This Country Has the Lowest Cost of Living

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 21, 9:30AM EST

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This Country Has the Lowest Cost of Living — © Trueblood786 / Wikimedia Commons

Inflation has triggered a rise in the cost of living in the United States and throughout the rest of the developed world. The consumer price index rose 7% in December, compared to the same month last year. Prices of some items, like used cars and gasoline, rose over 30% during the period.

Differences in cost of living from nation to nation are due in part to wages, inflation and the cost of basic items such as food, fuel and housing. Several countries, particularly in Africa, have median incomes of under $3,000. Both costs of living and income in these nations are extremely low, particularly compared with the United States, where the median household income was $67,521 in 2020.

Numbeo recently released its Cost of Living Index by Country 2022. Factors used to create a cost of living index for each of the 139 nations measured include rent, groceries, restaurants and local purchasing power. The country with the highest score was Bermuda, with an index of 146.04. The United States ranked 26th at 70.13. At the bottom of the list, Pakistan had an index of 19.92.

Bermuda’s GDP per capita ranks eighth in the world at $81,800, according to the CIA World Factbook. The gross domestic product per capita figure is used as an alternative measure of wealth and can be a proxy for median household income.

Pakistan’s GDP per capita figure is $4,600. That ranks it 177th. The CIA World Factbook measures more nations than Numbeo does.

These are Numbeo’s 20 countries with the lowest cost of living:

Pakistan (19.92)
Afghanistan (20.37)
India (24.43)
Colombia (26.72)
Algeria (26.87)
Kosovo (27.05)
Uzbekistan (27.31)
Tunisia (27.87)
Nepal (28.29)
Turkey (28.31)
Kazakhstan (28.68)
Syria (28.75)
Egypt (29.52)
Azerbaijan (29.73)
Georgia (30.18)
Paraguay (30.20)
Moldova (30.35)
Nigeria (30.49)
Ukraine (30.71)
Belarus (30.89)

Click here to see which are the richest countries in the world.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.