> > New York (second poorest in the US)

> On what basis?

Probably the same basis by which California is the poorest: statewide cost-of-living adjusted poverty line.

There's a number of ways this measure is potebtially misleading; for instance, both New York and California are diverse states where the local cost of living varies considerably, and the numbers for any CoL adjusted measure would look very different if instead of a statewide CoL you used, say, county CoL based on residence and then aggregated the statewide numbers.

But using this or other statewide CoL-based metrics does get at something that mean or median income or measuring against the even less relevant national poverty line does not.

Yeah, when it comes to New York, CoL, income, etc. vary widely; Albany, Buffalo, Binghamton, and NYC are all incredibly different. And as far as I know county level CoL isn't so great either, depending on how big your county is; even in New York, Huntington and Riverhead have vastly different local economies (to the point where there are occasionally calls to split Suffolk County in two), to say nothing of massive counties like King County, WA.

That’s true in Virginia too. But in the flip side, most people live in the expensive metro areas.

The chart I posted uses the BEA’s regional price parity figures: https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/methodologies/RPP201...

Interesting and good points. Thanks!

Median income adjusted for cost of living (which is the usual way of comparing income between countries).

I would not characterize it as the "usual" way of comparing incomes. It's useful in some contexts but the adjustment can mask differences in local quality of life that matter to people.

When comparing countries, as I said, the basis of comparison is almost invariably PPP GDP per capita, not nominal GDP per capita.

Thanks!