IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v43y2006i13p2443-2466.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economic Wellbeing and Where We Live: Accounting for Geographical Cost-of-living Differences in the US

Author

Listed:
  • Leah Beth Curran

    (School of Public Policy and Public Administration, George Washington University, 805 21st St, NW, Washington, DC, 20052, USA, lcurran@gwu.edu)

  • Harold Wolman

    (School of Public Policy and Public Administration, George Washington University, 805 21st St, NW, Washington, DC, 20052, USA, hwolman@gwu.edu)

  • Edward W. Hill

    (Maxine Goodman Level College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University, 2121 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44115, USA, wed@urban.c.ruohio.edu)

  • Kimberly Furdell

    (School of Public Policy and Public Administration, George Washington University, 805 21st St, NW, Washington, DC, 20052, USA, kfurdell@gwu.edu)

Abstract

Regional cost-of-living differences affect the quality of life that individuals and families experience in different metropolitan areas. Yet, lack of metropolitan cost-of-living indexes has left analysts without the ability to make accurate cost-of-living adjustments to measures of economic wellbeing. This paper evaluates alternative approaches to cost-of-living measurement and then applies the ACCRA cost-of-living index to various US metropolitan area datasets, including median household income, the number of people living in poverty, and family eligibility for the Free and Reduced Price School Lunch and Head Start programmes to illustrate some of the policy impacts of adjusting economic indicators of wellbeing for geographical cost-of-living differentials.

