Insider Monkey

20 Fastest-Growing Cities in the Midwest

Ramish Cheema
8 min read

In this piece, we will take a look at the 20 fastest-growing cities in the Midwest. For more cities, head on over to 5 Fastest-Growing Cities in the Midwest.

The Midwest is one of four census regions of America. It includes the states east of Montana, Colorado, and Wyoming, states north of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kentucky, and states west of Pennsylvania and New York. Simply put, the 'Midwest' is the area between the true West of the U.S. and the eastern coastal and inland regions. The area is made up of twelve states, which are Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

The region is also quite different from what is typically perceived about the U.S. Globally, America is projected as a financial behemoth with high costs of living and a stressful work environment. However, the Midwest is known for its laid-back lifestyle. As opposed to the iconic skylines of New York City and the glitz and glamor of Los Angeles, the Midwest has vast farmlands and gorgeous plains that are an equally important part of American heritage but are often overlooked in media coverage.

Additionally, if farms aren't your thing, perhaps the costs of living is. A compilation of costs of living in the U.S. by the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center shows that states in the Midwest are consistently a healthy green. In fact, out of the twelve Midwestern states, only three - Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota - had a cost of living index approaching the standard value of 100. Additionally, the Midwest is also the only census region without a state with extremely high living costs. To achieve this, the region did compete with the South as a large number of states in both have low living costs, but in the end, the Midwest prevailed because Maryland and D.C. both have extremely high living costs.

Analyzing America as a whole, seven of the top fifteen states with the lowest cost of living are in the Midwest, and the remainder are in the South. However, considering the fact that the South has more states than the Midwest, the fact that the latter still accounts for a large portion of states with the lowest living cost in America provides strong credence to the argument that the Midwest might be the cheapest region in America.

Not only does the Midwest have low costs of living, but it is also crucial to America's agricultural output. America is the world's largest corn producer, and 80% of the U.S.'s corn output comes from this region according to the Midwest Row Crop Collaborative. This makes the region important not only to American prosperity but also to the global food supply chain. Considering the fact that the Russian invasion of Ukraine disrupted the global commodities supply chain which contributed to high food costs, it can be argued that stability in the Midwest is also crucial for the global economy.

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