A recent ranking using data from the Council for Community and Economic Research’s Cost of Living Index (COLI) has determined that the Dallas-Fort Worth area is the most expensive region to live in the state.
Using this federally-recognized information, a local media outlet ranked 18 metropolitan areas in Texas from most expensive to least expensive.
The average COLI for all places in the U.S. is 100, so a ranking given to a city above 100 is more expensive than the average. A ranking below 100 is less expensive.
The COLI uses six different categories to determine the average cost of living for a certain area. The categories are housing, groceries, utilities, transportation, health care, and miscellaneous.
The categories are weighted differently as they make up different respective costs in an overall cost of living score. For example, housing makes up 30.9% of the score.
All 18 of the Texas metropolitan areas appearing in the ranking fell under the national average score of 100 — but just barely in some cases.
The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area was given a score of 99.35.
With 7.6 million people living in DFW, this metropolitan area is the largest in Texas, as well as the most expensive, according to the COLI.
DFW’s most expensive category was utilities. The metroplex scored 10% higher than the average U.S. price and was the third-highest ranked in Texas. According to the COLI, the average monthly cost for electricity was $209.
The ranking named Brownsville-Harlingen as the cheapest place to live in Texas, with a score of 77. The cost of living in this southern metropolitan area was 37% lower than Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington.
The data used by COLI was collected in April and released in August. Prices may have changed since then due to inflation.
The annual inflation rate as of August was 8.3%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and 8.2% in September.
