People keep mentioning that life is a lot cheaper in a small town in the Midwest than in a big city on the East Coast. As somebody who has lived in the Midwest, on the East Coast, in small towns, in big cities, and in really tiny towns, I can say that the issue is a lot more complicated than it seems at a first glance.
The housing (I’m only talking about renting since I’m ideologically opposed to mortgages of any kind) is, indeed cheaper in the Midwest. The choices, however, are quite limited. In Baltimore, we paid $1o0 less for our apartment than we pay for the one we have here in the Midwest. It was significantly smaller, but it was absolutely beautiful. It had a huge antique mirror on the wall and a real fireplace. Imagine having a real fireplace right in downtown Baltimore.
The utilities were cheaper on the East Coast and their quality was significantly better (I’m talking about the Internet, television, and telephone.)
Public transportation is cheaper in our tiny Midwestern town.
The food, though, is a lot more expensive in the Midwest. Of course, I don’t eat junk. I eat a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables and fresh meats and fish. The prices for this stuff are ruinous in a small Midwestern town. In a town in Oklahoma where I was offered a job, you needed to drive for 75 miles to get to the closest grocery store. Mind you, not an organic grocery store, or anything fancy like that. Just a regular grocery store. Within the town itself, there were convenience stores that sell the kind of junk I could not imagine eating. TV dinners and frozen pizzas, chips and chocolate bars. Bleh. So I refused the job.
In a big city (or even in a small town) on the East Coast, you can easily live without a car. And a car is a total money-guzzler. Here, you even need a car to go to a dollar store, which, of course, makes the entire concept of a dollar store moot.
And how about clothes? In New York, Montreal, Baltimore, etc. you can buy absolutely amazing clothes in all sizes very cheaply at Century 21 or its equivalent. I just bought two pairs of pants for something like $20 and $25 in Montreal and they look amazing. Here, however, clothes are supremely ugly and expensive. I have scoured the Metro St. Louis area for stores with passable clothes and have found nothing. This means that you have to travel far away to buy good clothes if you live where I do.
And books? Big cities (and even small towns) on the East Coast are teeming with used book stores. Here, there are none.
Now let’s think about people who have children. In a big city, there is a bizillion activities you can do with a child absolutely for free. Santa Claus parades, festivals, museums, galleries. Here, there is nothing. I have no idea what is it that people do with their kids in order to have a good time and help them develop intellectually. They can’t even go for walks because there is nowhere to walk.
This brings us to yet another added expense of life in a small Midwestern town. If there is nowhere to walk, you’ve either got to join a gym (expensive) or start frequenting doctors (insanely expensive).
Any kind of entertainment is located far away and is expensive in our area. In a big city on the East Coast, though, you could spend hours each day enriching yourself culturally for no money at all.
So I have to conclude that life in the Midwest is only cheaper if you are willing to eat garbage, wear horrible ugly clothes, read no books, drive everywhere, only exercise in the horrible perversion of humanity called the gym, and spend all your free time vegging out in front of the TV.
The healthy, cultured, intellectual lifestyles that even poor people can enjoy in a big city on the East Coast, however, are only accessible to quite wealthy folks in small Midwestern towns.
Clarissa's Blog 
Wow, good point. I was about to say it might be more useful to compare metro cities – Chicago is cheaper than NY for example – but then I remembered that salaries are much higher in NY for comparable jobs than in Chicago, and I’m sure many other things. There’s always more to the story!
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I get paid less here than I did for a job in upstate New York where I worked significantly less hours (a much smaller teaching load and no service obligations). So yes, that’s also a factor.
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There’s also cost of insurance, and taxes – what state income taxes are like, property taxes, sales taxes, and so on. Baltimore’s not an expensive place as things go – cost of living more or less what it is here, from what I can tell – and salaries are higher – I should go!
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I was noticing the difference in quality of life between a small town (Missoula) and a medium size city (Victoria) for myself. There are no sales taxes in Missoula, and prices are lower (even when I adjust between American and Canadian currency) but I had to stretch and squeeze every penny to make it, and depended upon the food bank and getting creative with other friends who were financially limited. Here, I’m not exactly rich, but it feels like luxury after four years of living off oatmeal and bruised fruit.
Another thing I would mention is access to health resources for disabled/queer people is less of an issue in a big city. If you live in a small town and there’s no autism specialist, or you’re a trans* person and your doctor is close minded or thinks it’s just transvetistic fetishism, well tough cookies, but a big city offers more options and they are usually more accessible.
