Global: How do consumers view costs of living compared to 12 months ago?

The price of commodities has been pushed up due to pandemic shortages, which has further escalated due to the Russia-Ukraine crisis. In a new YouGov survey we asked consumers from 18 markets about their cost of living now compared to 12 months ago.

A plurality of global consumers (42%) say that the cost of living has gone up by a lot compared to 12 months ago, while over a third say it’s gone up a little (34%).

Two thirds of consumers in Spain indicate that they find the cost of living to have increased by a lot (66%). Slightly fewer Canadians (58%) say the same – but that’s still more than half the consumers. Americans are slightly less likely than their North American counterparts to find that costs have gone up a lot (49%).

Despite a hike in wages in the UK, Britons indicate that it’s increasingly difficult to keep up with the rising costs. Great Britain (53%) along with most European countries surveyed saw more than half of its consumers who say that cost of living has gone up by a lot – Italy (57%), Germany (57%) and France (52%). However, Denmark and Sweden are among the least likely markets where consumers say the cost of living has gone up by a lot (22% and 17% respectively).

Asian markets are comparatively less likely than the global audience to find that the cost of living has gone up a lot. However, they are more likely to say that it’s gone up a little – China (50%), India (40%), Singapore (40%).

Consumers in Hong Kong (39%) and Sweden (38%) are twice as likely as global respondents (19%) to say that the cost of living has remained the same in the last 12 months. While Americans and Australians are as likely as global consumers to say their costs of living have not changed (18% and 19% respectively), Britons are half as likely to say that (9%).

Just 4% of global respondents say that the cost of living has gone down a little. This attitude is echoed by consumers in France and Poland (4% each). Around 2% of the global audience say that costs have gone down a little. A similar share of consumers in individual countries say the same is true. Indonesians are the only exception as nearly one in ten consumers say that costs have gown down a little and also gone down a lot (9% each).

Breaking the data down by age reveals that more than half the US consumers aged 55 and above (57%) find that the cost of living has gone up a lot. Slightly fewer Britons of the same age group are of the same opinion (44%). While British consumers aged 18-24 are significantly more likely to say that the cost of living has gone down a lot (43%), 25-34-year-olds register only around one in ten consumers (11%) who say the same. However, the opposite is true among younger Americans where 11% of 18-24-year-olds agree that the cost of living has gone down a lot, compared to 39% of 25-34-year-olds.

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Methodology: The data is based on the interviews of adults aged 18 and over in 18 markets with sample sizes varying between 513 and 2007 for each market. All interviews were conducted online in February 2022. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples.