By June 1, 2026
Within five years, the income needed to maintain a middle-class standard of living for a two-parent family with two school-age children in Massachusetts jumped nearly 50 percent, according to the MassINC Policy Center.
This increase, from $117,000 in 2020 to $174,000 in 2024, is a much faster rise than in the past and exceeds the rate nationwide.
It also outpaced the inflation rate by 28 percentage points, analysis by the Massachusetts research nonprofit shows. Until recently, inflation rose at about the same rate as middle-class household budgets. And this divergence reflects MassINC’s larger finding: Many households are far more financially strained than traditional inflation measures show.
So what’s happening?
Costs have been skyrocketing, to start, particularly for housing. In Massachusetts, home prices have increased more than in any other state; housing-related costs more than doubled over the past two decades, MassINC data shows. Rents are now often more than a mortgage payment. And health care expenses shot up more than 150 percent.
MassBudget Reference:
The growing divide between the haves and the have-nots is clear in Massachusetts, where the median household income is roughly $104,000 but more than a quarter of households make less than $50,000 a year. A small percentage of people are making a lot of money, while a lot of households are barely able to afford basic needs, said Viviana Abreu-Hernandez, president of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center.
The expense of living in Massachusetts is driving many people away. Nearly nine out of every 10 households leaving the state made less than $200,000 a year, according to MassBudget.
“We are saying that the economy is working,” Abreu-Hernandez said. “The question that I always ask is: For whom?”
