Interestingly, the costs for a single-parent family with two children don't differ much from a two-parent household. A single parent in San Francisco needs an annual income of $80,703 to maintain a comfortable lifestyle. In San Jose that number is $75,618 and in Oakland it's $70, 978.

San Francisco residents often complain that it's just as expensive to live here as New York or Boston. Are they right? Well, for a family of four, New York is definitely more expensive than San Francisco, coming in at $93,502 annually. Chicago is much cheaper, only requiring $69,028 per year. And Boston is right around the same price as San Francisco, at $85,641.

Meanwhile, Federal Poverty Guidelines say a family of four is "officially" poor if it brings in less than $23,550 per year. Even 300 percent of that poverty line, $70,650, falls well below the comfortable threshold proposed by the Economic Policy Institute for Bay Area cities.

Update: Following a number of questions raised in the comments here and on Facebook, we've written a follow-up post on the numbers above and if a family of four can live on $84,000 in San Francisco?

Economic Policy InstituteEconomic Policy Institute

How Much Does It Cost to Live Comfortably in the Bay Area?