Delhi and Mumbai – Least expensive Cities in World
Leading Swiss Bank UBS study reveals that
++ Oslo, Copenhagen, Zurich, Geneva and Tokyo are the world's priciest cities
++ Employees in Zurich and Geneva have the highest net wages in the world
++ People in Cairo and Seoul work the longest – roughly 600 hours more per year than their peers in Western Europe
Oslo, Zurich, Copenhagen, Geneva, Tokyo and New York are the world's most expensive cities based on a standardized basket of 122 goods and services. When rent prices are factored into the equation, New York, Oslo, Geneva and Tokyo emerge as especially pricey places to live. The basket costs the least in Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Delhi and Mumbai . The study was based on data collected in 73 cities around the world between March and April of this year.
Earnings highest in Switzerland, Denmark and the US:
The survey of 73 international cities found that employees in Copenhagen, Zurich, Geneva and New York have the highest gross wages. Zurich and Geneva – the two Swiss cities in the study – top the rankings in the international comparison of net wages. By contrast, the average employee in Delhi, Manila, Jakarta and Mumbai earns less than one-fifteenth of Swiss hourly wages after taxes.
Nine hours of work for an iPod nano :
One vivid way to illustrate the relative purchasing power of wages is to replace the abstract basket of goods and services with a specific, highly uniform product that is available everywhere with the same quality, and then calculate how long an employee would have to work to be able to afford it in each city. The study determined that employees have to work a global average of 37 minutes to earn enough to pay for a Big Mac, 22 minutes for a kilo of rice and 25 minutes for a kilo of bread. For the first time, a non-food product was used in the study to compare working hours.
The iPod nano with 8 GB of storage is an ideal example of a globally uniform product. An average wage-earner in Zurich and New York can buy a nano from an Apple store after nine hours of work. At the other end of the spectrum, workers in Mumbai , need to work 20 nine-hour days – roughly the equivalent of one month's salary – to purchase an iPod nano .
Costliest Cities:
While Tokyo ranks as one of the world's five costliest cities, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Delhi and Mumbai are all at the bottom of the price range. Workers in Tokyo earn the highest wages in Asia. Likewise, consumers in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Taipei have the greatest purchasing power in the continent. Sydney ranks among the top ten cities in the international comparison.