Numbers on the cost of living and personal income for the year 2014 have been released by The Bureau of Economic Analysis.
The Bureau uses something called Regional Price Parity, an index that sets the average cost of the things we use at “100.” A certain region’s RPP shows how the cost of living there compares to that average.
As it says in a Yahoo Finance article, as an example, “the New York City metropolitan area had a 2014 RPP of 122.3, which means that NYC is about 22.3% more expensive than the national average. Meanwhile, Beckley, West Virginia, had a RPP of 79.7, meaning that goods and services cost just about four-fifths as much as in the country as a whole.”
According to the chart, five of the top ten most expensive places to live in the US are in Northern California where I live. Swell.
The Midwest and Southeast are the most affordable areas of the country.
How does your region stack up?