BEA RPP anchor
Every state-level price claim is generated from BEA table SARPP, 2024 reference year, released 19 February 2026. Not adjusted, not blended, not time-shifted.
Sources, calculations, scope | Verified September 2026
Cost of Living Methodology
Cost of living rankings are widely cited but rarely well understood. This page documents the citation chain, the calculation framework, the scope decisions and the known limitations. Every price-level figure on the site comes from BEA Regional Price Parities, 2024 reference year. Housing values, incomes, tax rates and utility bills come from the separate sources listed below.
Calculation framework
How the numbers are built.
BLS CPI for time-shift
Used on the cost-of-living-increase page, which is about inflation over time. Price parities are published as-is and are never time-shifted.
Census ACS for housing
Median home value and gross rent come from the ACS 5-year estimates. Refresh against Zillow ZHVI and Apartment List for current-quarter housing.
USDA + AAA + EIA for utilities
Grocery from USDA Food Plans, gas from AAA, electricity and natural gas from EIA. State-level public-data sources with monthly updates.
Four components, and no others
BEA publishes goods, housing rents, utilities and other services. It publishes no grocery, healthcare or transportation parity, so this site shows none rather than estimating one.
Tax Foundation for the tax overlay
Price parities exclude taxes. The /taxes page layers Tax Foundation total state-and-local burden on top of the price index to produce a true-cost view.
The footnote that matters
Standard COLI excludes taxes.
The single most important caveat: a price parity does not include state income tax, property tax, sales tax or federal taxes. A state with low cost of living can still be expensive after taxes; a state with high cost of living can be cheaper than it looks if it has no income tax.
We address this on the taxes page by layering Tax Foundation total state-and-local burden estimates on top of the cost index to produce a "true cost of living" combined measure.
Other things the index does not capture: federal taxes (uniform across states), savings rate, retirement-specific tax treatment (covered on the retirement page), quality of life, education quality, crime, climate and commute time.
Primary sources
Data sources cited across the site
| Dataset | Publisher | Period | How we use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regional Price Parities (RPP) | Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) | Annual. 2024 reference year, released 19 February 2026. | The only price index on this site. Every index column, ranking and comparison is generated from table SARPP. Covers all 50 states and DC. A work of the US federal government, in the public domain. |
| Consumer Price Index by region | Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) | Monthly, current | Inflation trend by Census region (Northeast, Midwest, South, West). Used on the cost-of-living-increase page, which is about change over time. Never used to adjust a BEA price parity. |
| American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year | US Census Bureau | 5-year estimates 2019-2023 | Median household income, median home value, gross rent, household size for every state. |
| Living Wage Calculator | MIT (Glasmeier, Department of Urban Studies) | Updated annually | Required income by family composition by county. Benchmark for 'what does a family of four actually need' answers. |
| Home Value Index (ZHVI) | Zillow Research | Monthly, current | Median home value by state, refresh against ACS for current-quarter housing figures. |
| Rent Reports | Apartment List | Monthly, current | Median 2-bedroom rent by state and metro. Cross-check against ACS gross-rent estimates. |
| USDA Food Plans (Thrifty, Low, Moderate, Liberal) | USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion | Monthly, current | Weekly grocery cost by family composition. Benchmark for the monthly grocery-bill estimates on the groceries page (BEA publishes no grocery parity). |
| State Gas Price Averages | AAA Gas Prices | Daily, current | Regular unleaded gas price by state, shown on the transportation page (BEA publishes no transportation parity). |
| State Energy Profiles | US Energy Information Administration (EIA) | Monthly, current | Average residential electricity rate (cents per kWh), natural gas, total energy spend per capita. |
| State Health Spending | Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) | Annual, 2024 release | Total health spending per capita, employer-sponsored premium averages, uninsured rate by state, Medicaid expansion status. |
| Marketplace Health Insurance | Healthcare.gov / CMS | Open enrolment 2026 | Benchmark silver-plan premiums by state, ACA subsidy thresholds. |
| State and Local Tax Burden | Tax Foundation | Fiscal year 2024-2025 | Total state and local tax burden as percent of state income. Used in the /taxes page true-cost-of-living overlay. |
| State Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) | Bureau of Labor Statistics | May 2024 release | Median wage by occupation by state. Powers the salary-purchasing-power calculations. |
| National Broadband Map | Federal Communications Commission (FCC) | Current, 2025 | Percentage of households with 100Mbps+ broadband, average residential speed by state. |
| Hospital and Healthcare Access | American Hospital Association (AHA) / CMS | 2024-2025 | Hospitals per 100,000 residents. Cross-check Medicaid expansion via CMS state-by-state lookup. |
In scope vs out of scope
In scope
- State-level cost of living comparison for all 50 states + DC
- Per-category breakdowns: housing, groceries, healthcare, utilities, transportation, miscellaneous
- Salary purchasing power calculations from BLS OEWS by occupation
- Tax overlay (income, property, sales) via Tax Foundation
- Retirement composite with tax-friendliness and healthcare access weighting
- Remote-worker geo-arbitrage scenarios
Out of scope
- City-by-city rankings (state averages mask metro variance; use BEA RPP metro tables)
- Quality of life, climate or crime rankings (too subjective for cost-only methodology)
- Per-county rankings (resolution exceeds BEA RPP publication granularity)
- Investment returns or asset allocation
- Personal financial planning advice (consult a CFP)
- Forecasted future cost figures (we publish current and historical, not projections)
YMYL discipline
This is reference content.
