It’s How Much?! Cost of Living Data for NC Counties and Select Cities
<p>North Carolina communities are undergoing rapid economic change at different rates in different parts of the state. Issues such as affordable housing, appropriate rate levels for public services, costs of commuting and wage growth (or stagnation) are now key for CED officials, whether your community is still struggling or dealing with the challenge of intense growth. How do we know what ‘affordable’ is in our own hometowns?</p> <p style="font-size: 16px">The debate over higher minimum wages, which played into the North Carolina Legislature adopting a new, higher minimum wage for many state employees as part of the recently passed state budget, or the argument for a ‘living wage,’ revolves around employees being able to afford to live in the communities in which they work. In fact, the whole idea of anything – housing, food, utilities – being affordable in a community depends not only on wages and income but how much those items cost in that location. </p> <p>This question came to the SOG recently. Combined with recent CED blogs on affordability of public services and workforce housing, it led to the (re)discovery of a valuable national data source on cost of living at a local level buried within a project around living wages – the MIT Living Wage Calculator. The idea of this calculator was started in 2003 by a researcher at Penn State University as part of a Ford Foundation project on poverty policy. Its current form was established in 2004 at MIT and is maintained there. </p> <p>Current measures of poverty rely only on resources flowing into [...]</p>
