IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/inrsre/v26y2003i1p86-116.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is The Cost Of Living Less In Rural Areas?

Author

Listed:
  • James A. Kurre

    (School of Business, Pennsylvania State University–Erie)

Abstract

There seems to be a general presumption that rural areas benefit from lower costs of living than urban areas. However, there is relatively little systematic data, other than anecdotal evidence, to support this. To test this presumption, this study develops spatial cost of living estimates for each of the sixty-seven counties of Pennsylvania. In addition to the overall cost of living, it generates indexes for each of six component subindexes: groceries, housing, utilities, transportation, health care, and miscellaneous goods and services. These estimates find that the average urban resident of Pennsylvania pays about 6 percent more than rural residents for a broad basket of goods and services. Moreover, urban residents pay more on average for all six major categories of goods, with the greatest difference (12.7 percent) occurring for housing costs. Interestingly, the article also finds that the efficiency of the local public sector can affect local cost of living. The article also identifies policy implications of these differences for economic development and other purposes.

Suggested Citation

  • James A. Kurre, 2003. "Is The Cost Of Living Less In Rural Areas?," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 26(1), pages 86-116, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:inrsre:v:26:y:2003:i:1:p:86-116
    DOI: 10.1177/0160017602238987
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0160017602238987
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0160017602238987?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Koo, Jahyeong & Phillips, Keith R & Sigalla, Fiona D, 2000. "Measuring Regional Cost of Living," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 18(1), pages 127-136, January.
    2. Michael L. Walden, 1997. "How Much Income Variation "Really" Exists Within a State?," The Review of Regional Studies, Southern Regional Science Association, vol. 27(3), pages 237-250, Winter.
    3. Ravallion, Martin & van de Walle, Dominique, 1991. "Urban-rural cost-of-living differentials in a developing economy," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 113-127, January.
    4. Timothy J. Bartik, 1991. "Who Benefits from State and Local Economic Development Policies?," Books from Upjohn Press, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, number wbsle, November.
    5. Bishop, John A & Formby, John P & Thistle, Paul D, 1994. "Convergence and Divergence of Regional Income Distributions and Welfare," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 76(2), pages 228-235, May.
    6. Walter W. McMahon, 1991. "Geographical Cost of Living Differences: An Update," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 19(3), pages 426-450, September.
    7. Dumond, J Michael & Hirsch, Barry T & Macpherson, David A, 1999. "Wage Differentials across Labor Markets and Workers: Does Cost of Living Matter?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 37(4), pages 577-598, October.
    8. Cebula, Richard & Alexander, Gigi & Koch, James, 1991. "A Further Note on Determinants of Geographic Living-Cost Differentials," MPRA Paper 49397, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Ghelfi, Linda M., 1988. "About that Lower Cost of Living in Nonmetro Areas," Rural America/ Rural Development Perspectives, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, vol. 5(1), October.
    10. Randall W. Eberts & Mark E. Schweitzer, 1994. "Regional wage convergence and divergence: adjusting wages for cost-of- living differences," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, vol. 30(Q II), pages 26-37.
    11. Steven C. Deller & Martin Shields & David Tomberlin, 1996. "Price Differentials And Trends In State Income Levels: A Research Note," The Review of Regional Studies, Southern Regional Science Association, vol. 26(1), pages 99-113, Summer.
    12. Richard J. Cebula, 1989. "The Analysis of Geographic Living-Cost Differentials: A Brief Empirical Note," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 65(1), pages 64-67.
    13. Richard McHugh, 1990. "Cost-of-Living Differences in Urban Versus Rural Areas: An Analysis with Expenditure Data," Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications 90-sr49, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:rre:publsh:v:34:y:2004:i:1:p:112-19 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Juan Soto & Milena Vargas & Julio A. Berdegué, 2018. "How Large Are the Contributions of Cities to the Development of Rural Communities? A Market Access Approach for a Quarter Century of Evidence from Chile," Documentos de Trabajo 17060, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA).
    3. Elena Lasarte Navamuel & Esteban Fernández Vázquez & Fernando Rubiera Morollón, 2017. "Higher cost of living in urban areas? An AIDS-based analysis of food in Spain," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(11), pages 1665-1677, November.
    4. Richard J. Cebula & Andre J. Van Rensburg, 2016. "Does greater labour market freedom lead to lower new home prices in the US? An exploratory inquiry," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(6), pages 415-419, April.
    5. Cebula, Richard J. & Toma, Michael, 2008. "An Empirical Analysis of Determinants of Interstate Living-Cost Differentials, 2005," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 38(3), pages 1-7.
    6. Cebula, Richard & Toma, Michael, 2006. "Determinants of Interstate Differentials in the Real Median Price of Single Family Homes," MPRA Paper 61410, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Richard J. Cebula & Michael Toma, 2010. "Determinants of interstate differentials in the cost of housing, 2006," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(2), pages 153-157, January.
