Show HN: We priced basic needs in work hours (global ranking and CSVs)

On “average” wages: The chart uses a typical/median (net) hourly wage, not the mean. Means are pulled up by high earners, and many HN readers sit above the median. so your personal “hours to basics” will look lower than the chart. Using the mean would systematically understate hours for the typical worker, especially in unequal countries. Also note: the index assumes a single renter; couples/roommates or employer subsidies will reduce hours per person.

There is a social meme going around about Mississippi being wealthier than Bordeaux, France [1] that relates to the “Mississippi Question" (the question is whether a country is poorer than Mississippi, which is used as a benchmark for low income and wealth within the U.S). Broadly speaking, it speaks to GDP and economic numbers being poor metrics for tracking happiness and quality of life [2] [3] [4]. Mississippi GDP per capita is higher than Spain, Italy, the UK, and France; where would you rather live as a human?

Edit: I do like that this uses time as a measure versus fiat; fiat can be gamed, time consumed to meet a need cannot.

[1] https://www.threads.com/@sarahbesingrand/post/DJGCx47sqPI/th...

[2] https://mises.org/mises-wire/britain-france-and-spain-poorer...

[3] https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/poorest-us-state-rivals-ge...

[4] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/mississippi

It also ignores quality of the goods.

But more importantly, it ignores what you can do with the extra hours you work.. same as with PPP it ignores that an iPhone isn't cheaper (it may not be a basic necessity), but many globally traded goods that go beyond basic needs aren't affected by PPP.

Not a welfare ranking. This measures one thing: hours of work to cover a small monthly essentials basket (rent, utilities, basic food, transport) = price ÷ wage. Healthcare/education/vacation are mostly outside that basket or already baked into hourly pay.

Turkey topping the “fewest hours” list doesn’t mean “everything is great”; it just means that for a single renter the price of a minimal basket divided by typical local net hourly pay is low in time terms. We’re measuring affordability in hours, not product quality.

Quality: Out of scope here. The basket is priced to minimal staples (rent, basic utilities, staple groceries, local transit). We’ll add a “quality bands” sensitivity so readers can see how hours move if you upgrade items.

Big-Mac Index: That’s a tradables proxy and food-only. Our hours include rent + utilities, which usually dominate time cost. Also, you used minimum wage; we use typical/median net hourly pay—minimum-wage calculations will overstate hours vs our method.

Your math note: €540 ÷ €12.82 ≈ 42 hours, but again, that’s food-only and gross wage, so it isn’t comparable to our basket or denominator.

Happy to post Turkey’s component line-items (rent/utilities/food/transit) and the sources in the article for auditability.

Totally fair—here are the data and components:

Basket (single renter, new lease): 1-BR market rent, basic utilities, staple groceries (~2.1–2.4k kcal/day), local monthly transit.

Formula: hours = monthly basket price ÷ typical net hourly pay.

Sources: Prices via World Bank ICP 2021 component parities (plus local operator fares for transit, tariffs for utilities, and rental medians/listings where available). Pay via OECD Taxing Wages (net) for OECD countries; ILOSTAT gross series as a clearly-flagged proxy elsewhere.

Data files (with country rows you can check):

Global table: https://www.thepricer.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/wtei_pu... OECD slice (net pay, full range): https://www.thepricer.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/wtei_oe... Extended (gross-basis, non-comparable): https://www.thepricer.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/wtei_ex...

I’ll add a small component breakdown table under the chart (rent/utilities/food/transit per country) so you can see exactly what influences the hours. If you have a better official rent/utilities series for a specific country, link it and I’ll rerun that row and note the change.

Quick clarification (re Sweden/Nordics): The 200+ hours isn’t “hours you actually work”; it’s hours of pay needed for a single renter on a new lease to cover a minimal basket (1-BR rent, basic utilities, staple groceries, local transit). It’s a price ÷ (typical net hourly pay) ratio.

Why it can look high in Sweden/Finland:

New-lease market rent vs. your rent. Many Swedes have regulated/legacy rents or own; our basket uses current market 1-BR (costlier), so it’s an upper-bound for a solo entrant. Households commonly share or pool incomes, which cuts hours per person a lot.

Paid vacation/leave. If the wage source is hourly, paid leave is already priced in. If a dataset forced us to derive hourly from monthly pay ÷ 160–168h, that would overstate hours for Sweden’s effective ~140h months. That alone trims the ratio ~15%.

Not a welfare map. It ignores public services/quality; it’s a cash-flow affordability snapshot for a specific living setup, not “where life is good.”

Having trouble here, the US is a big place and rents are affordable in some parts of it but ridiculous in others. Any idea of the hours/month for San Francisco?

