May the 2nd, 2021 - Living costs in Croatia are often generally lower than they are in Western Europe, allowing those coming from the likes of Germany, France and the United Kingdom to have even deeper pockets when living in Croatia, especially if they receive a foreign wage or pension. A look at costs shows that living costs in Dubrovnik and Zagreb rival those in European cities like Brussels and the Hungarian capital of Budapest.
As Marina Klepo/Novac writes, although mayoral or county candidates rarely talk about the cost of living in the constituencies in which they're running in elections, they would certainly have a good reason to do so. On the list of the cost of living in 608 cities across the world as looked into by the popular Numbeo portal, the global database of consumer prices (groceries, clothing and footwear, taxis, utilities, internet, transportation, restaurant offers, allocations for sports activities, for kindergarten, schooling), takes five Croatian cities into account. The most expensive are the living costs in Dubrovnik, which is unsurprising and which took a very high 65th place, the second is Zadar, in 275th place, followed by Split (312), Rijeka (322), Zagreb (346) with the cheapest being the Eastern Croatian city of Osijek, which took 374th place on the list.
When it comes to countries, on the list of all 138 of them, Croatia is takes 42nd place, and of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, only Estonia (41st place) and Slovenia (38th place) are slightly more expensive, while life is in the rest of the countries in that general area is much cheaper. One reason for this, it seems, is the high cost of basic utilities, which include electricity, heating, water and other such costs for housing. Among 107 countries, Croatia ranks fairly high on that list, coming in at 17th place.
The monthly living costs in Dubrovnik for a family of four, as calculated by Numbeo, amount to as much as 23,888 kuna, without the cost of rent taken into account. When compared to the capital city of Zagreb Dubrovnik is 54.2 percent more expensive, while the rental price is 31.7 percent higher. On the other hand, a family of four in Osijek, without rent, needs 12,980 kuna per month, an enormous drop in comparison to Croatia's southernmost city. However, it is more expensive to live in all five Croatian cities than, for example, in Warsaw or Budapest.
The cost of living is just one of a number of criteria by which the quality of life in cities is assessed. When it comes to national capitals, last year's survey by a German company specialising in relocation, Movinga from Berlin, showed that among 150 cities, Zagreb ranks only 135th, and only the capitals of Lithuania, Latvia and Bulgaria are ranked worse. Cities are rated according to 16 criteria.
Thus, in the category of mobility, which shows the efficiency of private and public transport (the length and regularity of the system, the share of passengers in the total population, and the degree of traffic congestion), Zagreb is significantly worse than comparable cities from other countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
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