Australia Has the 3rd Highest Cost of Living

Does it feel a bit like the cost of living (in Australia) is getting a little harder to handle? Do your power, water, and gas bills seem to be creeping up? Are your home and car insurance, registration, and petrol costs getting worrisome? Food bills seeming somewhat out of control? Well that would be because they are creeping up faster than your income is being increased—for the average income earner anyway.

In Saturday’s Australian Financial Review (AFR) on page 44 they had a graphic from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which shows that Australia currently has the third highest cost of living on the planet. Only citizens of Switzerland and Norway have to pay more for their day-to-day unavoidable regular outgoings.

I have scanned the Top 12 countries on the graphic from the AFR and as you can see Canada and New Zealand have a cost of living index about 22 percent less than we do in Australia.

The USA is down at 24th with an index rating of 62.

What I would like to have been able to do is compare our (i.e., the Australian) cost of living index in 2002 with the index now (i.e., ten years ago). I suspect that we were probably down with Canada and New Zealand back around 2002 and that the costs of our regular outgoings have mainly gone up over the last eight to ten years.

If you would like to see the whole graphic, which covers 34 counties, then you need to get hold of a copy of the Weekend Edition of the Australian Financial Review for the 18th and 19th of February. For copyright reasons I did not scan the entire graphic; also it would have been too long to post. I really can’t afford any legal action for copyright infringement.