ALICE Goes To War
Vol. IV, No. 17 - High Oil Prices are Crusing Vulnerable Housholds here at Home
In the social service world, the acronym ALICE has gained notice for quite a few years, largely thanks to our friends at the United Way. ALICE—Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed—describes households that are working, often full-time, yet still cannot reliably cover the basic cost of living where they live. These are not people disconnected from the economy; they are in it every day, but the math no longer works.
In Miami County, 22% of households are classified as ALICE and another 11% live in poverty. Put together, roughly one in three households—33%—cannot afford a bare‑bones “survival” budget that covers only the essentials. That single number should force us to rethink what we mean when we say the local economy is “doing fine.” And as the Iran war drives fuel and fertilizer costs sharply higher, that one‑third is about to feel the squeeze first, hardest, and longest.
ALICE Meets A Fuel Shock
Here in 2026, ALICE households are getting shocked by higher fuel prices. The first signs are the explosion of gas prices at the gas station, but the bigger bill is coming in higher diesel costs, more expensive groceries, and stressed farm finances. Most of your neighbors have not put those pieces together yet. To them, it still looks like “prices just went up again.” To understand what is really happening, you have to connect ALICE households here in Miami County with a war that started thousands of miles away and a handful of narrow waterways most people have never heard of.
The 2026 Iran war did not start at the pump. It started with decisions in Washington and Jerusalem to hit Iran militarily after years of sanctions, covert skirmishes, and political brinkmanship. Iran answered in the one place it knew it had leverage: the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage that normally carries close to 20% of the world’s traded oil each day, along with natural gas and refined products. When tanker traffic slows through that chokepoint, prices for crude, diesel, jet fuel, and fertilizer do not just rise in theory—they actually rose and are are hurting ALICE households.
The Household Budget That Doesn’t Pencil Out
Even before the war, the numbers for a basic household budget in Miami County were tight. A single adult needs close to $28,000 a year just to cover a lean survival budget. A single parent with one child needs over $40,000. A family of four with two children in childcare needs north of $75,000 just to get by—no savings, no college fund, no cushion for a blown transmission or a medical bill. The county’s median household income is around $75,000, which means a lot of families that look “middle class” on paper are one disruption away from trouble.
Now layer a fuel shock on top of that. Gas prices have already climbed this summer, and diesel has jumped even faster to near record levels around here. For a middle‑class family, that means fewer dinners out and some uncomfortable tradeoffs. For an ALICE household—already spending most of its income on housing, food, transportation, and childcare—it means the difference between staying barely current and falling behind on rent, utilities, or car payments. That extra $20 or $30 a week at the pump is the co‑pay, the prescription, the past‑due electric bill.
Why The Midwest, And Miami County, Are In The Crosshairs
People in rural counties drive longer distances for work, school, church, and basic errands. Every extra quarter per gallon hits harder when you put that many miles on a vehcile; for ALICE households that lifeline might be an old beater that gets less than optimal fuel efficiency squeezing budgets even tighter. Furthermore, our local economy is built on other petro-chemical products like diesel and fertilizer; from spring planting through harvest, every pass across a field is now a fuel and input decision.
The local agricultural industry is getting squeezed at every step—paying more to run equipment, more to haul grain, and more for the fertilizer that makes the crop possible in the first place. When those costs jump 20–40%, you see hard choices: cut application rates and risk yields, delay repairs, or take on more debt. That is not some abstract farm‑belt problem. When small and mid‑sized farms cut back or sell out, the impacts eventually show up in your grocery bill, in the consolidation of land ownership, and in the stability of the small towns that depend on that farm income.
For ALICE households in Miami County, that means getting hit from both sides. Higher fuel prices make it more expensive to get to work, to childcare, or to the doctor. Higher farm and freight costs work their way into the price of bread, milk, eggs, and the cheap packaged foods that fill in the gaps when the paycheck doesn’t stretch. There is no “luxury” to cut; you start seeing quiet adjustments—skipping meals so kids can eat, turning the thermostat down too far in winter and up too far in summer, stretching bills until the shutoff notices hit.
National Decisions, Local Consequences
The hard truth is that what we are seeing was decades in the making that has helped set the stage for this. One administration escalated with airstrikes and a naval blockade of Hormuz, promising a quick, clean win while choking off a fifth of the world’s oil. Another spent years talking about building a clean‑energy future while leaving the United States deeply tied to fossil fuels shipped through narrow, vulnerable straits—and without a serious, durable strategy for deterring Iran short of walking up to the brink.
When you treat diplomacy and war like campaign messaging instead of serious work, ordinary people pay the bill. One party lights the fuse and calls it strength. The other waits for the explosion, then wrings their hands. Out here, all of that translates into higher gas, higher groceries, and more households slipping below the ALICE threshold.
What Communities Can Still Do
You cannot reopen the Strait of Hormuz from here in Miami County. But local choices still matter. The same tools that can help ALICE households in normal times—more housing that people can actually afford, better childcare access, smarter transportation options, well‑targeted utility assistance, and realistic workforce training—matter even more during a global shock like this.
At the personal and neighborhood level, small, unglamorous things add up: carpooling, combining trips, churches and civic groups organizing errands, pooling gas cards, giving to local food pantries, schools and libraries acting as safe places with food and internet for kids, and neighbors checking on families who have quietly stopped driving or grocery shopping as often. None of this fixes the Strait of Hormuz. It does keep more people from falling off the cliff while national leaders argue about poll numbers.
For a county where one in three households already cannot afford the basics, this war is not a distant geopolitical chess match. It is the next stress test of whether our local systems—public, private, and civic—are willing to treat working families’ stability as the main measure of success, rather than an afterthought once the ribbon‑cuttings are done.
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This Month, we are doing something different! We are partnering with the Troy-Miami County Public Library by using this platform to raise funds for the Dolly Partin Imagination Library locally here in Miami County! Through the Dolly Partin Imagination Library, children from birth to Kindergarten, can get a book delivered every month to their home at no cost.
And while Dolly is a huge help, she picks out the stories and she works with the publishers, there is still a local cost to the program. Your donations through our “Buy Me A Coffee Page” will help get these youngsters on the right track to a life-long love of reading!
Thanks to John, Kim and Rachelle for your recent donations to this effort. So far this month — 55 books have been purchased! Thank you!