Resources for Illinois Families Struggling to Make Ends Meet

The Social IMPACT Research Center has compiled a Quick Resource Guide for Illinois families struggling to make ends meet. The Quick Resource Guide outlines the various types of assistance that may be available to Illinois families and includes information on eligibility criteria, where to get more information, and how to access or apply for certain benefits.

Download the Quick Resource Guide

Links to online applications:

Apply for Unemployment Insurance

Apply for cash, medical, and food stamp benefits

Apply for All Kids and Family Care

The Illinois Family Economic Self-Sufficiency Standard (FESS)

The Social IMPACT Research Center (IMPACT), formerly the Heartland Alliance Mid-America Institute on Poverty, is home to the Illinois Family Economic Self-Sufficiency Standard (FESS). The FESS is a tool that measures how much income working families need to meet their basic expenses of housing, child care, food, health care, transportation, and taxes depending on where they live and the composition of their family. The FESS is calculated on real costs for different family types in numerous geographic areas across Illinois.

The FESS helps define who needs assistance and places an emphasis on the importance of work supports, wages, career ladders, and economic development priorities. This tool enables individuals, policymakers, advocates, business leaders, and service providers to plan, not just how to move families out of poverty, but how to move them forward on a path to true economic independence and stability.

Illinois' FESS was originally created in December 2001 and reflects early 2000s cost data. As such, the original FESS is outdated and has declined in usefulness. IMPACT is in the process of updating the Illinois FESS and creating a useful online calculator that individuals, case managers, advocates, and others can use to evaluate job quality and determine the income needed to make ends meet.

To get more information on Family Economic Self-Sufficiency efforts around the nation:

• Visit Wider Opportunities for Women
• Read the Report: Self Sufficiency Standards for Illinois

The Federal Poverty Measure 

The current measure of poverty has long since failed to give an accurate picture of what families need to realize a decent, though modest, standard of living. Many experts agree that it takes an income of around two times the poverty line to pay for a family's most basic expenses. The time is ripe to reevaluate the poverty measure and implement a relevant, useful measure that is both more complete in counting available family resources and that provides a realistic picture of how much income American families need to meet the price demands of their basic expenses such as housing, health care, child care, transportation, and food. Such a measure would present a picture of poverty that is anchored to real costs and would have the capacity to measure the impact policies and programs have on alleviating poverty, helping give a better sense of how to target resources.

• Download Heartland Alliance's "Measuring Poverty in America" testimony before the Congressional Ways and Means Committee

 The Illinois Family Economic Self-Sufficiency Standard is generously supported by the Grand Victoria Foundation.