Infographic: Income vs. Cost-of-Living For All 50 States

Posted on August 14, 2016 // 4 Comments
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

The NY Times has an article called What $100 Can Buy, State by State. You know I can’t resist a good 50-state infographic. The first chart is basically a cost-of-living comparison. The findings shouldn’t be too surprising.

nyt_100buy1

  • Stuff and services cost the most in District of Columbia, Hawaii, New York, New Jersey, California, and Maryland.
  • Stuff and services cost the least in Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, South Dakota, and Kentucky.

You would expect the states with higher cost-of-living to also have higher incomes. But the correlation isn’t always perfect. I found the second chart to be more interesting, as they adjusted for incomes. Some places had low-to-average income and high prices, while some states had average-to-high incomes and low prices.

nyt_100buy2

  • The states where per capita incomes have the most purchasing power were North Dakota, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Wyoming, Massachusetts, and Nebraska.
  • The states where per capita incomes have the least purchasing power were Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho, and Hawaii.
Filed Under: Career, Frugal Living //
Last updated: August 14, 2016
My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.

User Generated Content Disclosure: Comments and/or responses are not provided or commissioned by any advertiser. Comments and/or responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any advertiser. It is not any advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

Comments

  1. Larry Newman says
    August 15, 2016 at 5:33 am

    This is awesome. Could you make one with Europe as well?

    Reply
  2. Jim says
    August 15, 2016 at 7:56 am

    I think this is interesting, though this data misses two key things

    1. Taxes. I don’t believe state taxes such as property or income are included in this, so that can make a big difference
    2. While it looks at rents, it doesn’t look at real estate prices. For example, rents may be 2x difference between states, but values could be 4x (i.e. the higher cost statge tolerates lower rental yields).

    I think those two additions would make this skew even more…

    Reply
  3. Dannielle @ Odd Cents says
    August 18, 2016 at 6:37 am

    I love this infographic. I thought Georgia and Louisiana would have been blue though. This reminds me of those MSN features which used to look at how much house you can get for X dollars. The ranges are shocking.

    Reply

Speak Your Mind

*