Tokyo is cheaper than Seattle? To put cost of living in perspective, here’s a comparison of 35 U.S. cities to their nearest equivalents around the globe.
With inflation up 9.1%, Americans are taking a hit to their wallets and their lifestyles. Prices of common items like potatoes and bread are up more than 8%, seafood is up 12% and coffee 15.3%. Eggs are up a whopping 32.2%.
U.S. households are cutting back on restaurant spending, vacations and debt payments as a result, and many are struggling to pay rent and are worried about providing food for themselves and their families.
Cost of living varies geographically and temporally, meaning that the same lifestyle can cost more or less in different places, and it can go up—or sometimes down—over time.
To put cost of living in perspective, here’s a comparison of 35 U.S. cities to their nearest equivalents around the globe. The 2022 data for this cost of living index comes from Numbeo and Visual Capitalist, and uses New York City as a benchmark. That means New York City is assigned a cost of living index of 100, and if Geneva, Switzerland costs 14.1% more than New York, then Geneva’s cost of living index is 114.1. The cheapest American city on this list is El Paso, Texas, with a cost of living index of 55.9, which means it’s 44.1% cheaper than New York.
Of the 578 cities in the dataset, there are about 260 cities in the world cheaper than El Paso. The city with the lowest cost of living is Peshawar, Pakistan, at 18.6, and there are a number of cities in India that fall below 20 and 30. Hanoi, Vietnam, is 36.9 and Mexico City is 37.4. Johannesburg, South Africa is 44.9, and Beijing is 49.5.
Here’s how the cost of living in 35 U.S. cities compares around the world.
See the full list of cities at Visual Capitalist.
