Based on how many average baskets of goods one can buy for an average salary while living alone and without children – Poland takes the lead followed by Germany. For some time the United States seemed the best country for that. However in a few decades, things can change drastically – the Slovak Republic once at the top, now is somewhere at the bottom, and Poland itself climbed a long way up – the time between 2009 and 2010 was a mess.

It is very difficult to find time-series data about the average salary, so only the EU and OECD countries are included in this chart. It would be interesting to see how cheap is Thailand for Thai people!

What: Average wage divided by price level index which results in the number of standard baskets of goods one can buy.
The average wage is “annual net earnings of a full-time single worker without children earning an average wage” measured in Purchase Power Standards.
The price level index is made to be 100 in 2020 for the EU as a whole for a standardized basket of goods. It is tailored for cross-country comparison.
Data for OECD countries was estimated using “Price level ratio of PPP conversion factor (GDP) to market exchange rate” (provided by WB, very accurate estimates), and “Average annual wage in 2018 constant prices at 2018 USD PPPs” (provided by OECD, not very accurate estimates)
When: 2000 – 2018
Where: 39 countries of the world
Source: EUROSTAT, OECD, WB