[extropy-chat] World's most and least expensive cities

Amara Graps amara at amara.com
Tue Jun 15 08:51:14 UTC 2004


J. Andrew Rogers:
>  11	Beijing, China
>  12	New York City, USA

>It's when I saw this that I started to wonder what their criteria was.
[...]
>Any clue why this is?  Is it being normalized for per capita income of
>the local population?

It seems not. Here is from their web site:

http://www.mercerhr.com/pressrelease/details.jhtml?idContent=1096865

"The survey, which covers 144 cities, measures the comparative cost
of more than 200 items in each location. These include housing,
food, clothing, and household goods, together with transportation
and entertainment.  The data is used to assist multinational
companies and governments in determining compensation allowances for
their expatriate workers."

Maybe they didn't create a good sample of items in Beijing? Why don't
you write them and describe what you know?

Here's an anecdote: my professor from San Jose State University in
the Silicon Valley spent six months last year on a sabbatical in
Rome. He thought that the rental costs for flats was not too bad...
So why is that? (Silicon Valley is expensive too!)

21	Rome, Italy
[...]
38	San Francisco, USA

If the prices were normalized for per capita income of the local
population, then perhaps Rome would be higher. (It is mostly the
rent that is killing me, other prices are generally ok)

I know about the phenomena of the smaller cities too, Alfio. The
people in Heidelberg (population 150,000) claimed that their city
was the next most expensive place to live in Germany after Munich,
and Heidelberg was not listed (but, being relatively close to
Frankfurt, I grouped it with that). My experience with Florence and
Venice is that Venice should be at the top for Italian cities, and
then Florence tied with Milan. Another anecdote: A man who manages
the CNR network at my location lives in Milan and commutes, and he
says that my town of Frascati (population 15,000) is more expensive
for flat rentals than Milan! :-(


Amara

-- 

********************************************************************
Amara Graps, PhD          email: amara at amara.com
Computational Physics     vita:  ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers         URL:   http://www.amara.com/
********************************************************************
"It's not the pace of life I mind. It's the sudden stop at the end."
--Calvin



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list