For immediate release · October 10, 2026
Senior care now runs $6,230 a month for assisted living and $10,205 for a nursing home, with a page for every state
ElderCareCosts Research
OCTOBER 10, 2026 ElderCareCosts today published The ElderCareCosts 2026 Cost of Senior Care Index, a public record of what senior care costs in every state, with a release page for each state and a downloadable dataset behind every table. Nationally, assisted living runs a median $6,230 a month, from $4,369 in Mississippi to $12,096 in Hawaii. A nursing home runs $10,205 a month, from $5,627 in Texas to $27,831 in Alaska.
Agency home care works out to about $35 an hour at the survey's 44-hour week, against a national median wage of $16.87 an hour for home health and personal care aides (Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025). The index lists 45,489 assisted living communities, 14,944 nursing homes, 33,026 home care agencies, 5,255 memory care communities, 5,115 adult day programs and 6,914 hospice agencies nationwide, drawn from state licensing registries and federal files.
National medians, 2025
Scroll for more →
In-home and home health figures assume 44 hours of care a week. National medians are taken across state medians and appear only when at least five states publish for the same period. Every figure is a modeled median anchored to the latest published national cost survey and adjusted with federal wage data; it is an estimate to plan against, not a quote.
What the index holds
- State medians for every priced care type, with the city rows behind them in the CSV.
- Hourly math at the survey's weekly-hours basis, beside the published aide wage for the same state.
- Licensed providers from state registries and CMS files, with inspection records where they are published.
- A Medicaid guide per state: what the program covers, who in a family may be paid, and the published nursing facility rate where a state publishes one.
- Missing care types stay blank. Nothing is filled from a neighboring state or a national average.
Where the numbers live
- The 2026 index, archived under DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23005532 (CC BY 4.0) and listed in the NIH National Library of Medicine Dataset Catalog.
- The full dataset as CSV, one row per state or city and care type, with its source and period.
- The data newsroom, with original analysis of affordability, supply, inspections, wages and ownership.
State releases
One page per state, each with its own headline figures, rank, provider counts and Medicaid guide.
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
Reuse any figure with attribution to ElderCareCosts Research and a link to the page it came from. No permission is needed.
About ElderCareCosts
ElderCareCosts is a cost-first senior care resource. We publish care costs by care type, state, and city with the source and date on every number. We list licensed providers from government records, not just the ones that pay. We explain how families actually pay: Medicaid, veterans benefits, insurance, and what happens when the money runs out.
We do not hide prices behind forms. We do not have commissioned advisors. We do not remove providers for bad inspection results, and we do not let anyone pay to bury them.
Authorship: ElderCareCosts Research (Organization). Not medical, legal, or financial advice.
Media contact
[email protected]
eldercarecosts.com/press/
The research desk is available for comment, state and metro data cuts, and a CSV of any table on the site.
###