Cost of living can be said to be the amount of money needed to cover basic expenses such a housing , food, taxes, and healthcare in a certain place at a particular period of time. The cost of living is often used to compare how expensive it is to live in a city.
Cost of living can also be associated to our lifestyles and also our personal wealth, high salaries collected and less daily expenses will provide high standard of living in a place where expenses are lesser compare to a city where the expenses is high and the wages or salaries is nothing to write home about. We cannot compare an average Nigerian cost of living to an average American citizen cost of living.
Using Nigeria as a case study, in recent time, Nigeria cost of living is high due to Government Economic policies, Devalution of the Naira, increased wages, reduction in productivity, the price of fuel and higher taxes. This problem is really affect the citizen cost of living , the expenses is way too costly than the given wages and salaries which is really causing bloodsucking demon of finance in the country ,this is actually increasing poverty rate in the state .
High cost of living is mostly compared to inflation but on the contrary, inflation is an increase in the cost of goods and service while high cost of living is the average income in a particular location. For example, when there is shortage of fuel and food , there will be inflation on the price of these commodities because they are scarce, which in return leads to high cost of living in the sense that there will be increment in transportation same goes to increment in price of food.
This can have negative impact on the country;
- Inflation can occur when prices rise due to increases in production costs, such as raw materials and wage.
- High demand for products and service can cause inflation as consumers are willing to pay more for the product.
- Most companies take advantages of the period of inflation, they tend to charge more of there product as a result of high demand of there goods.
Another factor that bring about high cost of living depends on the geographical area, we cannot compare the cost of living in a rural area to an urban area. Using Lagos state as an example, cost of living in Lagos is higher than some other cities. In rural setting cost of living is lesser than people staying in urban area.
The government is not helping through the increase in taxes and lower wages which is actually leading to a call towards starvation.
In my own opinion the cost of living can be reduced through the following measures:
- Government can help to bring end to this money eating termite by reducing high taxes rate
- Government should help in increasing productivity rate so that it there will be no scarcity of food in the country.
- Government should help through less expenditure than the income.
- Government should help with favourable policies .
Written by;
Oyinlola Mariam oluwatosin A student of linguistics And communication studies, Osun state University