Suggested Citation

  • Leah Beth Curran & Harold Wolman & Edward W. Hill & Kimberly Furdell, 2006. "Economic Wellbeing and Where We Live: Accounting for Geographical Cost-of-living Differences in the US," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 43(13), pages 2443-2466, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:43:y:2006:i:13:p:2443-2466
    DOI: 10.1080/00420980600970698
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/00420980600970698
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00420980600970698?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen Malpezzi & Gregory Chun & Richard Green, 1996. "New Place to Place Housing Price Indexes for U.S. Metropolitan Areas, and Their Determinants: An Application of Housing Indicators," Wisconsin-Madison CULER working papers 96-07, University of Wisconsin Center for Urban Land Economic Research.
    2. Charles M. Tiebout, 1956. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(5), pages 416-416.
    3. Richard Cebula, 1979. "Living costs, the Tiebout hypothesis, and welfare policy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 129-130, March.
    4. Koo, Jahyeong & Phillips, Keith R & Sigalla, Fiona D, 2000. "Measuring Regional Cost of Living," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 18(1), pages 127-136, January.
    5. Walter W. McMahon, 1991. "Geographical Cost of Living Differences: An Update," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 19(3), pages 426-450, September.
    6. Cebula, Richard J, 1979. "A Survey of the Literature on the Migration-Impact of State and Local Government Policies," Public Finance = Finances publiques, , vol. 34(1), pages 69-84.
    7. Louis Kaplow, 1995. "Regional Cost-of-Living Adjustments in Tax-Transfer Schemes," NBER Working Papers 5008, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. G. D'Alessio, 2018. "Well-being, the Socio-economic Context and Price Differences: the North-South Gap," Rivista economica del Mezzogiorno, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 3, pages 471-498.
    2. Hillringhaus, Tilman & Peichl, Andreas, 2010. "Die Messung von Armut unter Berücksichtigung regional divergierender Lebenshaltungskosten und öffentlicher Leistungen," IZA Discussion Papers 5344, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. John A. Bishop & Jonathan M. Lee & Lester A. Zeager, 2017. "Incorporating spatial price adjustments in U.S. public policy analysis," Working Papers 438, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    4. Bishop John A. & Lee Jonathan M. & Zeager Lester A., 2018. "U.S. Income Comparisons with Regional Price Parity Adjustments," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 18(4), pages 1-17, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Phillip B. Levine & David J. Zimmerman, 1999. "An empirical analysis of the welfare magnet debate using the NLSY," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 12(3), pages 391-409.
    2. Nakazawa, Katsuyoshi & 中澤, 克佳 & ナカザワ, カツヨシ & Kawase, Akihiro & 川瀬, 晃弘 & カワセ, アキヒロ, 2009. "An Empirical Analysis of the Welfare Magnet: Aged Care Provision and Migration in Japan," PIE/CIS Discussion Paper 412, Center for Intergenerational Studies, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    3. Edgar O. Olsen & Dirk W. Early & Paul E. Carrillo, 2010. "A Panel of Price Indices for Housing, Other Goods, and All Goods for All Areas in the United States 1982-2008," Virginia Economics Online Papers 377, University of Virginia, Department of Economics.
    4. Richard J. Cebula, 2009. "Migration and the Tiebout‐Tullock Hypothesis Revisited," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(2), pages 541-551, April.
    5. Jan Eeckhout & Nezih Guner, 2014. "Optimal Spatial Taxation: Are Big Cities too Small?," Working Papers 804, Barcelona School of Economics.
    6. Brian Cushing & Jacques Poot, 2004. "Crossing boundaries and borders: Regional science advances in migration modelling," Advances in Spatial Science, in: Raymond J. G. M. Florax & David A. Plane (ed.), Fifty Years of Regional Science, pages 317-338, Springer.
    7. Cebula, Richard, 2007. "Impact of Property Taxes and Public Education Outlays on Housing Costs: Recent Empirical Evidence," MPRA Paper 60109, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Thomas Liebig & Patrick A. Puhani & Alfonso Sousa‐Poza, 2007. "Taxation And Internal Migration—Evidence From The Swiss Census Using Community‐Level Variation In Income Tax Rates," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(4), pages 807-836, October.
    9. Michael Roos, 2006. "Earnings Disparities in Unified Germany: Nominal versus Real," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 26(2), pages 171-189, October.
    10. Kjetil Anderson & Fredrik Cerlsen, 1997. "Local Public Services and Migration: Educational Change Evidence from Norwegian Municipalities," The Review of Regional Studies, Southern Regional Science Association, vol. 27(2), pages 123-142, Fall.
    11. Jan Eeckhout & Nezih Guner, 2017. "Optimal Spatial Taxation: Are Big Cities too Small?," Working Papers wp2018_1705, CEMFI.
    12. James A. Kurre, 2003. "Is The Cost Of Living Less In Rural Areas?," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 26(1), pages 86-116, January.
    13. Cebula, Richard J. & Alexander, Gigi M., 2006. "Determinants of Net Interstate Migration, 2000-2004," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 36(2), pages 1-8.
    14. Michael Roos, 2006. "Regional price levels in Germany," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(13), pages 1553-1566.
    15. Lewis R. Gale & Will Carrington Heath, 2000. "Elderly Internal Migration in the United States Revisited," Public Finance Review, , vol. 28(2), pages 153-170, March.
    16. Keith Dowding & Peter John & Stephen Biggs, 1994. "Tiebout : A Survey of the Empirical Literature," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 31(4-5), pages 767-797, May.
    17. Nezih Guner & Jan Eeckhout, 2014. "Optimal Spatial Taxation," 2014 Meeting Papers 750, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    18. Richard J. Cebula & John Connaughton & Caroline Swartz, 2018. "An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of the Three Labor Market Freedom Indices and Occupational Licensing on Interstate Living-Cost Differentials," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 33(Fall 2018), pages 49-62.
    19. Salih Ozgur SARICA, 2014. "Regional Economic Growth. Socio-Economic Disparities among Counties," Journal of Economic Development, Environment and People, Alliance of Central-Eastern European Universities, vol. 3(4), pages 25-36, December.
    20. Sandy Fréret & Denis Maguain, 2017. "The effects of agglomeration on tax competition: evidence from a two-regime spatial panel model on French data," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 24(6), pages 1100-1140, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:43:y:2006:i:13:p:2443-2466. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.