Blogger Joanne McNeil asked why Alaska's cost of living was so high according to the seemingly accurate source of the Missouri Economics Research and Information Center. My classmate Brian Simmonds found the answer. (Caveat: he was also trying to defend the honor of his home state of Oregon.)
"The Missouri propaganda you cite is based upon an average of ACCRA data for each city surveyed in a given state. Because the cities are self-selecting, the number of cities participating in a given state varies widely. Furthermore, the number of cities surveyed does not even necessarily correlate with the number of metropolitan areas in a state. For example, the index only tracks three Oregon cities: Portland, Corvallis, and Lincoln Co., leaving out most of the state’s less expensive population centers.
In addition, it’s impossible to talk meaningfully about a state’s cost of living. If San Diego is cheap, it doesn’t make San Francisco any cheaper."
ACCRA (not an acronym), "producer of the nationally renowned Cost of Living Index (COLI)," is a non-profit based out of George Mason University.
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