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These are very good points.
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My family lives in Dayton, Ohio and I’m going to college in Chicago. While some things are definitely cheaper than Dayton, I think that the cost of driving everywhere probably negates that anyway.
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That’s exactly what I’m saying.
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Well, for the clothes and books, there’s online shopping (and prior to that, mail order). Not to mention the public library, which can order books not in their collection. For exercise, people can run on the shoulder of the road or dance in their houses. Children can play make-believe in their backyards. State and county parks are also popular, and free or cheap. Fruits and veggies are cheap in season from roadside stands, can them for winter.
Big cities have food deserts just like Oklahoma, especially in poor neighborhoods. In the same places, it might not be safe to exercise or play outside.
So yes, it’s more complicated, but it mostly depends on where exactly you live, rather than some gross generalization about East Coast v. Midwest, or small town v. city (and let’s not forget rural!).
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Okay, so I’m going to have to object to the idea of having nothing to do with kids or exercise in small middle-of-nowhere-esque towns… I grew up in one. As sports was king (at least in my small town, and my impression is that this is true in many others) we had plenty of opportunities to participate in recreational or competitive (if that was your bag) athletic events, and thus did not need gym membership (there were adult leagues too, my mom has been in several, and my dad mostly got his exercise by helping with my athletics). And my friends and I found plenty of things to do out in the middle of nowhere: exploring streams, hills, and abandoned farms from early settlers to the area, looking for native american artifacts, helping with people’s farms in exchange for horse back riding etc. And as my dad showed me many of these cool activities, I see no reason why one couldn’t do them as an adult, you just have to be willing to wander through the wild. And I did many arts and crafts with my mom, preparing for each holiday was a month long orgy of making decorations and gifts (or sewing costumes for Halloween, which was my favorite).
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Yes, horseback riding is an amazing hobby. It’s also ruinously expensive. My colleagues daughter is into it and her mother, a Full Professor, can barely afford it.
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I honestly think that it depends on where in the Midwest you live as well. My parents live in a small town in Northeastern Minnesota. Their mortgage is less than half what my and my husbands rent is. They have a grocery store only 10 miles away in the same town that my dad works in. Food prices are more there than they are in the Twin Cities, simply because of transportation costs. However, their car insurance is less because they live in what is considered a rural area. Utilities are less and of comprable quality to ours.
As far as intellectual stimulation. . . I really think it comes down to what your priorities are. If teaching your children to think and explore their world is important to you, you’ll make sure it happens. Just because there’s not a bookstore doesn’t mean you can’t get books. Just because there aren’t museums around does not mean that your children won’t be exposed to great works of art. The effects of globalization, while sometimes are not that good, are definitely helpful when you live in a rural area.
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” If teaching your children to think and explore their world is important to you, you’ll make sure it happens.”
-But how do you do that, Rachel? This is not a rhetorical question. I’m thinking about having a kid right now and whenever I walk outside, I start asking myself whether I have the right to inflict these surroundings on a kid. There isn’t even a place to play outside because there are no sidewalks. The only alternative I’m seeing is to ship the child off to Montreal in summers to give her or him some kind of intellectual, visual, etc. stimulation at least once a year.
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Look up what’s offered by parks and recreation or its equivalent where you live. Usually their activities are free or cheap, and include sports leagues which are much cheaper than horseback riding or traveling teams. I got plenty of intellectual stimulation as a child via the public library (books and programs), playing outside (no sidewalks where I lived either, but there was a creek, woods, backyards, and the courts on the road), theater productions at the community college (cheap, kids prices too) and through the community theater, etc. While I am not familiar with your location, everywhere I’ve ever lived in the US (including very tiny Midwestern towns) has had something like this, if you know where to look. For what it’s worth, my husband and I have this discussion all the time–he was raised in a city, and can’t imagine what kids do in small towns. I was raised in a small town/rural area and can’t imagine what kids do without the opportunities there!
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While I definitely think it’s important for kids to have time out doors, it certainly isn’t the only way to encourage curiosity. As I’ve grown up my parents have made a special effort to encourage us to be curious. Specifically when my family has lived in smaller communities my parents have done everything from playing games with us (Scrabble is a big on in the Kelson household) to building our book collection so that we could educate ourselves on a variety of subjects. Library participation has been critical at all times. Documentary watching has also been really big in our household. Can’t go to the Louvre? Well then, let’s watch a documentary about it. Who is the man behind the Mona Lisa? One of the most memorable documentaries I’ve ever seen was about Leonardo Da Vinci.
