A C-note is a C-note, but in some places it’s got to feel a little like a C-minus, y’know?
That is, $100 may look and feel the same wherever you live, but it’s pretty much commonly understood that it goes farther in places where the price of living is low and doesn’t stretch so far in places where prices are high.
And the Tax Foundation has come out with a map that shows just how far that Benjamin stretches state by state.
It matters for all the obvious reasons: for the purposes of day-to-day living, a low cost of living makes you effectively richer, the Tax Foundation says.
“Regional price differences are strikingly large,” the report concludes. “Real purchasing power is 36 percent greater in Mississippi than it is in the District of Columbia.”
The Tax Foundation is a non-partisan think tank that has been researches and analyzes tax and financial policy.
That means that you’d have to have after-tax earnings of $68,000 in the District of Columbia to afford the same overall standard of living as you’d have with $50,000 in Mississippi.
As it turns out, using data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, that Benjamin has a pretty good time of it in Georgia.
Georgia's C-note goes farther than in most states: It's the equivalent of $108.70, but there are 17 states where the bucks buy more.
Some might surprise you: Ohio, for example, is now a low-cost state, the Tax Foundation reports.
But the states where $100 is worth the most are Mississippi — $115.34 – followed by Arkansas ($114.29), Alabama ($113.90), South Dakota ($113.64), and West Virginia ($112.49).
At the other end of the spectrum, the C-note is worth least in the District of Columbia, where it is effectively worth just $84.67.
Generally, states with high incomes also have higher prices. But not always: North Dakota has high income but not high prices (then again, it also has a winter that lasts longer than a re-gifted fruitcake).
The calculation could shift your perception of wealth, the Foundation suggests: “Nebraskans and Californians earn approximately the same amount in dollars per capita, but after adjusting for regional price parity, Nebraskan incomes can buy more.”
