A hundred bucks in one state doesn’t always get you the same thing in another. Using calculations by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, here’s a state map from The New York Times that shows the relative purchasing power in each state.
To better understand, imagine a store offering a range of goods and services, each for sale at the national-average price for that particular item. Now, imagine a shopping cart filled with $100 worth of items from that store.
In Hawaii, $100 buys about 85 percent of the goods in the cart thanks to the high prices there. In other words, $100 in Hawaii feels more like $85.60, compared to the national average.
In Mississippi, the opposite is true. With $100, you would be able to buy the cart’s contents and more: the equivalent of $115.30 of goods and services from the national-average store.
You can grab the data over at the BEA site.