    8. Goldhaber-Fiebert, Jeremy D. & Babiarz, Kimberly S. & Garfield, Rachel L. & Wulczyn, Fred & Landsverk, John & Horwitz, Sarah M., 2014. "Explaining variations in state foster care maintenance rates and the implications for implementing new evidence-based programs," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 183-206.
    9. Richard J. Cebula & John Connaughton & Caroline Swartz, 2018. "An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of the Three Labor Market Freedom Indices and Occupational Licensing on Interstate Living-Cost Differentials," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 33(Fall 2018), pages 49-62.
    10. Jolliffe, Dean, 2006. "The Cost of Living and the Geographic Distribution of Poverty," Economic Research Report 7254, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    11. Jessica Nisén & Sebastian Klüsener & Johan Dahlberg & Lars Dommermuth & Aiva Jasilioniene & Michaela Kreyenfeld & Trude Lappegård & Peng Li & Pekka Martikainen & Karel Neels & Bernhard Riederer & Sask, 2019. "Educational differences in cohort fertility across sub-national regions in Europe," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2019-018, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michael Beenstock & Daniel Felsenstein, 2007. "Mobility and Mean Reversion in the Dynamics of Regional Inequality," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 30(4), pages 335-361, October.
    2. Cebula, Richard & Toma, Michael, 2006. "Determinants of Interstate Differentials in the Real Median Price of Single Family Homes," MPRA Paper 61410, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Michael Roos, 2006. "Earnings Disparities in Unified Germany: Nominal versus Real," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 26(2), pages 171-189, October.
    4. repec:rre:publsh:v:34:y:2004:i:1:p:112-19 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Rokicki, Bartlomiej & Blien, Uwe & Hewings, Geoffrey J.D. & thi Hong Van, Phan, 2021. "Is there a wage curve with regional real wages? An analysis for the US and Poland," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    6. Mark D. Partridge & Dan S. Rickman & M. Rose Olfert & Ying Tan, 2015. "When Spatial Equilibrium Fails: Is Place-Based Policy Second Best?," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(8), pages 1303-1325, August.
    7. Steven C. Deller & Martin Shields & David Tomberlin, 1996. "Price Differentials And Trends In State Income Levels: A Research Note," The Review of Regional Studies, Southern Regional Science Association, vol. 26(1), pages 99-113, Summer.
    8. Wojan, Timothy R. & Maung, Adam C., 1998. "The Debate Over State-Level Inequality:Transparent Method, Rules of Evidence, and Empirical Power," The Review of Regional Studies, Southern Regional Science Association, vol. 28(1), pages 63-80, Summer.
    9. John Winters, 2013. "Differences in quality of life estimates using rents and home values," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 51(2), pages 377-409, October.
    10. Julie L. Hotchkiss & Menbere Shiferaw, 2011. "Decomposing the education wage gap: everything but the kitchen sink," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 93(July), pages 243-272.
    11. Tatiane Almeida de Menezes & Carlos Roberto Azzoni, 2001. "Estimação de uma Estrutura de Ponderação para as Cidades Brasileiras," Anais do XXIX Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 29th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 078, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    12. Michael Amior & Alan Manning, 2018. "The Persistence of Local Joblessness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(7), pages 1942-1970, July.
    13. Cebula, Richard, 2007. "Impact of Property Taxes and Public Education Outlays on Housing Costs: Recent Empirical Evidence," MPRA Paper 60109, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Susan B. Hansen & Carolyn Ban & Leonard Huggins, 2003. "Explaining the “Brain Drain†from Older Industrial Cities: The Pittsburgh Region," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 17(2), pages 132-147, May.
    15. Chad Frederick, 2022. "Economic Sustainability and ‘Missing Middle Housing’: Associations between Housing Stock Diversity and Unemployment in Mid-Size U.S. Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-17, June.
    16. Jolliffe, Dean, 2006. "The Cost of Living and the Geographic Distribution of Poverty," Economic Research Report 7254, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    17. George Hammond & Eric Thompson, 2002. "Mobility and Modality Trends in US State Personal Income," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(4), pages 375-387.
    18. Carrillo, Paul E. & Early, Dirk W. & Olsen, Edgar O., 2014. "A panel of interarea price indices for all areas in the United States 1982–2012," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 81-93.
    19. Easton, Todd, 2001. "Immigration and Natives' Wages: Understanding Their Correlation in the 1980s," The Review of Regional Studies, Southern Regional Science Association, vol. 31(3), pages 219-235, Winter.
    20. Elena Lasarte Navamuel & Esteban Fernández Vázquez & Fernando Rubiera Morollón, 2017. "Higher cost of living in urban areas? An AIDS-based analysis of food in Spain," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(11), pages 1665-1677, November.
    21. Cebula, Richard J. & Toma, Michael, 2008. "An Empirical Analysis of Determinants of Interstate Living-Cost Differentials, 2005," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 38(3), pages 1-7.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:inrsre:v:26:y:2003:i:1:p:86-116. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.