By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

Realtor Randy Wright said that when he takes a phone call from a buyer in California who is looking to relocate, Joplin’s low cost of living is almost always a motivating factor.

Joplin was the U.S. metropolitan area with the lowest cost of living for the first quarter of 2007, according to the Council for Community and Economic Research’s cost-of-living index released last week. The index takes into account the cost of groceries, housing, utilities, transportation, health care, and miscellaneous goods and services such as shampoo, movie tickets and clothing for 293 urban areas.

The average cost of living is viewed as 100 percent. Joplin’s cost of living was 81.6 percent of the national average. The most expensive place to live, New York City, had a cost of living that was 213.7 percent of the national average.

Eros Yildirim, with the Council for Community and Economic Research, said that because the index is based on voluntary responses by people in each metro area, it is difficult to compare one quarter with another, but general trends can be identified over time.

In the first quarter of 2006, Joplin did not participate in the index. It came in at 82.6 percent in the second quarter, 83.8 percent in the third quarter and 82.4 percent in the fourth quarter.

What it means

Rob O’Brian, president of the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce, said Joplin has consistently been among the top five metro areas with the lowest cost of living according to the quarterly index. He said that consistency not only helps existing companies attract new employees, but it also draws companies to the region.

“Being in the lower five areas for the cost of living for years now indicates that not only is the cost of living low, but it’s also relatively stable,” O’Brian said. “Companies can know they probably aren’t going to see a big jump in prices.”

Jasen Jones, executive director of the Workforce Investment Board of Southwest Missouri, said the lower cost of living often translates to lower required wages, an attractive concept for companies.

Jones said a lower cost of living means people’s dollars go further than in some of the larger metro areas.

“We always think of Kansas City or St. Louis having significantly higher salaries, but the dollars don’t go as far there,” he said. “A person’s standard of living would be lower if we had (big-city) salaries along with their cost of living.”

According to the latest data on per-capita income available from the Bureau of Economic Analysis with the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Joplin metropolitan area came in 167th among 179 metro areas surveyed in the United States.

Per-capita income in the Joplin metro area — defined as Jasper and Newton counties — was $25,008 in 2005, the last year for which information was available. That’s about 73 percent of the per-capita income average for the United States in 2005, which came to $34,471.