Cost of Living Comparisons

By Kristina Cowan

If you're curious about doing a cost of living comparison between cities, you've come to the right place. A cost of living comparison between cities can vary greatly and can play a pivotal part in helping you understand how far your salary will go in a particular city.

1. How can doing a cost of living comparison between cities help me understand my earning potential in one city versus another?

Doing a cost of living comparison between cities will help you learn what it takes to maintain your standard of living from one place to another. Pamela Villarreal, a policy analyst at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas, gave the example of moving from Houston to New York City. While the move may include a significant salary boost, she said, you need to consider, for example, if you'll be able to afford the same size home in New York-and if you're not able to, would you be OK with that?

"I think sometimes people get so encouraged by the possibility of moving to another area that they may not stop to think what exactly that salary is going to buy them," she said. "In some cases they may have a higher standard of living and in some cases they may have a lower standard of living, but each person has a different standard or set of goods and quantity that makes them happy. So the key is looking at what your salary will buy to help you attain that."

2. Why is a cost of living comparison by city more useful than cost of living comparison by state?

Experts say doing a cost of living comparison by state isn't useful because different metro areas within the same state may have very different costs of living.

"It doesn't do any good to compare the cost of living from state to state," said Steve Reed, an economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index program. "Eureka, California versus Los Angeles is very different."

3. How do you do a cost of living comparison between cities?

Try using the new PayScale Cost of Living Calculator.

Noah and Jessica Anderson recently made the trek from Atlanta to New York City, using cost of living comparison calculators to help gauge what it would cost to live in New York. The 27-year-old Noah, who works for a private equity firm in New York, said with the calculator's help, he was able to do very careful comparisons that proved accurate once they made the move."I was fortunate to get into something where the income increase did justify the increase in expenses," he said.

4. What's the difference between using a salary calculator and a cost of living comparison calculator?

A salary calculator can tell you how much you should be earning compared to others with similar characteristics-people who live in the same metro area, have obtained the same level of degrees, etc. A cost of living calculator will tell you how far your salary will go when you're buying goods and services in a particular location.

5. What do cost of living comparison charts really tell you?

Noah Anderson said the charts provide a base of knowledge about how much it'll cost you to move from one city to another. "It's not 100 percent accurate, but it gives you a rough estimate of what your expenses will be and what you have left over, and what you can save," he said.

Anderson said he used six months' worth of data he'd kept on expenses he and his wife had while living in Atlanta, and worked it into a comparison chart between Atlanta and New York.

Penelope Trunk, blogger and author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success, recently moved her family from New York City to Madison, Wis., after conducting a year's worth of research, and cost of living comparison played an important part. But she said relocating is often more philosophical than some may realize.

"You should be doing a soul search on your core values. There's no chart or pull-down menu for that," Trunk said. "You can't predict how your life is going to change with a cost of living index."

6. Is there any way to do an international cost of living comparison?

Except for a few Canadian cities, the there isn't much international data available online. But the ACCRA website suggests several other sources, including the U.S. Department of State.

Other potentially useful sites for doing an international cost of living comparison are:

• The London-based Economic Research Institute's Relocation Assessor.
  
• The Economist Intelligence Unit's Worldwide Cost of Living bi-annual survey.

Related articles

• Living Small to Cut Costs (annlrd.wordpress.com)

The question of sponsorship

CIC maintains that the priority in sponsorships under the family reunification program is to reunite spouses and children of Canadian citizens and permanent residents, while parents can visit the country on multiple-entry visas.

Source: Canadianimmigrant.ca

Gloria Elayadathusseril

If we do decide to sponsor, it’s going to take a very long time. I hear at least seven years. 

Kailash Kaur has been visiting Canada every summer since 2004. Each trip from India costs her son and daughter-in-law several thousand dollars. The couple is willing to bear this large, recurring expense so they can see her regularly, rather than spend a one-time expenditure of a few grand to sponsor her to live permanently with the family here — and wait perhaps years.

“She is in her mid-70s and if we do decide to sponsor, it’s going to take a very long time. I hear at least seven years,” says her daughter-in-law Gurdeep Kaur. “It will be a tough task for her to come and integrate into this new society and contribute to this country’s economy.”

However, Kaur concedes that even if her mother-in-law didn’t contribute economically to the country, she would definitely play a positive role in the society by helping raise her grandchildren.

