Believe it or not, when looked at in aggregate, groceries are cheaper in New York City—home of the $5 dollar bottle of Coke and $150 bowl of soup—than they are in other parts of the country, a new research paper reports. According to two Columbia University economists a "household that moved from Des Moines to New York and purchased goods from the same type of stores in the two cities would realize a 10% drop in the overall cost of its grocery purchases."
Using Nielsen bar-code data from 33,000 households across the country, the duo compared identical products sold in cities of varying sizes. In nearly every case in larger cities like New York products were cheaper than in smaller cities like Memphis, Indianapolis and Milwaukee.
And yet we can all probably agree it doesn't feel like groceries are cheaper here. Why? One of the researchers explained it to the Journal: "New York is only expensive because there is so much you can spend your money on." In other words, the core staples we have here are cheaper, we just also have a seemingly endless array of obscure and/or premium food products that are priced through the roof.
All good to know, what with world food prices continuing to rise.
