International Cost of Living

Question

I have a user who is looking to compare cost of living in France, New Zealand, Australia, Italy, Scotland, Japan, and Canada. She wants comparable figures for basic categories like food, housing, clothing, etc.

The only things I could come up with were tables showing household final consumption figures (i.e., not per capita or per household, but total figures per country). I don't think this would be useful for her. I think she just wants to know how much someone would spend on housing, for instance, in each of these countries, and she wants the figures to be comparable.

Anyway, what I was able to find were the following:

1. Statistical Yearbook (United Nations): The 48th issue (2004). Table 24, starting on page 194, shows household final consumption figures by country. It also shows a breakdown in terms of percentage spent on food, clothing, furnishings, etc.

2. World Development Indicators (World Bank), 2004. Table 4.10, starting on p. 218 also shows household final consumption by country. Here, the figures are standardized into US dollars, but, again, this is total consumption, not per capita or by household, and there is no breakdown in terms of food, housing, etc.

Can anyone tell me if anything exists that would be more useful for this student, who is, I believe, is an undergrad, not an advanced researcher?

Answers

1. World cost of living survey (Gale publisher), 2nd edition, 1999.

Conveniently arranged by country and then by cities within that country, World Cost of Living Survey provides quick, comparative analysis of such major topics as:

*Child care, Clothing, Communications, Education, Energy and fuels, Groceries, Health care, Housing, Travel, Utilities, and many others for 740 locations throughout the world. You will find a more complete description in the Gale catalog.

2. I found interesting statistics in SourceOECD (database that contains books, periodicals and statistics from the OECD). If you don't have it, you probably have OECD subscriptions.

There is also the International Financial Statistics (paper and database) from the International Monetary Fund but there is only a few data that could be useful (by country: labor force, employment, consumer prices).

Other suggestions:

- International Marketing Data & Statistics 2005 from Euromonitor
(http://www.euromonitor.com/International_Marketing_Data_and_Statistics_2005).

- World Consumer Spending 2005/2006 from Euromonitor
(http://www.euromonitor.com/World_Consumer_Spending_2005-2006).

3. The United Nations also keeps detailed and up-to-date indexes on cost-of-living of its employees. You can download their data free of charge at http://icsc.un.org/col-rpi-d.asp. The cost-of-living is not available at the national level, but at the 'duty station' of the UN (e.g. Paris, Canberra and Melbourne, Montreal, Toyko, and so on). There is no data for New Zealand. Data is available as indices and US $ and covers:

Food and non-alcoholic beverages
Clothing and footwear
Housing, water, electricity, gas and fuels
Health
Transport
Etc.

*If encounter problem with this data: Go to Tools -> Macro -> Security, and then decrease your security level to Medium to enable macros. Restart your Excel and you will have access to the pull-down menu.