10 Most Expensive Places To Live In The World
It could cost as much as $6.64 in U.S. dollars for a cup of coffee, or $6,960 to rent an unfurnished, two-bedroom apartment In Hong Kong. Hong Kong ranked # 3 on Mercer’s latest annual Cost of Living Survey. The survey is aimed at giving those who are working abroad insight into the cost of living and is frequently used by employers to come up with compensation packages for employees with international assignments.
In order to come up with this list, Mercer researchers looked into cities in five continents, then measured the comparative cost of over 200 items in each location, items like housing, food, clothing, transportation, household goods, and entertainment. They used New York as a baseline city to compare against the other cities.
“Despite increasing prices in most European cities, European currencies for the most part slightly strengthened against the U.S. dollar, which pushed most Western European cities up in the ranking,” Nathalie Constantin-Métral, who compiled the survey, told Forbes. Increased rental prices has also pushed some European cities up in the rankings, particularly Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt, according to the study.
The following are the most expensive cities in the world in 2014, according to Mercer’s survey:
1. Luanda, Angola
2. N’Djamena, Chad
3. Hong Kong, Hong Kong
4. Singapore, Singapore
5. Zurich, Switzerland
6. Geneva, Switzerland
7. Tokyo, Japan
8. Bern, Switzerland
9. Moscow, Russia
10. Shanghai, China