The Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) of The Economist magazine has compiled the 2007 Worldwide Cost of Living Survey. The survey is compiled by collecting a snapshot of prices from 177 internationally comparable products/services and sorting them into 10 categories. From this an index score is calculated and compared against the benchmark metric, which is the cost of living in New York City (which has an index score of 100).
The most expensive cities in the world for 2007 are as follows:
1. Oslo, Norway
2. Paris, France
3. Copenhagen, Denmark
4. London, UK
5. Tokyo, Japan
6. Osaka, Japan
7. Reykjavik, Iceland
8. Zurich, Switzerland
9. Frankfurt, Germany
10. Helsinki, Finland
Surprisingly, New York was number 28 on the list. Not surprisingly, it is the most expensive city outside of Europe and Asia. An interesting follow-up survey would be income to cost of living, to see which group of people actually have to manage their money the most.
2 Comments
A good indicator would be median income, compared to cost of living, and the numbers will be startling for most cities.
That’s a good point, but I think the numbers might be even more startling for countries not on this list, like developing countries, where often times costs of living are so high in proportion to income that you have large extended families living together.