Why is a cost of living comparison by city more useful than cost of living comparison by state?
Experts say doing a cost of living comparison by state isn’t useful because different metro areas within the same state may have very different costs of living. “It doesn’t do any good to compare the cost of living from state to state,” said Steve Reed, an economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index program. “Eureka, California versus Los Angeles is very different.
