The Economist Intelligence Unit released its annual list of the world’s most expensive cities to live in and two cities tied for first place – yes you guessed it Singapore is right there at the top along with New York City. Both ranked first in the 2022 list of the Top 10 most expensive places to live in.
Tel Aviv in Israel came in third, with Hong Kong and Los Angeles tying for fourth place. Swiss city Zurich was in sixth place with Geneva in seventh.
Surprisingly it is more expensive to live in San Francisco than it is to live in Paris. The former landed in eighth place with the latter in ninth. Coming in at number 10 was Sydney, Australia.
Less Expensive Cities
At the other end of the pole the cheapest cities to live in were Damascus, Syria, Tripoli and Libya. The data was part of the Worldwide Cost of Living survey. The survey also revealed that prices in the world’s biggest cities have risen faster in the last year than in the last two decades by an average 8.1 percent.
Petrol saw the biggest jump rising by 22 percent on average amid higher global oil prices and a stronger US dollar.
Western European cities reported skyrocketing prices of gas and electricity which have gone up by 29 percent as the region slowly learns not to depend on Russian energy.
The survey also indicated that most household were spending on basic necessities and essentials and not many spend money on recreational goods and services in 2022.
The happiest countries in the world (according to the World Happiness Report) remain less worried and these were the countries that had better life expectancy, more social support and less or no corruption to name a few criteria. The happy countries were Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Austria. Australia is just behind Austria at number 11 and Israel at number 12.