Eurostat: Budapest’s living standards overtake Vienna’s

According to recent Eurostat figures, the Hungarian capital is ahead of the Austrian one in terms of living standards. However, Warsaw is ahead of us when it comes to the quality of life of citizens.

New Eurostat data released on living standards

Every year, Eurostat, a Directorate-General of the European Commission, publishes detailed economic data to compare living standards in different EU regions. The latest figures, showing the second year of COVID, 2021, have just been released, novekedes.hu reports.

Budapest has a huge dominance in the Hungarian economy. The situation in this respect has remained unchanged for almost a hundred years, novekedes.hu writes. The gap between the capital and the countryside is widening. This is regularly reflected in Eurostat’s annual reports.

Eurostat also converts GDP data into a fictitious currency called PPS (Purchasing Power Standard). This is necessary because there are often large price differences between countries. Novekedes.hu mentions the differences between a McDonald’s menu or a brake change in Germany and in Bulgaria.

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Budapest is ahead of Vienna, Berlin and Madrid

In terms of PPS, Budapest has been ahead of cities like Vienna, Berlin and Madrid for years now. We are not the only ones doing so well. Cities in Central and Eastern Europe are also performing quite nicely. So much so that Prague is at the top of the rankings, not far behind Luxembourg, Brussels and Dublin. In our region, economies are typically capital-centric. Rural regions are generally disconnected. In contrast, people in Germany, for example, live above the EU average in almost all regions.

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Rural figures are worse

A new improvement compared to last year is that Budapest has now overtaken Bratislava. The rural figures are less flattering for our country though. Although some rural regions are now less behind the EU average than a year earlier, the gap is still wide. At EU level, the negative top list is dominated mainly by the Bulgarian regions, novekedes.hu concludes.

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Source: novekedes.hu, ec.europa.eu