Selecting cities
Viewing the
indices page
Selecting cities
To make a comparison of
the cost of living between cities, use the two city
list boxes on the home page to select one base
city--the place from which you are moving
personnel--and one or more destination cities--the
place to which you are moving personnel. There is in
theory no limit on the number of cities you can choose
as destination cities, although displaying more than
five cities at any one time may make the presentation
of information less clear. You cannot choose the same
city as a base and a destination: the service is
designed to express the difference in living costs
between two separate locations.
To select multiple
destination cities, hold down the Control key on your
keyboard at the same time as clicking on the city you
want.
Once you have made your
selection click on the Submit button to view the
cost-of-living index and the price data. If you return
to the home page, the system will remember your city
selection and you can modify it immediately.
Viewing the indices
page
The indices page
contains three main elements: the index table, the
charting area, and the price data.
The index table
is at the top of the screen and gives you instant
access to the cost-of-living indices. The first index
number shows the general index, which compares the
overall cost of living in the base city (expressed as
"100") against the chosen destination cities. Both the
mean index and the high index for the base city are
shown: the mean index is the one most companies use to
determine the cost-of-living allowance.
Beneath the general
index are the individual indices for the
sub-categories of products and services used to
calculate the index. These subcategories are:
Shopping basket (food
and non-alcoholic beverages)
Alcoholic beverages
Household supplies
Personal Care
Tobacco
Utilities
Clothing
Domestic help
Recreation & entertainment
Transportation
Links from within the
index table take you immediately to background
information on the cities you have chosen and to the
prices of the products and services which comprise
each of the subcategories.
You can download the
index table into Excel by clicking on the Export into
Excel button.
The charting area
in the middle of the indices page is where you can
view the data in graphical form. The default view for
the chart compares the base city against the mean
index of the first destination city in your selection.
You can add in other destination city indices by
clicking on the index names in the selection box below
the chart. Clicking on the index name again will
remove them from the chart.
There are two types of
chart format to choose from. The default view is of a
clustered bar; you can also choose to view the data as
a line chart.
The software does not
currently support an export option for the chart, but
we are working to develop this feature.
The actual prices
for the products and services in the Worldwide
Cost of Living survey are displayed below the charting
area. These prices are displayed in both the local
currencies of the selected cities, and, on the
right-hand side of the table, in a common currency to
enable easy comparison. As a default, the US dollar is
used as a common currency, but the software gives you
a choice of six currencies (the others are Japanese
yen, British pound, Euro, Hong Kong dollar and
Singapore dollar). You can select your common currency
by using the dropdown menu at the top of the price
data table.
Every effort is made to
collect prices for every item in every city. However,
in certain locations, the quality and range of the
goods available means that they are not
internationally comparable, and in others, goods are
simply not available at all (alcohol in Muslim
countries is an obvious example). In these cases, the
cells are given the value "n/a".
You can download all
the price data into Excel by clicking on the Export to
Excel button at the top of the price data table.
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