What is the Self-Sufficiency Standard?

The Connecticut State Office of Health Strategy and the Connecticut Office of the State Comptroller are publishing The Self-Sufficiency Standard for Connecticut, 2019 and  The Demographic Characteristics of Households Below Economic Self-Sufficiency in Connecticut, 2019 in an effort to ensure that the best data and analyses are available to enable Connecticut’s families and individuals to make progress toward real economic security. It is a building block in the creation of a new Healthcare Affordability modeling tool and standard that will be available in the spring of 2020.

The Self-Sufficiency Standard identifies what income is required for families in Connecticut to afford their basic needs, such as housing, child care, food, transportation, and health care without any financial assistance from any sources. 

It is calculated in detail for 700 family types in each town and city in the state. The report gives a detailed description of the economic strains that present challenges to reaching self-sufficiency in Connecticut. It also calculates the wage needed to reach self-sufficiency, broken down by geographic region and family type. 

The Standard is a more detailed and accurate calculation of sufficient income and is thus a better tool for measuring poverty than the Federal Poverty Limit. Given these differences and the barriers to reaching self-sufficiency in Connecticut, this report helps to define problems that require new and innovative policies to better serve those living in Connecticut.