Prescott Valley-Prescott vs Bakersfield-Delano

Cost of living comparison based on BEA Regional Price Parities. Bakersfield-Delano is 2.7% more expensive than Prescott Valley-Prescott.

2.7% more expensive

Bakersfield-Delano, CA is 2.7% more expensive than Prescott Valley-Prescott, AZ on BEA Regional Price Parities (overall RPP 100.9 vs 98.3). A $100,000 salary in Prescott Valley-Prescott buys about the same as $102,678 in Bakersfield-Delano; the largest component gap is services.

  • Overall RPP 98.3 (Prescott Valley-Prescott) vs 100.9 (Bakersfield-Delano)
  • $100k in Prescott Valley-Prescott ≈ $102,678 purchasing power in Bakersfield-Delano
  • Services drives the gap (+66.8 RPP points)

RPP parity plate

Pair AZ:CA 98.3→100.9

TIER-NEAR · CROSS-STATE · SPLIT-BUDGET · BENCH-CROSS · PP-SHIFT

  • TIER-NEAR Near tier
  • CROSS-STATE AZ × CA
  • SPLIT-BUDGET Split budget
  • BENCH-CROSS Benchmark cross
  • PP-SHIFT PP shift

Instrument codes from this pair's BEA Regional Price Parities (overall · goods · services · rents · national benchmark 100 · purchasing-power conversion), not a ranking or recommendation.

Category Breakdown

Visual Comparison

Overall
Prescott Valley-Prescott
98.3
Bakersfield-Delano
100.9
Goods
Prescott Valley-Prescott
96.2
Bakersfield-Delano
105.2
Services
Prescott Valley-Prescott
91.5
Bakersfield-Delano
158.3
Rents
Prescott Valley-Prescott
98.8
Bakersfield-Delano
90.3

Vertical line = national average (100)

What This Comparison Actually Tells You

Services creates the largest separation: Bakersfield-Delano is 66.8 points higher. But rents move against the overall direction, so this is a split budget rather than a clean across-the-board winner.

Bakersfield-Delano, CA is 2.7% more expensive than Prescott Valley-Prescott, AZ, a meaningful but not extreme shift. The move decision turns on which budget category creates the 2.6-point overall gap.

This route crosses the national benchmark: Bakersfield-Delano is above 100 while Prescott Valley-Prescott is below it. That makes the move a change of price regime, not merely a rank swap.

Comparable population context is incomplete for this pair, so no market-scale explanation is inferred from the price indexes.

For a service-heavy household, test childcare, health, and other locally supplied costs before relying on rent alone. The BEA ratio converts $100,000 in Prescott Valley-Prescott to $102,678 in Bakersfield-Delano, but it is not a personal spending weight.

Prescott Valley-Prescott
98.3
Cost Index
Bakersfield-Delano
100.9
Cost Index

Salary Equivalents

What a salary in Prescott Valley-Prescott would need to be in Bakersfield-Delano for the same purchasing power:

In Prescott Valley-Prescott In Bakersfield-Delano Difference
$50,000 $51,339 +$1,339
$75,000 $77,008 +$2,008
$100,000 $102,678 +$2,678
$150,000 $154,017 +$4,017
$ in Prescott Valley-Prescott = in Bakersfield-Delano

Same BEA Regional Price Parity ratio as the table above (98.3 → 100.9), computed live from your number, nothing is sent anywhere.

How the Price Gap Changed

Prescott Valley-Prescott and Bakersfield-Delano share 17 published annual releases from 2008 through 2024. Their overall gap narrowed, moving from 6.1 to 2.6 RPP points. Bakersfield-Delano remained the higher-index metro in the latest release.

Services changed the most within this pair: its gap moved 53.3 points between the first and latest shared releases (13.5 to 66.8 points). This describes a relative price-index history, not a forecast or a household budget.

Release Year Prescott Valley-Prescott RPP Bakersfield-Delano RPP Relative Gap
2008 103.0 96.9 6.1 points Prescott Valley-Prescott higher
2012 96.5 101.1 4.5 points Bakersfield-Delano higher
2016 98.6 96.5 2.1 points Prescott Valley-Prescott higher
2020 93.2 100.3 7.1 points Bakersfield-Delano higher
2024 98.3 100.9 2.6 points Bakersfield-Delano higher

Annual BEA Regional Price Parity releases; a higher index means a higher price level relative to the national average of 100. Selected years shown from the full shared series.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Bakersfield-Delano more expensive than Prescott Valley-Prescott?

Bakersfield-Delano is 2.7% more expensive than Prescott Valley-Prescott. The overall cost index is 100.9 vs 98.3 (national average = 100).

What salary in Bakersfield-Delano equals $100K in Prescott Valley-Prescott?

A $100,000 salary in Prescott Valley-Prescott has the same purchasing power as $102,678 in Bakersfield-Delano. This is based on the BEA Regional Price Parity indexes.

How do rents compare between Prescott Valley-Prescott and Bakersfield-Delano?

Rents in Prescott Valley-Prescott are indexed at 98.8 while Bakersfield-Delano is at 90.3 (national average = 100). Prescott Valley-Prescott has higher rents.

Data sourced from official public datasets, Regional Price Parities (2024), index where national average = 100. Retrieved and formatted by PlainCost. See our methodology for details.

Every figure on PlainCost is rendered directly from BEA Regional Price Parity source data, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, our changelog, or report a data error. Data current as of 2026-08-11. Rankings measure the published cost-of-living index only; we don't recommend where to live or rate any metro's quality of life.