One of my strongest memories as a child was when my dad was working on his Ph.D. I remember doing my homework (K-3) while my dad did his work. At the time I thought it was the coolest thing ever that I was in school just like my dad. Learning new things with him really helped me to develop a love of learning.
Honestly, just sitting around and talking to each other has been huge. My mom went to France when she was a kid and listening to her talk about that has made me really curious about different cultures. My dad is constantly teaching us (being a teacher isn’t just his profession, it’s how he lives.) Honestly, it’s these experiences, more than actually visiting the locations (I actually had the change to go to France about 5 1/2 years ago) that has helped me to maintain my curiosity.
This was slightly long winded, but I hope it made sense :).
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This is a good example of using anecdotal evidence versus hard data. You made a series of conjectures on the quality of food based on your personal experiences but others could argue against your thesis saying that they had different experiences. I pulled up the USDA food desert map which visualises the areas of America that have low access to quality and affordable food. It validates your premise for your particular geographic area showing large areas of food desert surrounding Edwardsville. You can check it out using the link below.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/fooddesert/fooddesert.html
The American government for some reason is systematically eliminating easy public access to data like the fore mentioned map. I think that I previously mentioned next year’s elimination of the Statistical Abstract of the United States which is the premier source of public information both in print and online about the American economy that has been in print since 1878. I found out last week that the five year economic activity census is possibly being eliminated next year and it is the primary source for the calculation of the American GDP. Also under consideration is the elimination of next year’s annual Household Wealth census. Can you imagine having any objective discussion of wealth inequality without this data?
It is very advantageous for the Fox news/Republicans to argue their position based on anecdotal evidence and ideological stances rather than hard data but why does a Democratic executive branch of government go along with it? You can also check the use of SNAP i.e. food stamps on this site and gain an appreciation of the situation in which your neighbours find themselves.
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All of those are low income areas, and they aren’t all that close to Edwardsville.
Yes, it is a sad state of affairs when government data like this is considered too hot to handle.
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Here are a few Missouri-side used book stores in the St Louis area. Left Bank and Subterranean also sell new books.:
Left Bank Books (Central West End branch), Subterranean (U.City), name forgotten (Arsenal and Grand, South City), Book House (Manchester Road, Rock Hill), parrot guy who used to sell at the Subterranean space (Manchester Road, Rock Hill). There are many, many more, these are merely the literature-oriented ones that I frequent. Used book stores that tend to have mostly genre stock (mystery, romance, western, urban romance, science fiction, comics, Christian-themed novels) are quite common – perhaps 15 to 20 in the bistate region?
No, these stores aren’t the Strand.
It is true that commuting is cheaper in those places with good public transportation. You aren’t in one of those places, and I might add, the E. community homeowners likely want to be inaccessible by rail. There is always a to-do among white Illinoisan suburbanites about extending rail access: “but people from East St. Louis might come out here…”.
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I love Left bank, it’s a great store. But I can’t walk there because it is very very far away. So it’s useless to me. And driving there makes the used books expensive because of the costs involved in driving. THis is really not a way to save money.
“E. community homeowners likely want to be inaccessible by rail. There is always a to-do among white Illinoisan suburbanites about extending rail access: “but people from East St. Louis might come out here…”.”
-Very true. And very tragic, in my opinion.
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As for fashion, well, the Midwest in general is behind the times. You can frequent the mark-down shops (Marshall’s, Loews, etc) and the gently-used clothing stores (many – there’s a dandy one on Big Bend in Richmond Heights, and another one down the road in Shrewsbury, plus a relatively new one in the Central West End) for less expensive clothing, but the taste will still be Midwestern.
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Societies that have population pressure are significantly more likely to (1) be permissive of abortion (2) be tolerant of or be neutral towards homosexuality. Considering that cities are generally higher density, the lower amount of living space on a per person basis might apply enough population pressure to make the same hold. Indeed, cities usually have a lower birth rate then more thinly populated areas. Higher population density causing (local) population pressure might be a (partial) explanation for why cities are usually more liberal. Furthermore, to the extent to which the population pressure relationship holds, it follows that a more urban population is more likely to support abortion rights. In effect, urbanization is good for reproductive rights.
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