This statistic shows the best states to make living in the United States in 2019. In 2019, Wyoming was ranked as the best state to make a living in the United States, with the cost of living index at **** value and the median income of ****** U.S. dollars.

West Virginia and Kansas had the lowest cost of living across all U.S. states, with composite costs being half of those found in Hawaii. This was according to a composite index that compares prices for various goods and services on a state-by-state basis. In West Virginia, the cost of living index amounted to **** — well below the national benchmark of 100. Virginia— which had an index value of ***** — was only slightly above that benchmark. Expensive places to live included Hawaii, Massachusetts, and California. Housing costs in the U.S. Housing is usually the highest expense in a household’s budget. In 2023, the average house sold for approximately ******* U.S. dollars, but house prices in the Northeast and West regions were significantly higher. Conversely, the South had some of the least expensive housing. In West Virginia, Mississippi, and Louisiana, the median price of the typical single-family home was less than ******* U.S. dollars. That makes living expenses in these states significantly lower than in states such as Hawaii and California, where housing is much pricier. What other expenses affect the cost of living? Utility costs such as electricity, natural gas, water, and internet also influence the cost of living. In Alaska, Hawaii, and Connecticut, the average monthly utility cost exceeded *** U.S. dollars. That was because of the significantly higher prices for electricity and natural gas in these states.

Quality of life is a measure of comfort, health, and happiness by a person or a group of people. Quality of life is determined by both material factors, such as income and housing, and broader considerations like health, education, and freedom. Each year, US & World News releases its “Best States to Live in” report, which ranks states on the quality of life each state provides its residents. In order to determine rankings, U.S. News & World Report considers a wide range of factors, including healthcare, education, economy, infrastructure, opportunity, fiscal stability, crime and corrections, and the natural environment. More information on these categories and what is measured in each can be found below:

Healthcare includes access, quality, and affordability of healthcare, as well as health measurements, such as obesity rates and rates of smoking. Education measures how well public schools perform in terms of testing and graduation rates, as well as tuition costs associated with higher education and college debt load. Economy looks at GDP growth, migration to the state, and new business. Infrastructure includes transportation availability, road quality, communications, and internet access. Opportunity includes poverty rates, cost of living, housing costs and gender and racial equality. Fiscal Stability considers the health of the government's finances, including how well the state balances its budget. Crime and Corrections ranks a state’s public safety and measures prison systems and their populations. Natural Environment looks at the quality of air and water and exposure to pollution.

About This Dataset

This dataset is the original 70-city version used in my first published research paper: “A Data-Driven Survey on Cost of Living and Salary Affordability in Indian Cities” (IJRASET, 2025) Link: https://www.ijraset.com/best-journal/a-datadriven-survey-on-cost-of-livingsalary-affordability-in-indian-cities

It was created using web-scraping techniques from LivingCost.org and converted to INR using a consistent USD→INR exchange rate. This dataset forms the foundational base for affordability analysis, exploratory data analysis (EDA), and benchmarking cost-of-living patterns across India.

The dataset includes 70+ Indian cities, with fields covering living cost, rent, salary, affordability ratio (“months covered”), and derived financial indicators. It is clean, structured, and suitable for beginner to intermediate analytics projects.

Why This Dataset?

This dataset is ideal for:

EDA practice for college & school projects

Correlation and regression analysis

Basic ML tasks (predicting salary, affordability, rent, etc.)

Urban economics mini-projects

Dashboard creation (PowerBI, Tableau)

Data cleaning and preprocessing assignments

It is designed to be simple enough for students but structured enough for real-world analysis.

Features Included

Each row represents a city/state-level affordability profile with:

Cost of living (USD & INR)

Rent for a single person (USD & INR)

Monthly after-tax salary (USD & INR)

Income after rent

“Months Covered” affordability ratio

Source URLs for verification

Exchange rate used

This makes the dataset both transparent and reliable for academic usage.

Data Quality

Web-scraped directly from LivingCost.org

Cleaned and standardized

Currency converted uniformly

Non-city entries flagged

Fully reproducible from the source

This dataset served as the master input for my peer-reviewed paper and has been validated through statistical analysis.

Intended Audience

Students (school, undergraduate, postgraduate)

Data science beginners

Educators needing real datasets for teaching

Analysts looking for quick EDA practice

Researchers exploring affordability or urban economics

Note

A more comprehensive 200+ city enhanced dataset (used in my second paper) will be uploaded soon, including ICT metrics, GDP, and extended affordability indicators.

