AFFORDABILITY INDEX 2014
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CONTENTS
WHY AFFORDABILITY?
2
CITIES AS AFFORDABLE PLACES
3
WHY WE’RE DIFFERENT
4
MINIMUM WAGE [1 OF 9]
7
MOVIE TICKET [2 OF 9]
8
RENT [3 OF 9]
9
EGGS [4 OF 9]
10
TRANSIT [5 OF 9]
11
BURGERS [6 OF 9]
12
FLIGHTS [7 OF 9]
13
TAXATION [8 OF 9]
14
CONCERT [ 9 OF 9]
15
OVERALL CITIES SCORE
16
AFFORDABILITY INITIATIVES
17
FINAL DATA
20
PROBLEMS & SOLUTIONS
21
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INTRODUCTION
YOUTH AFFORDABILITY SERIES
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SELECT CITIES APPENDIX
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Cities are our collective future Today’s young people are at the centre of building better cities.Youth add urgency, vibrancy, creativity, and digital age talent to cities.
YOUTHFUL CITIES YouthfulCities is a global social venture
WHY AFFORDABILITY?
Affordability is an incredibly important issue:
and has worked has worked with thousands of youth in 65 of the largest cities across six major global regions to build a way to measure and compare cities from a youthful perspective. The YouthfulCities Index is a first-ofits-kind statistical ranking of the world’s top cities from a youth perspective.
Young people from around the world have told us that it’s their key urban priority. Preliminary results from our survey of 10,000+ global youth show it to be more important than having access to education, having a great film/music culture, and having access to healthcare.
Keeping all the above in mind, we want to answer the following: In which city do all the aspects of affordability from a youth perspective best align? Read further and find out.
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The YouthfulCities Affordability Index takes 25 of the world’s biggest cities and compares the cost of everyday items like food, housing and public transit.This index also covers some basic entertainment costs, since letting loose on a budget is key to making a city an exhilarating, liveable and youthful place. These include the average cost of concerts at small, medium and large venues, the cost of a movie ticket, the cost of fast food and the cost to fly away to a nearby city when you’re itching for a quick getaway. You rely on the brains and brawn of young people. You need to ensure that young talent, creativity and energy is nurtured, in order to foster the social, cultural and economic capital of this crucial demographic and your city as a whole. We dare you to guarantee that you will be a place young We pose this to city governments: people can afford to live today and tomorrow. See pages 17-18 to read about a few key urban initiatives that city governments are undertaking to ensure they don’t price substantial portions of young people out of their cities. Your bottom lines rely on young people. We want to afford your products or services. But you often price yourself out of the market. Take a cue from the growing contingent of companies working with municipalities to promote We pose this challenge to companies: affordability, as well as those promoting the sharing economy. These businesses are working towards cities as more affordable places and are encouraging all of us to capitalize on our underused assets, which in turn pushes affordability. Read more on pages 17-18 about how companies and cities are working together to make cities more low-cost. 4 4
CITIES AS AFFORDABLE PLACES
Our collective challenge is to make cities more affordable for youth.
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WHY WE’RE DIFFERENT
Our Index is different in that we place a strong emphasis on base wages. Too often, discussions about affordability focus solely on the cost of everyday items, products and services, usually normalized to U.S. dollars, and indexed against a baseline city. We think these fail to take into account the varying levels of income present in each city. Our Affordability Index is unique in the way we measure costs as relative to one hour of minimum wage labour in each of our cities.
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Looking at the results, you’ll see that Paris takes the top spot, followed by Toronto, Los Angeles, Chicago and Berlin. These aren’t all cities that normally place at the top of similar lists. What’s happening in these cities, however, is that minimum wage has come to be framed as a key policy area not only for young people, but for the growing overall demographic that relies on minimum wage jobs. In these places a fair wage has become a key concern for policy makers too, as they’ve begun to wake up to the reality that youth are highly mobile and likely to leave town if a city isn’t doing enough to protect their pocketbook. Since youth rely on entry level jobs when they enter the workforce, we feel tying costs to an hour of minimum wage labour is the best way to measure a city’s affordability from a youth perspective. And the fact that it’s within the legislative reach of many of the municipalities in our Index to increase wages only adds to the impact of this factor. Measuring it this way, we look at affordability from both a cost perspective, as well as from an entrylevel income perspective. Both sides of the coin, we feel, are necessary to accurately state how reasonably priced life in any given city is..
YOUTHFUL CITIES AFFORDABILITY SERIES 2014 6 6
7 7
8 8
9 9
10 10
11 11
12 12
13 13
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15 15
1000
PA R I S
950
1
PA R
900
902.23
TO R
LO S
896.48
BE R
889.48
DA L
880.20
NY C
850
867.40
2
890.60
CH I
RO M
885.78
869.68
LOS ANGELES
3
800
LO N
810.52
SE O
791.45
750 IS T
733.41
BA
733.85
700 JO H
BO G
680.94
679.15
650
CA I
686.71
LI M
663.48
MU M
648.77
LA G
644.64
633.63
MA N
600
SP
612.84
SH A
598.33
550
500 MX C
474.12
450
400
350
300
NR B
261.01
250
OVERALL CITIES SCORE
TO K
839.54
200
150
4
KI N
50
NORTH AMERICA AFRICA ASIA EUROPE LATIN AMERICA
0
16 16
CHICAGO BERLIN
5 6
DALLAS
7
ROME
8
NEW YORK CITY
9
TOKYO
10
LONDON
11
SEOUL
12
BUENOS AIRES
13
I S TA N B U L
14
CAIRO
15
JOHANNESBURG
16
B O G TA
17
LIMA
18
MUMBAI
19
LAGOS
20
S A O PA U L O
21
MANILA
22
SHANGHAI
23
MEXICO CITY
24
NAIROBI
25
KINSHASA
100 71.59
TORONTO
Young people in Rome get a break on municipal Public Transportation costs. This municipal program gets those earning less than â‚Ź20,000 an automatic 50% reduction in an annual pass. Prices can be further discounted up to 90% according to personal health and family issues.
