I’m moving to Sweden soon and a friend of mine sent me the following link (in Spanish, sorry) about the salaries in different countries. From here, I learnt about Purchasing Power Parity and using the data from the IMF I obtained the PPP ratios from Spain, Sweden and other countries. Using this list you can translate how much worth is your money in other country. For example, roughly we can say that goods you buy in Sweden using 10000€ can be purchased in Spain for only 8058€. Or saying it in another way, if I have 10000€ in Spain I have the same purchasing power than a suede that owns 12409€. Yet another way to say it is that living in Sweden is a 19,41% more expensive than living in Spain.
Now a table with the country ranked by ther PPP ratio and the cost of life of those countries compared to Spain, negative values indicate is cheaper to life there:
| Country | PPP ratio | 10000€ PPP | Cost of life compared to Spain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slovenia | 1.30 | 12,962 € | -28.14% |
| Portugal | 1.24 | 12,383 € | -22.42% |
| Spain | 1.01 | 10,115 € | 0.00% |
| United States | 0.98 | 9,818 € | 2.93% |
| Italy | 0.97 | 9,665 € | 4.45% |
| Greece | 0.95 | 9,546 € | 5.63% |
| Luxembourg | 0.95 | 9,473 € | 6.34% |
| Belgium | 0.93 | 9,252 € | 8.53% |
| Austria | 0.92 | 9,215 € | 8.90% |
| United Kingdom | 0.90 | 8,993 € | 11.09% |
| Finland | 0.88 | 8,756 € | 13.43% |
| Germany | 0.87 | 8,726 € | 13.73% |
| Japan | 0.87 | 8,659 € | 14.39% |
| France | 0.86 | 8,630 € | 14.68% |
| Netherlands | 0.86 | 8,597 € | 15.01% |
| Ireland | 0.85 | 8,537 € | 15.60% |
| Sweden | 0.82 | 8,151 € | 19.42% |
| Norway | 0.64 | 6,355 € | 37.17% |
Then using the table you can quickly determine the conversion from money in Spain to money in Sweden taking into accunt the Purschasing Power Parity. (€/Spain ppp ratio)Sweden ppp ratio. So, for 10000 euros in Spain are equivalent to (10000€ euros / 1.011484) 0.815086 = 8058.31 € in Sweden. So with the same amount of euros in both countries 10000€ you end up with a purchasing power of 10114€ (10000x1.011484) in Spain and a purchasing power of 8150€(10000x0.815086) in Sweden. The same amount of money give you a 19.42% lower purchasing power in Sweden.
This is the table I used to obtain the PPP ratio from the using the IMF data. PPP = GDPppp 2005/GDP 2005
| Country | GDP 2005 | GDPppp 2005 | ppp |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | 305.338 | 281.357 | 0.921461 |
| Belgium | 372.726 | 344.842 | 0.925189 |
| Finland | 195.785 | 171.43 | 0.875603 |
| France | 2127.168 | 1835.696 | 0.862977 |
| Germany | 2791.737 | 2436.004 | 0.872576 |
| Greece | 284.226 | 271.31 | 0.954557 |
| Ireland | 200.769 | 171.393 | 0.853683 |
| Italy | 1772.769 | 1713.399 | 0.96651 |
| Luxembourg | 36.621 | 34.692 | 0.947325 |
| Netherlands | 629.911 | 541.513 | 0.859666 |
| Portugal | 185.644 | 229.881 | 1.238289 |
| Slovenia | 34.407 | 44.597 | 1.296161 |
| Spain | 1127.975 | 1140.929 | 1.011484 |
| Japan | 4557.116 | 3946.09 | 0.865918 |
| Norway | 301.735 | 191.747 | 0.635481 |
| Sweden | 358.481 | 292.193 | 0.815086 |
| United Kingdom | 2230.608 | 2006.078 | 0.899341 |
| United States | 12455.83 | 12229.28 | 0.981812 |