Mississauga, Canada’s seventh-largest city, is now the most expensive in the country to live in and the second-most unaffordable large urban area in North America, only behind New York City, according to a recent study.
The new study, conducted by PolicyAdvisor, a Canadian insurance provider, concludes that when it comes to cost of living versus income in both Canada and the U.S., the five most expensive cities are New York City, Mississauga, Vancouver, Hamilton, and Toronto.
Mississauga is part of the Greater Toronto Area.
PolicyAdvisor calculated cost of living based on the average cost of eight items in each city, including: a restaurant meal, a bottle of water, a cinema ticket, a cappuccino, one-month gym membership, a one-way transit ticket, a monthly transit pass and one month’s rent.
“The combined cost of these items was calculated as a percentage of the average monthly salary to find out where to live most affordably,” wrote PolicyAdvisor in the report.
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What makes Mississauga so unaffordable, the study says, is that the average net salary of residents is very low compared to the cost of living.
A monthly pass on MiWay, Mississauga’s transit provider, costs residents $131. This is the third-most expensive public transit of all the cities in the study, trailing New York City and Toronto.
Mississauga also places third in Canada in most expensive rent ($2,117 per month), behind Vancouver and Toronto.
However, Mississauga residents only bring home an average of $4,168.70 per month, placing it 17th on the list of the 20 cities included in the study.
That is to say, a Mississauga resident making the average amount of money and paying average rent would be spending nearly 51 per cent of their take-home pay on cost of housing, or 56.4 per cent on cost of living.
The study shows that in New York City, the percentage of cost of living to monthly salary is 57.6 per cent which is the highest. The other three top five of the most expensive cities in North America are all in Canada: the percentage for Vancouver is 50 per cent; Hamilton is 47 per cent; and Toronto is 46.7 per cent.
By April Chu.
