News of the Day February 17, 2026
Essential Household Costs are Driving Wisconsin’s Affordability Challenge, Report Says

While median wages in Wisconsin have kept pace with inflation over the last 25 years, many essential household costs have risen much faster than wages and overall inflation.

That’s according to a new report from Forward Analytics, the research arm of the Wisconsin Counties Association. It highlights the rising costs for essential expenses like housing and healthcare as the primary constraint on household budgets across the state.

Preliminary estimates show that median household incomes in Wisconsin rose by 90 percent from 2000 to 2025, while overall costs of goods and services measured by the Consumer Price Index have increased by 87 percent during the same period, the report states.

Much of a household’s typical budget is tied up in goods and services that are hard to reduce, substitute or eliminate, like housing, health care, transportation and education, the report notes.

The report looked at cost increases across a variety of goods and services, broken down by essential costs and discretionary, or nonessential, costs. Most of the essential costs examined outpaced median incomes, while most discretionary costs decreased over the last 25 years.

The biggest increase among essential costs came from hospital services, which have increased by 274 percent since 2000, the report found.

Those hospital costs include inpatient and outpatient care, and represent the price that’s paid by consumers and by insurance companies toward hospital services.