An exploratory analysis comparing affordability across 11 major European cities through two different lenses: the local average wage, and a fixed international student budget.
- Cheap on paper ≠ affordable in practice. Lisbon, despite low absolute prices, has the worst affordability ratio (1.51) for its own residents — wages haven't kept up with rent and groceries.
- Absolute and relative views can disagree. Turin has the best affordability ratio but lands mid-pack in absolute savings potential because both salary and costs are low.
- Affordability depends on whose income you use. On a fixed 1000 USD student budget, every single city in the analysis is over the break-even line. Amsterdam in particular flips from "good for locals" (0.71) to "worst for students" (2.57).
Python · Pandas · Matplotlib · Seaborn · Jupyter
Global Cost of Living on Kaggle (Numbeo, May 2022 snapshot). 4,874 cities × 55 price columns, filtered down to 248 quality-checked European cities and a focus set of 11 major student hubs.
A short, honest list — these matter when interpreting the charts:
- Numbeo data is crowd-sourced; even quality-flagged values reflect contributor demographics rather than full markets.
- Snapshot is from May 2022 — rents in Lisbon, Berlin, and Amsterdam in particular have moved significantly since.
- Average net salary is a rough proxy for "typical local" and hides within-city inequality.
- Grocery consumption multipliers are reasonable personal estimates, not validated against survey data.
- Student budget is a single fixed assumption (1000 USD); a sensitivity analysis across 800/1000/1200 would strengthen the conclusion.
- Layer in 2024–2025 rent data from Idealista or Immobiliare.it for current numbers.
- Add a sensitivity analysis on the student budget assumption.
- Extend the city set to 20+ and use ranking robustness across multiple metrics.
Emirhan Ömer — Computer Engineering student at Politecnico di Torino.