This year's release of the 2008 Family Economic Self-Sufficiency Standard for Amador County contains some disturbing, yet unsurprising, statistics about how difficult it is to make ends meet.

As defined in the report, "Self-sufficiency is the income level at which a family can be sustained without relying on income support or public assistance."

The Self-Sufficiency Standard is based on the costs families face on a daily basis, including housing, food, child care, health care, transportation, taxes and other necessary spending. The standard assumes that all adults work - both parents in a two-parent family and one parent in a one-parent family.

Currently, the federal poverty level is the most commonly-used guide for determining levels of income low enough to qualify for many government assistance and relief programs. Devised more than four decades ago, the FPL is based solely on the cost of food. Estimated food expense for a family was multiplied by three to come up with the well-known FPL.

This method of computation didn't satisfy everyone. Among the dissatisfied was the Washington-based National Economic Development & Law Center, now operating as the Insight Center for Community Economic Development.

"During the mid-'90s, there was a lot of discussion about why people were not getting to financial independence," said the Insight Center's Jenny Chung. "They weren't getting out of the cycle of welfare."

In 1996, the NEDLC, in collaboration with Dr. Diana Pearce, then director of the Women and Poverty Project at Wider Opportunities for Women in Washington, D.C., released the first Self-Sufficiency Standard. "The concept," explained Chung, "was defining what is enough income, rather than what is not enough. They wanted to give people a goal, a number to strive toward."

This year's release is the third update of the Self-Sufficiency Standard for counties in California, one of 36 states utilizing these calculations. The Insight Center works with Dr. Pearce, who is now at the University of Washington in Seattle, to produce this more comprehensive method of measuring a family's actual needs.

Each county report details the expenses for 156 different family compositions, plugging in different numbers for infants from those for children of preschool age, school age and teenage. For purposes of this article, only two of the 156 family compositions were used.

The findings for Amador County show that a single parent with a preschooler and a school-age child has to earn more than $21 an hour, almost $46,000 annually, just to get by. Two parents in a family with a preschooler and a school-age child would each have to earn around $13 per hour for an annual total of $56,940. If only one parent in a two-parent household works, that $13 per hour number has to be doubled to $26 per hour for subsistence living.

The federal poverty level is the same everywhere in the country. In contrast, the standard varies geographically, not only by state, but also by county, reflecting real variations in the cost of living. In 1980, the FPL for a single person was $4,190 a year, while for a family of four it was $8,414. By 2008, these figures had grown to $10,400 for one person and $21,200 for four.

Head Start, the Food Stamp Program, the National School Lunch Program, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program and the Children's Health Insurance Program continue to use the FPL to determine eligibility. This means that all those families of four sandwiched between the FPL of $21,200 and the Self-Sufficiency Standard of $53,366 are living at a level of deprivation that doesn't quite qualify them for the benefits of being officially poverty-stricken.

The Self-Sufficiency Standard has been adopted by Workforce Investment boards around the country. Philanthropic foundations have adopted the Standard to prioritize their granting mechanisms. The standard also has been used in various labor negotiations as a tool for determining adequate pay levels. "Our ultimate goal," said Chung, "is to have our Self-Sufficiency Standard adopted at the national, state and local levels to replace the FPL as the measure of eligibility for public programs and to be used in evaluating and developing policies that support working families."

Earning enough money to be self-sufficient in Amador County is not easy. According to the Capital Region Healthy Futures Project, Amador ranks dead last among counties in the area in providing jobs that pay enough to achieve self-sufficiency. Barely 25 percent of single parents with two children earn enough to escape falling below the Self-Sufficiency Standard line. Having two wage-earners in the family may not bring in enough, either.

"Times are becoming increasingly difficult for couples as well," said First Five Amador Executive Director Nina Machado, "not just singles."

The stagnation in the local construction industry has added many workers to the ranks of the struggling.

The U.S. Department of Labor provides statistics by county and reveals the local jobs that pay high enough wages to rise above the Self-Sufficiency Standard line. Health care, law enforcement and corrections provide sufficient compensation, while food service, entertainment and recreation languish near the bottom of the pay rates. Retail hovers near the middle, still well below the self-sufficiency line.

As part of the ongoing research for updating the Amador County General Plan, research was done that led to creation of a 69-page document that analyzed the local economy. Although similar to the revelations included in the federal study, county findings pinpoint a few more professions that pay enough, including mining, utilities, information, finance and insurance.

The health care field pays well, with doctors, pharmacists, dentists, nurses and dental hygienists earning well above the line. Police and sheriff's office protection workers, as well as correctional officers at our prisons, are adequately compensated. Curiously, firefighters barely clear the hurdle, at $21 an hour, compared to the police rates at $29 an hour and correctional officers beyond $32 an hour. Teachers' pay isn't listed at an hourly rate, but their annual salaries of $48,000 for elementary school teachers and $58,000 for secondary school teachers lift them into self-sufficiency.