Countries With the Highest Price Levels

Every country with a figure for price level, ranked from highest to lowest. The top three are Barbados (1.41), Cayman Islands (1.38) and Switzerland (1.32). The middle country of the 182 has 0.489.

What this measures

Price level of household consumption, compared with the US (Penn World Table), in ratio to the US (US = 1). Source: Groningen Growth and Development Centre, University of Groningen. For this measure, no agreed better direction.

How expensive the things households buy are in a country, compared with the US in the same year, when money is changed at the market exchange rate. A value of 0.5 means a typical basket of goods and services costs about half what it would in the US. Richer countries tend to be more expensive. It comes from the same price comparisons used to adjust GDP for what money buys, so it shares a building block with GDP per capita (PPP). Years in which the Penn World Table flags the price comparison as unreliable are left out. No "better" direction is set.

The full ranking

Each country’s latest figure, from 2014–2023. The year beside each value says when it was measured.

More on price level

• Countries With the Lowest Price Levels
• Price level by country: trend over time and what it goes with

Related rankings

• Countries With the Highest Economic Freedom (Fraser)
• Countries With the Highest Small Government (Fraser)
• Countries With the Highest Sound Money (Fraser)
• Countries With the Highest Freedom to Trade (Fraser)
• Countries With the Highest Light Regulation (Fraser)
• Countries With the Highest Public Social Spending
• Countries With the Highest Family Benefits Spending
• Countries With the Highest Old-age Spending

A ranking describes countries, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All country rankings.