Glamor Economics

Chapter 155

Chapter 19 Section 10 How High Are Your Living Costs - The Cost of Living Index

On the Internet, someone calculated a cost of living account for people living in Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing:

The following costs are calculated based on the standard of a single male who has no girlfriend, seldom suffers from minor illnesses, seldom gathers with friends, seldom eats fruit, never breaks pots and pans... (unit: yuan/month).

Guangzhou
Rent, water, electricity, gas, and broadband are 1100 (general rent is 800, if one person lives in one room and one living room, most of them are more than 1000), meals are 600, generally do not eat big meals, and occasionally enjoy AA with colleagues on weekends, less than 50 yuan at a time .150 for mobile phones, transportation, etc. (there is usually a shuttle bus to work), and 300-400 for daily necessities.Currently, the average monthly cost is around 1900.

Shanghai
Rent and water, electricity and gas 700~900 (sharing two rooms), transportation fee 100~200 (free if there is a shuttle bus, taxi is not included), communication fee 100 (varies from person to person, but 50 yuan is the bottom line), meal fee 600 (Not considering the company's free work meals and treats), and other things such as human relations, charging, entertainment, etc.In general, about 1600 per month in Shanghai should be a reference indicator.

Beijing
Rent and water, electricity and coal 800~1000 (shared two-bedroom household), transportation fee 200 (free if there is a shuttle bus, taxi is not included), communication fee 100~200 (different for each person, 200 is more average), meal fee 450 (not included) Even if the company has free working meals and treats).Generally speaking, in Beijing, the consumption is at least 2000 per month.

If you think taking the subway to work in Beijing or New York is too expensive, look no further than Tokyo.It costs $3.25 to ride the subway in Tokyo, and $11.7 will quickly disappear from your pocket if you drop by for a newspaper and a cup of coffee.The same thing is 24% more expensive in Tokyo than in New York.

With the development of globalization, the quality of urban life has become a matter of great concern to many residents in today's global village. The website of "Forbes" magazine once reported that the "2010 Global Cost of Living" survey report released by the famous American consulting company Mercer on July 7, 7 showed that Tokyo, the capital of Japan, surpassed last year's champion Moscow to become the city with the highest cost of living in the world .The city with the lowest cost of living is Johannesburg, South Africa.The ranking of China's capital Beijing has risen by 2009 places from last year, making it the ninth most expensive city in the world.Four of the top 11 cities are in China.

In this so-called most comprehensive survey in the world, the investigators selected 6 cities on 143 continents as the survey object, and compared the spending of more than 200 items in each region, including housing, transportation, food, clothing , household goods, entertainment consumption, etc.In the comparison process, the investigators used New York as the criterion, with an index of 100. The indexes of other cities were compared with New York, and the index of consumption level higher than New York exceeded 100. The index of No.1 Tokyo is 143.7, and the index of the last Johannesburg is 49.6. The former is almost three times that of the latter.

In this ranking list, the performance of Asian cities is the most eye-catching.

Osaka moved up from 2008th place in 11 to 2nd place due to the greatly strengthened yen against the dollar.Hong Kong ranks fifth, while Singapore rises three places to 5th.Karachi remains the cheapest city in the region, ranking 3th, up one spot from last year.

A person in charge of Mercer Human Resources Consulting once commented: "Markets with strong currencies, such as China and Japan, have risen in the rankings, and the cost of living has become more expensive for employees stationed overseas. However, some currencies, including the South Korean won, Indian rupee, Indonesian rupiah and Philippine peso, depreciated against the U.S. dollar, causing cities in these countries to drop in the rankings.”

亚洲一些城市在榜单的排名下降。韩国从第5位下降到第51位，雅加达从第82位滑到第106位，而马尼拉则从第110位降到第126位。由于印度卢比对美元汇率的削弱，导致印度的城市排名纷纷下降。新德里从第55位跌至第65位，孟买则从48位跌至第66位。

而由于人民币相对于大多数其他货币表现强势，中国的城市呈现了相反的结果。北京排在第9位，上升11位成为全球前10大生活成本昂贵的城市。上海、深圳和广州紧追其后，分别是第12、第22和第23位。

Zhang Shidong, Business Director of Mercer Greater China Information Consulting Services, believes: "The rise in the ranking of Chinese cities is mainly due to relatively good overall economic performance and relatively strong currency value, while the actual cost of living denominated in RMB has not changed much. Due to China's huge market Due to the scale and relatively optimistic market outlook, it is not expected that the expatriate dispatch plans of multinational companies will have a significant impact due to the relative changes in the cost of living."

[links to related words]

The ideal cost of living index is the ratio of the cost to achieve a given utility level at the current price relative to the cost to achieve the same utility at the base price.

The Laspeyre price index is the quotient of the amount of money required to purchase a selected combination of goods and services at the current price in the base period divided by the amount of money required to purchase the same combination at the price in the base period.

Pap index is the quotient of the amount of money required to purchase a combination of goods and services selected in the current period at the current price divided by the amount of money required to purchase the same combination at the base price.

(End of this chapter)