How these numbers are calculated
Every layer is an index where 100 = the reference for the map you were reading. Each map states its own below.
These layers do not share a vintage: each section states its own.
The map covers the 50 states and the District of Columbia. American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are not on it: none of these sources publishes figures for them, so the US average behind every 100 is a 50-state average that does not describe them.
True cost
Each layer's distance from the reference, signed so that better for you is positive, averaged with the weights you set. A layer you turn off leaves the average rather than counting as zero, and a layer a source did not publish for a place leaves that place's average the same way.
- No single layer may pull the average further than 40 points. Money reaches 85% above the US in Hawaii and nothing else comes close, so without a limit one layer decides the whole map. Four of the 202 layer readings on the US map reach this limit, and every one of them is a cost rather than a return.
- Weighting is a judgement, not a measurement. Equal weights are where this starts, not something the data says: nothing here establishes that a dollar, an hour and a bad mental-health day trade off one for one. The sliders exist because your answer is better than ours.
- The layers are not independent, and this counts the overlap twice. Well-being's emotional dimension includes the same frequent-mental-distress measure the Stress layer uses, so the two already agree in part — and averaging them lets one survey answer speak twice.
- With a remote salary, Money is counted twice. Work hours is a place's price divided by what it pays; when your pay is not set by the place, that division stops changing anything and Work hours becomes Money again. Two of the four layers are then the same reading, and prices weigh double unless you move the sliders.
- It is a comparison, not a score. +7 means seven index points better off than this map's reference once the layers are averaged. It is not seven percent of anything you spend, and it does not carry across to a map with a different reference.
On the US map
100 = the US average. Red is a heavier burden, blue a lighter one.
Money
MERIC's composite cost-of-living index, published as it stands.
Source: MERIC, Q1 2026 · US average = 100
- A composite index is one national basket. It does not know your rent, your commute, or whether you own your home.
- These values were transcribed from a published reproduction of MERIC's table, not pulled from MERIC directly. The pipeline that verifies them at the source has not shipped yet.
Work hours
The Money index divided by the state's average hourly wage as a share of the US average ($37.41/hr). A 40-hour US-average week costs 40 × index ÷ 100 hours here.
Source: MERIC, Q1 2026 + BLS CES, April 2026 · US average = 100
- BLS state average hourly earnings is a mean across all private employees, not a median. States with a fat top tail — DC especially — look cheaper in hours than a typical earner will find them.
Stress
The share of adults who report 14 or more bad mental-health days in the past 30, divided by the US rate of 15.6%.
Source: CDC BRFSS, 2024 · US average = 100
- Distress tracks people, not places. BRFSS distress correlates with income, insurance and disability. A high earner moving to Arkansas does not inherit its 19.9%.
- Tennessee is missing from the source, so it has no Stress score.
Well-being
Each state's WalletHub happiness score divided by the mean of the 50 states the source ranks (51.2). Higher is better here, so the colors are flipped: blue is still the good end.
Source: WalletHub, 2025 · 50-state mean = 100
- WalletHub's score is editorial. The methodology is transparent and the inputs are legitimate, but the weights are choices — weather counts for 10 of the 100 points.
- Well-being and Stress are not independent. WalletHub's emotional well-being dimension includes the same BRFSS distress measure the Stress layer uses, so agreement between the two layers is partly double-counting.
- WalletHub does not rank the District of Columbia, so it has no Well-being score.
On a state's map
100 = the typical place in the state you are looking at, never the US average. Every layer here is built from a different source than its namesake above, so a place's 120 and a state's 120 are on the same scale without being the same measurement.
Money
A place's median gross rent as a percentage of the median place's rent in its own state.
Source: Census ACS 5-year, 2019–2023 · Median place in the state = 100
- Median gross rent is what renters there already pay, across every unit size, including long-held and rent-stabilised tenancies. A newcomer signing a new lease would be quoted more — in New York County the gap is wide enough to put Manhattan behind Nassau and Suffolk here.
- Gross rent is contract rent plus utilities, so it is a household's whole monthly housing payment rather than the figure on the lease.
- This is a five-year estimate covering 2019 to 2023. It is the most recent the Census publishes for every place on these maps, and it lags a market that has moved since.
- Rent is not a cost of living. This layer prices housing only, where Money on the US map prices a whole basket. The two are on the same scale and are not comparable.
Work hours
A place's annual median gross rent as a share of its median household income, divided by the same share for the median place in the state.
Source: Census ACS 5-year, 2019–2023 · Median place in the state = 100
- This is a different calculation from Work hours on the US map, which re-prices a cost index in hours of local work. Both ask how much work a place costs; the two numbers are not comparable.
- Median household income counts every household, including retired and student households with little earned income. A place with many of them reads as costlier in work than a working household would find it.
Stress
The share of adults who report 14 or more bad mental-health days in the past 30, divided by the same share for the median place in the state.
Source: County Health Rankings, 2025 · Median place in the state = 100
- This figure is modelled, not measured. County Health Rankings takes it from CDC PLACES, which estimates a place's rate from national survey responses and that place's demographics. Nobody surveyed enough people in most of them to measure it directly.
- Because it is modelled from demographics, a place's estimate partly restates its age, income and insurance profile. Two places with similar populations read similarly whether or not the people in them feel similar.
- It is not comparable with Stress on the US map, which uses BRFSS responses measured directly against a US rate of 15.6%. Different source, different method, different reference.
- Distress tracks people more than places. Moving somewhere does not hand you its rate.
Well-being
How long a person born in a place can expect to live, compared with the median place in its own state. Stated in years rather than as an index, because the index says almost nothing: ten years of life is thirteen index points.
Source: County Health Rankings, 2026 · Median place in the state = 100
- Life expectancy is standing in for a happiness score. No survey publishes one per place this small, so this layer measures how long people live where Well-being on the US map measures how they say their lives are going. They are not the same question, and this is the largest substitution anywhere on this page.
- It is not comparable with Well-being on the US map, which scores WalletHub's 30-metric composite against the 50-state mean. Different source, different question, different reference.
- Life expectancy at birth is a summary of today's death rates across every age, not a forecast for anyone alive. It tells you about the place's present, not about your future.
- It measures who lives in a place as much as the place itself — its age profile, its income, its access to care. Moving somewhere does not hand you its figure.
- A gap under half a year reads here as no difference. That is a deliberate floor: these estimates are modelled per place and do not carry that precision.
Why your city may not be on the map
Type its name into the search box on any map. Every town, village, borough and neighbourhood the Census names is in there, and each one answers with the place that contains it — Brooklyn with Kings County, Woodbridge with Prince William County. The numbers you get are that place's.
They are a county's numbers because a county is the finest level at which all four layers exist. A state's map draws the places the Census treats as counties: counties, parishes, boroughs, planning regions and independent cities. The Census does publish rent and income for cities, but County Health Rankings — the source behind Stress and Well-being — publishes nothing below a county, so a map of cities could show only two of the four.
Cities also do not sit inside counties the way counties sit inside states. New York City is one place spread across five counties, and Houston across four. Listing cities beside counties would rank two different kinds of thing against each other.
Many cities are already on the map under their own name, because a city belonging to no county is its own place: San Francisco, Denver, Baltimore City, St. Louis City, and every one of Virginia's 38 independent cities, Richmond City among them.