In 2025, Urban partnered with the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies (FPWA) and New York City officials to inform debates on affordability policy, using our true cost of economic security data to shed light on what families need to thrive.

Four years ago, New York City voters approved a ballot initiative requiring the city government to develop an annual report on the true cost of living for New York residents. After the initiative passed, stakeholders faced a challenge: there was no widely accepted way to assess whether families can afford the essentials for succeeding in today’s economy. FPWA and its National True Cost of Living Coalition turned to Urban for a solution.

Urban worked with FPWA to develop a groundbreaking new methodology for measuring economic security that accounts for a full range of family expenses alongside all available resources, including earnings, benefits, and savings. In contrast to the federal government’s official poverty measure, which assumes that families spend roughly a third of their income on food, the true cost of economic security (TCES) measure considers data on the actual, localized costs that families incur for housing, child care, transportation, and other expenses. TCES aims to assess what families need to thrive, not just survive, including adequate savings for emergencies and retirement.

The first TCES report, issued in 2024, found that 52 percent of all Americans, and 60 percent of children, live in families that earn less than our threshold for economic security.

Urban turned our attention back to New York in 2025, generating borough-level TCES data showing that 72 percent of the city’s children live in families below the economic security line. FPWA drew on this and other striking findings in a major policy report (PDF), interviews and op-eds, testimony at New York City and State legislative hearings, meetings with Mayor Mamdani’s transition team, and a forum on the affordability crisis co-hosted by FPWA and the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs.

At the same time, Urban worked with the New York City government to create a version of TCES that takes unique local policies and dynamics into account. This local version of TCES will serve as the foundation of the city’s first official report on the true cost of living in New York City, slated for release in 2026. Urban continues to work with FPWA and others to address policymakers’ growing interest in using more accurate metrics to design policies that advance economic security.