Costs for Carroll County families have risen more quickly than wages over the past decade, making self-sufficiency harder to achieve, according to a new study.

Families with young children need to earn nearly $55,000 a year to make ends meet in St. Mary’s County, a new study says.

A family of three — one adult, one preschooler and one school-age child — in Anne Arundel County needs an annual income of $67,865 just to meet their basic needs, a new report shows.

A family of three in Caroline County — an adult, a preschooler and a child in school — would need more than $44,500 to cover essential costs, including housing, child care, transportation, health care and food, a new study shows. That’s more than twice the federal poverty level, which is $19,090 in 2012, as calculated by the Department of Health and Human Services.

From 2008 to 2011, average monthly applications for food stamps in Baltimore increased by 66 percent, and applications for temporary cash assistance rose 35 percent, according to the Maryland Department of Human Resources.

Families with young children in Prince George’s County need to make more than $50,000 a year to cover just their basic living expenses, according to a new report.

To make ends meet in Baltimore County, a family of three that includes an adult, a preschool child and a school-age child needs to make nearly $62,000 to cover basic needs, a new study finds. That is more than three times the federal poverty level.

Families with young children in Montgomery County must earn at least $64,000 a year just to cover their basic needs without government aid — about a 50 percent increase over the past decade that makes the county more expensive for working families than New York City and San Francisco, a new study says.

Over the past two years Patricia Santee has seen a change in the people seeking assistance from the Charles County Children’s Aid Society, where she works as an administrative assistant.