According to a new index, the Russian war in Ukraine and the pandemic's after-effects have caused the cost of living to go up by 8.1 per cent in 2022. CNN has quoted the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) Worldwide Cost of Living Index for this year, according to which 2022 was quite an expensive year.
The index has listed the top 10 most expensive cities to live in, in 2022. Let's take a look:
1. New York and Singapore
3. Tel Aviv, Israel
4. Hong Kong and Los Angeles
6. Zurich, Switzerland
7. Geneva, Switzerland
8. San Francisco, California
9. Paris, France
10. Copenhagen, Denmark
CNN has quoted the head of worldwide cost of living at EIU, Upasana Dutt's media statement which read, "The war in Ukraine, Western sanctions on Russia and China's zero-Covid policies have caused supply-chain problems that combined with rising interest rates and exchange-rate shifts, have resulted in a cost-of-living crisis across the world." She added: "We can clearly see the impact in this year's index, with the average price rise across the 172 cities in our survey being the strongest we've seen in the 20 years for which we have digital data. The rise in petrol prices in cities was particularly strong (as it was last year), but food, utilities and household goods are all getting more expensive for city-dwellers."
How the list is made: The EIU evaluates more than 400 individual prices across more than 200 products and services in 172 cities in order to produce the list. In order to gauge how much prices have changed over the last year, they conduct surveys of a variety of high- and low-end firms.
Every year, a different organisation, the global mobility corporation ECA International, releases its own list of the most expensive cities in the globe. The ECA list has a somewhat different technique, focusing on regular costs such as rent and the price of public transportation while excluding luxury goods from its calculations.
Cities with currencies that are stronger against the US dollar are likely to show higher in the rankings because the EIU list is compared to New York City costs. And this year, New York and Singapore climbed up to the number 1 position.
