Dr. Joynicole Martinez
Rising Tide Capital
She opens her salon at 7 a.m., cuts hair until the last client leaves, and goes home to do the books at the kitchen table. She pays her taxes. She employs two stylists. And by the math of the federal government, she is not poor.
By the math of her rent, her child care bill, and the price of groceries, she is barely hanging on.
United Way has a name for her. She is ALICE.
Who is ALICE?
ALICE stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. The term describes households that earn more than the Federal Poverty Level but less than what it actually costs to live in their county, according to United For ALICE, the national research initiative that grew out of United Way. These are the cashiers, child care providers, home health aides, drivers, and small business owners who keep neighborhoods running.
The newest national figures are sobering. In 2024, 54.5 million of the country’s roughly 132 million households, or 41 percent, fell below the ALICE Threshold, the line that combines households in poverty with ALICE households, according to The State of ALICE in the United States 2026 Report. The number of ALICE households grew 23 percent between 2010 and 2024, faster than the 15 percent growth in total households, the same 2026 report found.
For Black America, the picture is sharper still. Of about 15.8 million Black households nationwide, 9.1 million, or 58 percent, lived below the ALICE Threshold in 2024, according to the national report. State reports tell the same story. In Michigan, 62 percent of Black households were below the threshold in 2023, compared to 38 percent of White households, the Michigan Association of United Ways reported.
These are not families who stopped working. That “E” in ALICE matters. These are families who are working and still falling behind.
The official poverty measure was built decades ago and does not reflect what a family pays today for rent, child care, and health insurance. ALICE fills that gap by pricing a bare-bones Household Survival Budget, county by county.
United For ALICE also tracks prices differently. Its ALICE Essentials Index follows only the basics: housing, child care, food, transportation, health care, and basic technology. From 2021 to 2024, those essentials rose 5.6 percent per year, compared to 5.0 percent for the Consumer Price Index, according to United For ALICE. Between 2007 and 2024, rental housing costs rose 99 percent and food at home rose 38 percent, the Essentials Index shows.
In plain terms, the things our families cannot skip have gotten more expensive faster than everything else. The headline inflation number undercounts the pain.
Consider child care workers, many of them women of color. Their median hourly wage rose from $9.28 in 2010 to $15.41 in 2024. Yet a full-time worker earning that wage still fell $16,766 short of the ALICE Household Survival Budget in 2024, a bigger gap than in 2010, according to United For ALICE. A raise that does not keep up with rent is not a raise.
Why use ALICE? Economists can debate whether the national economy is strong. ALICE asks a simpler question: can a working family in this county pay for the basics this month?
That framing matters right now for three reasons.
First, it is honest. When 41 percent of households are below the threshold, as the 2026 report documents, hardship is not a fringe issue. It is the lived reality of a huge share of the workforce.
Second, it removes shame. ALICE tells the family in the next pew that they are not failing. The system around them has priced out the paycheck.
Third, it is practical. Because ALICE data is local, down to the county and often the town, it gives employers, lawmakers, lenders, and churches a shared map. United For ALICE describes its work as providing “a framework and language” for leaders to reassess public and corporate policies (United For ALICE).
Our community has always built its own doors when others were closed. From the barbershop to the corner store to the family catering business, entrepreneurship has been a path to dignity and wealth when wages alone would not do it.
ALICE data helps explain why. When a paycheck cannot cover the Household Survival Budget, many ALICE earners start a side business, drive for a platform, braid hair on weekends, or turn a talent into a trade. Many of the small business owners who employ ALICE workers are themselves one slow month away from joining them.
That is why the ALICE lens should shape how we support entrepreneurs. A business owner who is also ALICE does not need a pep talk. She needs:
· Affordable, patient capital, not predatory loans or high-fee cash advances.
· Practical training in pricing, bookkeeping, and cash flow so revenue actually becomes household income.
· Coaching and peer networks that last beyond a single workshop.
· Access to child care and benefits, because the entrepreneur is often the family’s caregiver too.
· Local procurement, so that hospitals, universities, and corporations buy from the businesses on our own blocks.
When a small business stabilizes, the benefit spreads. The owner moves above the threshold. The workers she hires get steadier hours. The dollars stay in the neighborhood longer.
The model works when it is built for people like ALICE. The nonprofit I lead, Rising Tide Capital, started in 2004 with 15 entrepreneurs a year. Today it has served more than 13,500 entrepreneurs in English and Spanish, working in more than 14 states.
The results line up with what ALICE families need most: more income at home. Among the entrepreneurs it serves, business sales grew 77 percent and household incomes grew 56 percent, and together they created more than 1,500 new jobs. More than 81 percent of entrepreneurs we serve are still running their businesses after five years. That is a key test, because many small businesses close within their first few years.
This work is the ALICE lesson in action. A family climbs above the threshold when the business does more than survive, and starts to support the household.
What can you do? Look up your own county. United For ALICE publishes local data at unitedforalice.org, and many local United Ways share state reports.
Bring the numbers to the table. Share them with your family, your friends, pastor, your city council member, your employer, and your chamber of commerce. Ask what they are doing for the 58 percent of Black households the national report says are struggling to afford the basics.
Buy Black, and buy local, on purpose. Every purchase from a neighborhood business is a vote for a family’s stability.
And if you are ALICE, know this: the struggle is not a verdict on your worth or your work ethic. It is a measure of an economy that has not yet caught up to you. The goal, for all of us, is to make sure it does.
