The Poverty Premium
Being poor costs more. Slide the income to see how check-cashing fees, food desert markups, and emergency care add up to an invisible tax on not having enough.
At $28,000 a year, you pay about $3,400 extra — just for being poor. At $15,000, it’s closer to $3,800 — nearly a quarter of your income. At $80,000, it disappears entirely.
The Invisible Tax
The poverty premium is what economists call the extra cost of being low-income. When you can’t afford a bank account, you pay check-cashing fees. When you can’t get a prime-rate credit card, you pay 24% instead of 16%. When you live in a food desert, groceries cost 20-30% more. When you can’t afford preventive care, you end up in the ER — and the ER bill is ten times what the clinic visit would have been.
None of this is a choice. It’s the structural cost of not having enough to access the cheaper option. It’s one of the reasons Foundation argues for UBI as infrastructure: the economic floor doesn’t just provide income — it removes the premium that makes poverty self-reinforcing.
See the full Foundation framework →
Built by Æ for Humanity and AI. Cost estimates drawn from Brookings Institution, Federal Reserve, and USDA research.