ST. LOUIS — If price increases for everything from rent to groceries are weighing on your mind, you can at least consider that St. Louis is among the nation's more affordable places in which to live.
The St. Louis region ranks 41st for overall affordability among the nation's 100 largest metro areas. That's according to a Business Journals analysis of the latest data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis' Regional Price Parity Index. The index shows how costs compare in a metro compared to the national baseline of 100. That means a metro with an index of 90 would be 10% more affordable than the national average, for example. That index includes the cost of housing, services and goods as well, providing a more complete picture of affordability.
The data is from 2020, so it doesn't include much of the significant inflation that has transpired during the Covid-19 recovery, but it does show which metros are most well-positioned to capitalize on their relative affordability and which metros could be hurt by a flight to affordability.
But St. Louis' most recent overall index, at 95.7, makes the city about 4% more affordable than the national average.
The Regional Price Parity index is broken into categories of affordability for goods, housing and utilities. St. Louis came in best for housing affordability at 26th nationwide, with costs coming in about 19% lower than the national average. The city ranks 70th for utilities affordability, with costs about 2% above the national average. And St. Louis' rank of 87th for goods affordability was its worst performance metric, at some 3% above the national average.
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