A comparison of the standard budget with two alternative indexes shows little difference in overall consumption costs. The article examines characteristics and limitations of interarea indexes with particular emphasis on the impact of the varying weight structure of budgets on these indexes. (Author/MW)

This paper systematically reports differences in the cost of living among different parts of the United States, as well as among different rural and urban counties in the state of Illinois. A systematic procedure for estimating these differences based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics data for selected localities was developed by McMahon and…