BE
RL
This list would be amiss if we left out the recent moves made in Germany to eliminate all tuition fees. This returns Germany to the list of a handful of nations, including Norway and Panama, that offer university for free to domestic and international students.
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Free Universal Post Secondary
Subsidized Mortgages
RO
M
E
Launched by the Ministry of Youth, those under 35 interested in homeownership but without the necessary capital for a downpayment can access funding that will cover up to 5% of their first mortgage. Across Italy, â‚Ź600,000 has been set aside by the federal government to fund this project over the next three years.
IN
Discounted Transit
This list highlights initiatives cities around the world that are undertaking in order to make urban areas more affordable for youth:
We know affordability is the top priority for young people. And the results of this index prove the important role that a fair minimum wage plays in a city’s overall affordability. Paris, the most affordable city, sits in the top spot largely because of its high base wage. In fact, each of the top five cities in this Index have seen minimum wage become a hot button political issue recently. But a fair minimum wage is just one way municipal governments can make cities more affordable for the important youth demographic.
Discounted Transit
Affordability rules post secondary education, as students across France can access the APL housing subsidy. It’s available to all students, whether a citizen of France, the European Union or otherwise.
IS
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Discounted Transit
Youth in Paris can take advantage of reduced rates for Paris’ popular, privately owned Vélib bike sharing program, as well as cheaper municipal public transit fares on all weekends.
R PA
Housing Subsidy
VIV LA
TE
With cooperation between the Tel Aviv University (TAU) Student Union and the Tel Aviv Trust Fund, students at TAU, Israel’s largest, are privy to a housing subsidy of up to 9600 shekels per year. The program also drives civic participation, by requiring that all applicants volunteer at least 40 hours in the local community in which they live.
Affordable Housing
Colombia’s Ministry of Commerce Vive Colombia Joven - Youth Card program promotes overall affordability among 14 to 28 year olds. Discounts and benefits cover everything from housing, food, clothing, health and welfare as well as air and ground transportation. The free program has a specific focus on youth travel within the country and in turn benefits the commercial sector, offering multiple discounts and benefits in tandem with various local partners.
TA
Vive Colombia Joven - Youth Card
GO
BO
Discounts on public transit emerges as a theme, as Bogota’s public transit system (SITP) gives discounts to young people who qualify for social benefits. Youth who belong to SISBEN the agency that identifies beneficiaries, gives breaks on the amount of money paid for bus fares.
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APPENDIX
1
PARIS
TORONTO
2
LOS ANGELES
3
CHICAGO
4
BERLIN
5
DALLAS
6
ROME
7 8
NEW YORK CITY TOKYO
FINAL DATA
9
15
LONDON
10
SEOUL
11
BUENOS AIRES
12
ISTANBUL
13
CAIRO
14
JOHANNESBURG BOGOTA
16
17 18
MUMBAI
19
LAGOS
SAO PAULO
20
21 22
23
LIMA
MANILA
SHANGHAI
MEXICO CITY 24
25
NAIROBI
KINSHASA FINAL SCORE MINIMUM WAGE CONSUMPTION TAX
0 $0 USD 0%
100 $2USD 2%
200 $4 USD 4%
300 $6 USD 6%
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400 $8 USD 8%
500 $10 USD 10%
600 $12 USD 12%
700 $14 USD 14%
800 $16 USD 16%
900 $18 USD 18%
1000 $20 USD 20%
What issues did we run into: While constructing this and other YouthfulCities Indexes we’ve run into logistical problems. Some are problems inherent to comparing the cost of items between cities, others are specific to establishing minimum wage values for all cities. Here we explain the key hurdles. For more information, contact our Research Director: matthew@youthfulcities.com
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All cost amount were translated from local currencies into U.S. dollars at the average price between January 2012 and January 2013
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E BL ore O e m ges PR hav wa m i, ba imu um min M e ent pl m fer xa dif re 0 fo 00 s, n 1 ie cit tha For cities without a legislated minimum, we take the base wage at a typical entry-level job, for example a fast food restaurant
PROBLEMS & SOLUTIONS
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We take the average amount across all the given minimum wages in a city
Since robust data for average youth income at the city level doesn’t exist, we use minimum wage as our baseline income level
Join Us YouthfulCities is taking the lead in cities around the world in order to facilitate better cities built by youth. We work with youth, government, industry and communities in order to identify and work towards the needs of youth and the above stakeholders. If you want your city to be involved in our social enterprise, contact us as info@youthfulcities.com
YouthfulCities 401 Richmond St W, Suite 251 Toronto, Ontario Phone: +1-416-599-5400 Email: info@youthfulcities.com Website: http://www.youthfulcities.com 23 23