Cost comparison table showing community type costs by location

Of the most populous cities in the U.S., San Jose, California had the highest annual income requirement at ******* U.S. dollars annually for homeowners to have an affordable and comfortable life in 2024. This can be compared to Houston, Texas, where homeowners needed an annual income of ****** U.S. dollars in 2024.

Drinking water affordability affects all residents including those with piped water connections and self-supply, private wells. Self-supply drinking water well users make up 12–15% of the United States population and are often overlooked during affordability studies. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first attempt to quantify statewide water affordability costs for all residents, both utility customers and private well users. This study applies several geospatial methodologies: percent median household income (MHI), number of households beneath affordability thresholds, and hours worked at minimum wage. The greatest determinant of private well affordability was found to be initial capital costs. These costs were represented as a monthly loan payment plus operations and maintenance costs; a range of results were found. For operations and maintenance costs only, 9% of private well serviced homes exceeded the 2.5% MHI threshold while for monthly loan payments, corresponding to a $13,500 capital cost, 51% of households exceeded the same affordability metric. There are 3.17% of centralized water utility serviced households spending greater than 2.5% of their median household income on water while 16.3% of utility-serviced households fall below an income threshold representing 2.5% of the block group MHI. This range of results highlights the need for a multifaceted solution to ensure the human right to affordable water.

Cost comparison table showing community type costs by location

Cost comparison table showing community type costs by location

A dataset comprising various variables around housing and demographics for the top 50 American cities by population.

Variables:

Zip Code: Zip code within which the listing is present.

Price: Listed price for the property.

Beds: Number of beds mentioned in the listing.

Baths: Number of baths mentioned in the listing.

Living Space: The total size of the living space, in square feet, mentioned in the listing.

Address: Street address of the listing.

City: City name where the listing is located.

State: State name where the listing is located.

Zip Code Population: The estimated number of individuals within the zip code. Data from Simplemaps.com.

Zip Code Density: The estimated number of individuals per square mile within the zip code. Data from Simplemaps.com.

County: County where the listing is located.

Median Household income: Estimated median household income. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Latitude: Latitude of the zip code. ** Data from Simplemaps.com.**

Longitude: Longitude of the zip code. Data from Simplemaps.com.

As of September 2025, Mumbai had the highest cost of living among other cities in the country, with an index value of ****. Gurgaon, a satellite city of Delhi and part of the National Capital Region (NCR) followed it with an index value of ****.  What is cost of living? The cost of living varies depending on geographical regions and factors that affect the cost of living in an area include housing, food, utilities, clothing, childcare, and fuel among others. The cost of living is calculated based on different measures such as the consumer price index (CPI), living cost indexes, and wage price index. CPI refers to the change in the value of consumer goods and services. The wage price index, on the other hand, measures the change in labor services prices due to market pressures. Lastly, the living cost indexes calculate the impact of changing costs on different households. The relationship between wages and costs determines affordability and shifts in the cost of living. Mumbai tops the list Mumbai usually tops the list of most expensive cities in India. As the financial and entertainment hub of the country, Mumbai offers wide opportunities and attracts talent from all over the country. It is the second-largest city in India and has one of the most expensive real estates in the world.

Cost comparison table showing community type costs by location

Cost comparison table showing community type costs by location

In the United States, Hawaii was the state with the most expensive housing, with the typical value of single-family homes in the 35th to 65th percentile range exceeding ******* U.S. dollars. Unsurprisingly, Hawaii also ranked top as the state with the highest cost of living. Meanwhile, a property was the least expensive in West Virginia, where it cost under ******* U.S. dollars to buy the typical single-family home. Single-family home prices increased across most states in the United States between December 2023 and December 2024, except in Louisiana, Florida, and the District of Colombia. According to the Federal Housing Association, house appreciation in 13 states exceeded **** percent in 2023.

Quality of Life Index (higher is better) is an estimation of overall quality of life by using an empirical formula which takes into account purchasing power index (higher is better), pollution index (lower is better), house price to income ratio (lower is better), cost of living index (lower is better), safety index (higher is better), health care index (higher is better), traffic commute time index (lower is better) and climate index (higher is better).

Current formula (written in Java programming language):

index.main = Math.max(0, 100 + purchasingPowerInclRentIndex / 2.5 - (housePriceToIncomeRatio * 1.0) - costOfLivingIndex / 10 + safetyIndex / 2.0 + healthIndex / 2.5 - trafficTimeIndex / 2.0 - pollutionIndex * 2.0 / 3.0 + climateIndex / 3.0);

For details how purchasing power (including rent) index, pollution index, property price to income ratios, cost of living index, safety index, climate index, health index and traffic index are calculated please look up their respective pages.

