Source: © GfK Purchasing Power Europe 2013/2014 *Index per inhab.; European average = 100

Central-Eastern Europe from Poland's perspective

With a per-capita purchasing power of €5,870, Poland ranks 28th in Europe and as such continues to be in the bottom third of the rankings: Inhabitants of Poland have on average around half of the average European purchasing power per person (€12,890). As such, Poles have double the purchasing power available to inhabitants of Bulgaria (€2,919 per person).

Poland and its neighboring countries are prime examples of the purchasing power divide in Europe: While inhabitants in neighboring Germany have more than €20,621 available annually, Ukrainians have only one-tenth of this amount (€2,206 annually).

Source: © GfK Purchasing Power Europe 2013/2014        *Index per inhab.; European average = 100

Warsaw is Poland's most populated district. With €10,478, inhabitants of this district also have the country's highest purchasing power. Wrocław, Poland's fourth largest city, has a per-capita purchasing power of €7,929, placing it in sixth place in Poland and ahead of Poznań, which ranks 12th with a purchasing power of €7,431. Poland's most affluent districts include the capital Warsaw as well as the surrounding suburbs (Piaseczyński, Pruszkowski, Warszawski Zachodni and Grodziski).

Source: © GfK Purchasing Power Europe 2013/2014 *Index per inhab.; European average = 100

The purchasing power spread in Poland is especially large. In the Czech Republic, the purchasing power in the capital region Hlavni mesto Praha is already approximately 30 percent higher than the national average, but the capital of Poland is set even further apart from the other regions of the country: Warsaw's per-capita purchasing power is 78.5 percent above the national average and 112.5 index points higher than Przemyski, the Polish region with the lowest purchasing power (national index: 66). Norway’s capital Oslo has only 11 percent more purchasing power than the national average.

Western and Southern Europe from Portugal's perspective

With a purchasing power of €10,018 per person, Portugal ranks 20th in Europe, behind neighboring Spain (ranked 17th) and the Mediterranean countries Malta (ranked 19th), Cyprus (ranked 18th) and Italy (ranked 15th). Compared to the previous year, Portugal has a higher per-capita purchasing power than Greece, moving it one place higher in the European rankings. Even so, the total purchasing power of Greece's 10.8 million inhabitants is still slightly more that of the 10.5 million Portuguese. This is due to the fact that in some southern European countries, the purchasing power per person is not as revealing a figure as the purchasing power per household. The latter is much higher in Greece than in Portugal, as the average household size is Greece is larger than in Portugal.