About the Cost of Living Calculator
The Cost of Living Calculator provides cost comparisons for consumer goods and services between participating Indiana metros and other areas nationwide. It leverages the Cost of Living Index from coli.org, produced by the Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER), which is a useful and reasonably accurate measure of living cost differences among urban areas.
Geographic Coverage
Participating metropolitan and non-metro areas*
Frequency
Quarterly
Time Span
The calculator uses the most current quarters available.
*Areas included are those where chambers of commerce or similar organizations have volunteered to participate. The number of respondents varies from quarter to quarter, and C2ER makes a continuing effort to expand coverage of metropolitan areas. Any metropolitan area not represented is absent because local organizations have opted not to collect data. For example, the Indianapolis area was not available during 2011 because no organization was collecting the data.
Important Data Notes
- The average for all participating places, both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan, equals 100, and each participant’s index is read as a percentage of the average for all places.
- Each quarter is a separate comparison of prices at a single point in time, because both the number and the mix of participants changes from one quarter to the next.
- Items on which the index is based have been carefully chosen to reflect the different categories of consumer expenditures. Weights assigned to relative costs are based on government survey data on expenditure patterns for professional and executive households. All items are priced in each place at a specified time and according to standardized specifications.
- The index does not measure inflation (price change over time).