Formulas used in the past

Formula used between June 2017 and Decembar 2017

We decided to decrease weight from costOfLivingIndex in this formula:

index.main = Math.max(0, 100 + purchasingPowerInclRentIndex / 2.5 - (housePriceToIncomeRatio * 1.0) - costOfLivingIndex / 5 + safetyIndex / 2.0 + healthIndex / 2.5 - trafficTimeIndex / 2.0 - pollutionIndex * 2.0 / 3.0 + climateIndex / 3.0);

The World Happiness 2017, which ranks 155 countries by their happiness levels, was released at the United Nations at an event celebrating International Day of Happiness on March 20th. The report continues to gain global recognition as governments, organizations and civil society increasingly use happiness indicators to inform their policy-making decisions. Leading experts across fields – economics, psychology, survey analysis, national statistics, health, public policy and more – describe how measurements of well-being can be used effectively to assess the progress of nations. The reports review the state of happiness in the world today and show how the new science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.

The scores are based on answers to the main life evaluation question asked in the poll. This question, known as the Cantril ladder, asks respondents to think of a ladder with the best possible life for them being a 10 and the worst possible life being a 0 and to rate their own current lives on that scale. The scores are from nationally representative samples for 2017 and use the Gallup weights to make the estimates representative. The columns following the happiness score estimate the extent to which each of six factors – economic production, social support, life expectancy, freedom, absence of corruption, and generosity – contribute to making life evaluations higher in each country than they are in Dystopia, a hypothetical country that has values equal to the world’s lowest national averages for each of the six factors. They have no impact on the total score reported for each country, but they do explain why some countries rank higher than others.

Quality of life index, link: https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/indices_explained.jsp

Happiness store, link: https://www.kaggle.com/unsdsn/world-happiness/home

Luxembourg stands out as the European leader in quality of life for 2025, achieving a score of 220 on the Quality of Life Index. The Netherlands follows closely behind with 211 points, while Albania and Ukraine rank at the bottom with scores of 104 and 115 respectively. This index provides a thorough assessment of living conditions across Europe, reflecting various factors that shape the overall well-being of populations and extending beyond purely economic metrics. Understanding the quality of life index The quality of life index is a multifaceted measure that incorporates factors such as purchasing power, pollution levels, housing affordability, cost of living, safety, healthcare quality, traffic conditions, and climate, to measure the overall quality of life of a Country. Higher overall index scores indicate better living conditions. However, in subindexes such as pollution, cost of living, and traffic commute time, lower values correspond to improved quality of life. Challenges affecting life satisfaction Despite the fact that European countries register high levels of life quality by for example leading the ranking of happiest countries in the world, life satisfaction across the European Union has been on a downward trend since 2018. The EU's overall life satisfaction score dropped from 7.3 out of 10 in 2018 to 7.1 in 2022. This decline can be attributed to various factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic and economic challenges such as high inflation. Rising housing costs, in particular, have emerged as a critical concern, significantly affecting quality of life. This issue has played a central role in shaping voter priorities for the European Parliamentary Elections in 2024 and becoming one of the most pressing challenges for Europeans, profoundly influencing both daily experiences and long-term well-being.

Cost comparison table showing community type costs by location

Cost comparison table showing community type costs by location

Cost comparison table showing community type costs by location

Out of all 50 states, New York had the highest per-capita real gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024, at 92,341 U.S. dollars, followed closely by Massachusetts. Mississippi had the lowest per-capita real GDP, at 41,603 U.S. dollars. While not a state, the District of Columbia had a per capita GDP of more than 210,780 U.S. dollars. What is real GDP? A country’s real GDP is a measure that shows the value of the goods and services produced by an economy and is adjusted for inflation. The real GDP of a country helps economists to see the health of a country’s economy and its standard of living. Downturns in GDP growth can indicate financial difficulties, such as the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, when the U.S. GDP decreased by 2.5 percent. The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on U.S. GDP, shrinking the economy 2.8 percent. The U.S. economy rebounded in 2021, however, growing by nearly six percent. Why real GDP per capita matters Real GDP per capita takes the GDP of a country, state, or metropolitan area and divides it by the number of people in that area. Some argue that per-capita GDP is more important than the GDP of a country, as it is a good indicator of whether or not the country’s population is getting wealthier, thus increasing the standard of living in that area. The best measure of standard of living when comparing across countries is thought to be GDP per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) which uses the prices of specific goods to compare the absolute purchasing power of a countries currency.