Definition of "Cost of Living Index"

The Cost of Living Index provides information for more than 300 U.S. cities.

The Cost of Living Index, officially known as the ACCRA Cost of Living Index, provides detailed information quarterly on the overall cost of living in more than 300 U.S. towns and cities with populations of 50,000 or more. If you are contemplating a move to a new job in another city, the Index is the resource for comparing the cost of living between two cities.

Who Compiles the Index

The nonprofit Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER) began compiling the Cost of Living Index in 1968. The price data for the index is collected by local chambers of commerce as well as universities and community organizations. If a local chamber of commerce chooses not to participate in the collection of data, that city is not covered in the index. An advisory board of academic researchers and government officials reviews the data and the methodology for the Index.

Council for Community and Economic Research
ACCRA Cost of Living Index
1700 N. Moore St. Suite 2225
Arlington, VA 22209
703-522-4980
coli.org

Publication and Major Users

The ACCRA Cost of Living Index is published in both print and electronic formats. Major subscribers include the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau and the President's Council of Economic Advisers as well as a variety of state and local governments and major corporations.

What the Index Covers

Use the Cost of Living Index to find out how far your salary will go in another city.

The Cost of Living Index provides data on the cost of different categories of consumer expenditures. These broad categories include groceries, housing, utilities, transportation, health care and miscellaneous goods and services. Within each of those categories, detailed information is broken down more finely so that the actual cost of such items as two pieces of chicken, a pair of men's jeans, women's slacks, a pound of ground beef, ibuprofen and a haircut can be compared between two different cities.

What the Index Does Not Cover

The index's website emphasizes that it "does not take taxes into consideration in compiling the Cost of Living Index. Largely because it is prohibitively expensive to determine effective (as opposed to claimed) tax rates on residential property." Rate of inflation information is also not considered. The Cost of Living Index is a measure of the differences in prices of items in broad consumer categories in different U.S. cities at a specific time. Costs changes and the percent of those changes over time are not compared.

Online Comparison Tools

The Cost of Living Comparison Calculator from Bankrate.com allows you to compare costs between two different cities using your personal income as the basis for comparison. Bankrate.com's calculator also shows detailed Cost of Living Index data allowing you to compare the cost of a wide spectrum of consumer items from housing, monthly phone bill, pizza and movie to a tube of toothpaste, shampoo and the local mortgage interest rate for each city. CNNMoney.com offers a "How-far-will-my-salary-go-in-another-city?" calculator. The CNNMoney.com calculator uses a combination of data for the past four Cost of Living Index quarterly compilations for its online tool.

References

• C2ER: ACCRA Cost of Living Index
• Bankrate: Cost of Living comparison calculator
• CNNMoney: How far will my salary go in another city?