Ingram's March 2023

DESTINATION KANSAS REASONS TO CHOOSE

Cost of Living

HOUSING COSTS ARE THE REAL EYEBROW RAISERS, BUT THE COST STRUCTURES THAT MAKE KANSAS UNUSUALLY AFFORDABLE RUN ACROSS THE SPECTRUM.

Call it the Kansas Advantage—the ability to live a comfortable lifestyle, even on a wage well below coastal compensation rates. How? Because of a low cost of living that makes the Sunflower State one of the nation’s most affordable places to call home. That plays out in various ways. For business—especially those maintaining offices on the more expensive coasts— it means the ability to acquire high level talent at a significant discount. That’s a serious competitive advan- tage right there. For workers, it means taking a step off the hamster wheel of a progressive tax system; they are able to maintain a higher standard of living within a lower tax bracket, compounding the savings from a low cost environment. According to the ACCRA Cost of Living Index for 2022, Kansas ranked No. 3 nationwide for the lowest over- all cost of living, behind only Missis sippi and Oklahoma. Using 100 as a national average across six metrics, the index placed relative costs in Kansas

at 87.5. In other words, for every $100 expended by residents nationwide, Kan sans pay $87.50. Keep in mind: That 100 baseline is a national average. Perhaps it’s unfair to compare life in Kansas with that expe rienced in, say, Hawaii or the nation’s capital, but the fact is, people in those locales are paying $184 (Hawaii) com pared to the $87.50 figure here, and folks in Washington are paying $152.50. Powering that performance is hous ing, a category where Kansas ranks behind only four other states for af fordability. The ACCRA index assigns Kansas a score of 71.1 for housing, using that same 100 as a national average. What’s that look like compared to other states? Well, consider Washing ton, D.C., the most expensive housing market in the lower 48 states. Census estimates for 2022 show the median home value in that market is $615,692. In Kansas? It’s about $157,000, per the Census, or $198,200, according to Zil low, which may be a closer reflection of true market conditions at the time.

In either case, housing in the na tion’s capital easily runs three times what the average Kansan can expect to pay. And the factor is more than 2x in the states of Colorado, Washington, and Massachusetts.

Only Mississippi and Oklahoma have more affordable costs of living than Kansas, which beat the national averages in five of six categories measured.

Housing, though, isn’t the only fac tor creating that low-cost edge. Only four other states have lower overall cost-of-living metrics than Kansas,

Buying Local | One way to hold down the cost of groceries is to live close to the sources of production. In Kansas, residents are smack dab center of the protein value chain for beef, pork and poultry, as well as grains like wheat and corn.

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