Cost of living facts for kids
The cost of living is how much money you need to pay for everything you use to live. This includes things like food, clothes, a place to live, and getting around. It's about the money it takes to keep up a certain standard of living, which means the level of comfort and wealth you are used to.
Sometimes, people look at how the cost of living changes over time. They use something called a cost of living index to measure this. This index helps us see if things are getting more expensive or cheaper. We also use cost of living calculations to compare how expensive it is to live in different cities or countries.
Worldwide Cost of Living Survey
The Economist Intelligence Unit is a group that does a survey twice a year about the cost of living around the world. They compare the prices of over 400 different things in 160 cities.
These things include:
- Food and drinks
- Clothes
- Things for your home
- Personal care items (like soap)
- Rent for homes
- Transportation (like bus tickets)
- Utility bills (like electricity)
- Private schools
- Help around the house
- Fun activities
The survey from March 2015 showed that Singapore was the most expensive city in the world for the second year in a row. It was rare because the top 5 most expensive cities stayed exactly the same. Sydney and Melbourne in Australia also became more expensive. Sydney was the fifth most expensive, and Melbourne was the sixth. Asia has many of the most expensive cities, with more than five in the top twenty. But it also has many of the cheapest cities, with eight out of the ten cheapest cities in the world.
See also
- In Spanish: Costo de vida para niños
