Poverty, middle class and the cost of living. . .

This just in from The Huffington Post:

The Economic Policy Institute has just updated their cost-of-living budgets to reflect how much a family needs to earn to get by in 2013.

Looking at over 600 locations and estimating community-specific costs, EPI found that families need more than twice the amount of the federal poverty line to have a secure yet modest living standard.

"Our family budget calculations show that the real costs for families to live modest -- not even middle class -- lives are much higher than conventional estimates show and virtually impossible for families living on minimum-wage jobs," said Elise Gould, the Economic Policy Institute director of health policy research.

Read more here.