Personal cost of living depends on family composition, profession, housing type, benefit coverage and individual lifestyle choices. State averages are a shortlist, not a personal forecast. Use a certified financial planner (CFP), a CPA familiar with the destination state's tax code, and a fiduciary advisor with retirement-income tax experience before making a relocation decision.
Corrections: email [email protected] with the page URL, the figure in dispute and a primary source. We acknowledge within five business days and publish a correction with the source cited inline.
Frequently Asked
Methodology, answered
Which index does this site use?
BEA Regional Price Parities, and nothing else. Until September 2026 the index columns here followed the shape of the C2ER Cost of Living Index, a commercial dataset whose basket and per-state observations sit behind a paywall. Those numbers could not be checked by a reader and are gone. Every index figure on the site is now generated from BEA table SARPP, 2024 reference year, which anyone can download for free. The two measures do not agree, and where a page used to quote a C2ER-shaped figure it now quotes the federal one.
What does the BEA index include, and what does it leave out?
BEA publishes an all-items parity plus four components: goods (food, apparel, medical goods, transport goods, other goods), services housing (tenant rents plus imputed rent on owner-occupied homes), services utilities (water, sanitation, electricity, gas) and services other (every service except rents). It publishes no grocery parity, no healthcare parity and no transportation parity, so this site shows none. Note the benchmark: only the all-items line is normalised to exactly 100 for the nation. The four components are stated against that same national all-items level, so in 2024 the US reads 99.6 goods, 100.6 housing, 98.4 utilities and 100.1 other services.
Does the index include taxes?
No. BEA Regional Price Parities measure price levels, not tax burdens, so they exclude state income tax, property tax, sales tax and federal taxes. This is a major caveat: a state with low cost of living can still be expensive after taxes (Illinois at 1.97% effective property tax) and a state with high cost of living can be cheaper than it looks if it has no income tax (Washington, Texas). We address taxes on a separate page by layering Tax Foundation state burden data on top of the price index. The parities also say nothing about savings rate, quality of life, education quality, crime, climate or commute time.
How often is the data refreshed?
BEA RPP is published annually, each February, for the calendar year two years earlier. The 2024 reference year landed on 19 February 2026 and is what this site carries; the 2025 vintage is due around February 2027 and the site refreshes then. BLS CPI is monthly. Zillow ZHVI is monthly. USDA Food Plans is monthly. AAA gas prices are daily (we sample monthly). EIA state energy profiles are monthly. KFF state health data is annual. Tax Foundation burden estimates are annual. Numbers on this site carry a "Verified September 2026" stamp; if it is stale, the source is on the methodology page.
Why do state averages mask city-level variation?
Aggregation. A state parity is a population-weighted average, so a state with one very expensive metro and a large cheap interior lands in the middle. BEA publishes metro-area parities separately, in its own table, and this site does not reproduce them: where a page used to print a metro or county figure it had no source for, the figure has been removed rather than re-estimated. For a specific metro, use BEA's metro-area table, linked above.
Your numbers do not match the cost-of-living index I saw elsewhere. Why?
Because most published cost-of-living rankings use the C2ER index or a derivative of it, and BEA Regional Price Parities are a different measure built a different way. They disagree, sometimes sharply. On C2ER-style figures Hawaii reads well over 190 and Mississippi in the low 80s; on BEA the whole 50-state range is 86.9 to 110.7. Neither is wrong, they answer different questions, but they are not interchangeable and mixing them produces nonsense. This site publishes the federal measure throughout and does not blend the two.