare, food, healthcare and housing.

Those who were best off were categorized as meeting needs or getting by. Those who were struggling were sorted into burdened or severely burdened.

Georgia was on par with the U.S. as a whole for housing, with about a third either burdened or severely burdened.

But 36% of Georgians struggled with food costs versus 32% nationwide. With healthcare, 48% of Georgians were burdened or severely burdened, compared to 41% nationally.

One bright spot, sort of: the cost of childcare for children under 6.

The percentage of Georgia households that were burdened or severely burdened paying for it was 8 percentage points below the national percentage. But it was still more than half of Georgia parents, at 53%.

The numbers underscore the salience of affordability as an issue with just weeks to go before the Nov. 3 election.

“Affordability is the defining economic issue of the moment,” Bigelow said.