In September, The Economist published its third annual Carrie Bradshaw Index, named after the star of the popular TV show “Sex and the City.” The report ranks the U.S. cities where Americans can afford to live alone.
Lizzie Peet, a data researcher for The Economist, told CNBC Make It that she was named after the character because on the show she lives in a studio apartment in the West Village, which is highly unlikely to be afforded on a writer’s current salary.
“It all came out of some kind of fancy way of summarizing an aspiration: the quality of living alone for the first time in a big city. How much do you have to earn to afford that? And how much is that in realistic projections?” she says.
To rank U.S. cities, The Economist used the rule that tenants should not spend more than 30% of their gross income on rent. This, combined with using rental prices from Zumper, calculated the salary required to purchase a typical studio in each city. Each city is given a “Bradshaw Score” where a value greater than 1 means the average studio apartment is affordable, and less than 1 means housing is unaffordable.
“Cities where there’s a lot of building going on, or where there’s less demand, or where there’s less population demand for rentals, are the ones that seem to be more affordable,” Pete says.
Peet added that one of the big changes in this year’s index is that some cities that were affordable last year have fallen into the unaffordable category this year.
Many Texas cities, such as Dallas, Houston, and Austin, have gone from being considered affordable to now being considered unaffordable.
“There are many factors at play here. It’s important to know that the rental market can be very random, but it can fluctuate wildly in a very short amount of time,” says Pete. “It’s well documented that there is an influx of middle-class workers into Texas, which leads to higher rents.”
This year’s index shows 41 cities are out of reach, up from 38 cities last year.
Wichita, Kansas
Kwaymaa 4 | E+ | Getty Images
10 American cities where Americans can live alone
Wichita, Kansas is the most affordable city in the index. The Bradshaw Score is approximately 1.75, which means the average wage in the city is 75% higher than the wage needed to buy an average studio apartment.
The average monthly rent for a studio apartment in Wichita was $580, up 1.64% from the previous month but down 10.54% from a year ago, Zamper said.
Wichita residents need to earn $26,400 a year to afford a studio, which is $20,250 less than the median wage.
“I’m not really surprised that Wichita is the least expensive city. Many of the cities in the bottom 10 are in the middle of nowhere and aren’t big economic powerhouses. It’s an interesting dynamic,” Pete says.
“There are still some cities that are surprisingly unaffordable and perhaps less desirable, and vice versa.”
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