One thing I've always wanted is separate indices for different lifestyles

E.g. "family provider PPP" or "bachelor PPP" or "student PPP". Or "middle-class PPP" (BMW prices) vs "upper-class PPP" (yacht prices)

TL;DR: PPP adjusts prices across currencies; this metric converts a fixed essentials basket into hours of local work. Formula: Hours = Monthly essentials basket price (local) ÷ Typical local hourly wage. Two countries can have similar PPP price levels, but if wages differ, the hours required can be very different. This is an affordability / effort measure, not a price-level measure. It’s closer to the classic “hours of work to buy X,” except the “X” is a core monthly basket (rent + utilities + basic food + transport + essentials). Currency-agnostic, distribution-sensitive, and directly relatable to workers’ time.

Author here. fair critique. We should have led with the basket and methods in plain text. Here they are:

What “basic needs” means in our chart (single adult, new lease):

Housing: market-rate 1-bedroom rent (current new-lease median, not legacy/regulated rents).

Utilities: basic electricity + heating/cooling + water/sewer/trash for a small 1-BR.

Food: ~2,100–2,400 kcal/day from low-cost local staples (grains/pasta, legumes, eggs, veg/fruit, oil, dairy/chicken) — no brand premiums.

Transport: one local monthly public-transit pass (or closest equivalent).

Everyday basics: SIM/phone plan and hygiene/cleaning essentials. Excluded: healthcare/tuition/childcare, cars, entertainment. Wages: net typical/median pay (after tax/mandatory contributions). Metric: hours needed = basket price ÷ net hourly pay. It’s a cash-flow affordability ratio for a solo renter, not a welfare/quality-of-life score.

On citations & data: Sources are standard (national stats/OECD/Eurostat + operator fares + rental medians from official or broad listing datasets). If you have a better official series for any country (especially rent), point me to it and I’ll rerun that row and note the change.

On the visuals/formatting: Point taken. I can collapse the UI to just the number + rank and move the methods into a single, clean appendix. Ads fund the data work, but I’ll provide an ad-light reader version for this piece.

If something still looks off for your country, share the wage/rent series you trust and I’ll check it.

Not “9.5h worked each day.” It’s hours of pay needed in a month for a single renter to cover a bare-bones basket. Quick anchor with public data: Tel Aviv non-rent essentials ≈ ₪4,470 + studio/1-bed rent ≈ ₪5,000–6,300 ⇒ ≈ ₪9,500–10,700/month. If take-home pay is ~₪45–55/hour, that’s ~175–235 hours of pay. Many Israelis don’t live alone in TA (roommates/partner/subsidies/outside TA), so their effective hours are lower. The chart standardizes a tough single-renter scenario to compare places; it’s not saying people literally work 9.5h/day.

TL;DR: The chart is a single-adult, renter affordability ratio (price ÷ typical net wage). It’s not saying “people actually work 11h/day”; it’s saying “if you tried to cover a solo renter basket out of one typical paycheck, you’d need ~X paid hours.” Households adapt (roommates, family pooling, informal housing, employer perks), which lowers real-world hours.

Why the >220h outliers were excluded from the press note: We used a trimmed summary to avoid letting a handful of fragile cases (thin/biased price data, capital-city rent proxies, wage series with poor coverage, currency quirks) dominate the headline. In the full write-up, I’ll show the entire distribution, the eight omitted cases, and winsorized vs. raw comparisons so readers can audit the effect.

Where confounding can creep in (you called several):

Informal economy: Formal price series + formal wages can overstate hours where many transact or earn informally.

Housing formality: If rent stats miss informal dwellings, the “solo renter” basket skews too expensive vs. typical living arrangements.

Basket design: Ours is a minimal, non-tradable basket (modest 1-BR rent, basic utilities, ~2,100–2,400 kcal groceries, local transit). No cars, no tuition, no luxury goods. I’ll add a shared-housing variant and a city vs. national sensitivity.

Household composition: The metric is per worker, not per household. A 3-adult household sharing one rent bill will show fewer hours per person than a single renter.

Net pay & transfers: We use net/typical pay (after taxes, including standard cash benefits where the source does). Publicly funded services (health care, schooling) are intentionally excluded from the out-of-pocket basket—this is a cash-flow lens, not a full welfare measure.

Mexico/“11 hours a day” example: That interpretation mixes hours of pay needed with hours actually worked. If the basket costs more than one typical monthly take-home, the ratio can exceed ~173–184 hours/month—even though people don’t work 11h/day; they share housing, live outside the cost center, buy informally, or pool incomes.

What I’ll add to make this clearer (and falsifiable):

A methods box with the exact basket, wage series, and the full, untrimmed table (including the eight outliers).

Two companion views: Shared-housing hours and Discretionary hours = paid hours – hours to essentials.

A city edition (e.g., SF/NYC/Lagos vs. national) so price-level heterogeneity isn’t hidden.

Happy to be corrected—if you have a better wage or rent series for any of the questionable cases, point me to it and I’ll rerun that row and show the delta.