Which is why I said "partially reflected". The Southeast has the lowes level of disposable income of all the regions in the US, even ones with comparable (probably even smaller) costs of living (like the Plains).
And, cost of living isn't orthogonal to the level of economic development. They're typically positivly related.
One interesting point, is that the southeast PCDI growth rates aren't very good. Coming from behind, it should be able to grow at a faster rate than the northern regions if the cost-of-living differences ate up the differences in income (as you suggest). That's clearly not the case. Take from that what you want.
source:
Am I playing a little loose with the numbers? Of course; I'm not going to spend weeks generating cost of living indices just to quantifiably disprove an obviously wrong position.
Anyone who's spent time in the south, will almost certainly agree that the level of development is less than in other areas of America.
