Warsaw excels as Europe’s hub for affordable living

According to Fransua Vytautas Razvadauskas, Cities Consultant from Euromonitor, Warsaw is one of the more affordable locations in Europe in terms of purchasing power parity.

“Purchasing power parity (PPP) is regularly used to measure the cost of living and operates by evaluating currencies through a basket of goods approach. In 2020, 48 percent of households in Warsaw earned disposable incomes over $55,000 in PPP – this was similar to Helsinki (49.1 percent) and more than Copenhagen (47.4 percent), Prague (44.6 percent), Berlin (37.1 percent) or Budapest (33.1 percent). This suggests that nearly half of Warsaw’s households have purchasing power equivalent to earning $55,000 per annum,” Razvadauskas noted.

In his opinion, Warsaw also benefits from relatively low housing costs both nationally and in the broader regional context. In 2020, just 18 percent of consumer expenditure was spent on housing, compared to 24 percent in Kraków or 25 percent in Katowice. 

“This becomes more impressive when compared to other European cities such as Copenhagen (28 percent), Prague (28 percent), Stockholm (26 percent) or Berlin (24 percent) where the Polish capital excels its housing affordability, leaving more room for expenditure on non-discretionary goods and services,” he said.

“In 2020, spending on non-discretionary goods and services (spending on everything except for housing, food, and non-alcoholic beverages, clothing, and health and medical services) amounted to 55 percent – on par with Western European cities such as Milan, Birmingham, and Berlin which tend to display higher spending on non-necessities compared to less affluent cities in Eastern Europe,” Euromonitor expert added.

(WBJ)