Of course, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) maintains that the priority in sponsorships under the family reunification program is to reunite spouses and children of Canadian citizens and permanent residents, while parents can visit the country on multiple-entry visas, just like the elder Kaur.

But not every senior is as lucky as her in obtaining a visa, let alone multiple-entry ones. Max M. Chaudhary, a Toronto-based immigration lawyer notes that issuance of visitor visas are “notoriously arbitrary” in places like New Delhi, India; Islamabad, Pakistan; Manila, Philippines and Beijing, China. “I have seen cases where elderly applicants are rejected for visitor visas four times and be granted a visitor visa the fifth time. New immigrants who have established themselves in Canada are very frustrated at the difficulty in getting their parents here [even] as visitors.”

Of course, immigration officers can get strict about visits if they think there is a possibility the elder will not return to their homeland after the visit.

Cuts to quotas

So what’s really going on here? According to a 2009 study by CIC entitled Elderly Immigrants in Canada: Income Sources and Self-Sufficiency, parents and grandparents are continually at the bottom of the income-earning scale even after 10 years — the maximum number of years sponsors pledge to support immigrant relatives — depending on their relative’s age and relationship.

Perhaps partly in reaction to this data, the federal government recently issued a plan to cut the number of family reunification visas for parents and grandparents of immigrants from 15,300 to 11,000 a year.

However, in response to an earlier appeal by the Chinese Canadian community, Ottawa has decided to increase the quota for sponsorship of parents and grandparents in the Beijing visa office from 1,000 in 2010 to 2,650 in 2011. While, on the other hand, in New Delhi visa office, the numbers are being reduced to 2,500 this year, from 4,500 in 2010.

New Democrat immigration critic Olivia Chow said at a recent press conference that the information obtained under an Access to Information request shows the reduced quotas will primarily affect applicants from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America. She also noted more than 148,000 parents and grandparents overseas are already waiting as long as five years to be reunited with their Canadian children and grandchildren. “In the five, eight, 10 years these Canadians are waiting, most likely, these parents cannot travel to Canada,” Chow said.

The long wait ahead

According to Chaudhary, worse still is the stress of waiting endlessly. “Canadian-based relatives are frustrated when their elderly parents have lost most of their relatives in their home country … and no longer have their own community in their home country for support,” he says.

“The Liberals started the trend of reducing family class immigration, but this reduction has been accelerated by the Conservative Party with regard to parents and grandparents.”
Chaudhary says the immigrants he interacts with on a regular basis in his law practice are dismayed by the current waiting period for sponsoring parents. “Not to mention the excessive medical scrutiny that the immigration department metes out on elderly sponsored parents.”

The other side

So what’s the argument being made to reduce sponsorships? According to a 2005 report by conservative think tank the Fraser Institute, “Given their age, many of them put high costs on the health care systems if their sponsoring children are unwilling or unable to meet their obligation and pay for these cost privately.”

The Vancouver-headquartered institute’s study also reveals that most parents of economic class immigrants are unlikely to become active participants in the labour force because of their “advanced age” and “poor ability to speak and learn English.” The study indicates that these parents and grandparents are able to pay few if any income taxes, yet are entitled to all of Canada’s social programs.

“Admittedly, there is an increased health burden in bringing elderly immigrants to Canada, but this is slight, given the few additional elderly immigrants that have been admitted under Canada’s immigration program,” Chaudhary points out. “Further, why should native-born Canadians’ parents be a burden and not immigrant parents, given that both pay taxes to support Canada’s health care system?”

Contribution of sponsors

Mississauga-based software engineer Vivek Bibra who sponsored his parents says, “Yes, my parents do take advantage of OHIP [Ontario Health Insurance Program] and they don’t work here. But both my wife and I are productive, tax-paying immigrants.”

He also points out that since the couple came here as skilled immigrants, they did not take any social assistance for 30 years of their lives before arriving in Canada. “One of the things that was attractive to us when applying for our immigration was that we could sponsor our parents.”

Felix Zhang, a founder of Sponsor Our Parents, a grassroots advocacy group, has a similar view. “It raises a big question why we are all Canadians and yet we are treated unequally. This is unacceptable.” He also wonders whether economic migrants, who are sought after because they bring needed workforce skills, will continue to choose Canada if they can’t bring their parents here.

The Chinese-born immigrant sponsored his parents to Canada in 2007. His application is still at the in-Canada prescreening stage. “My parents would like to live with their only grandchild,” says Zhang. “And my parents are not getting any younger.”

Chaudhary — a Canadian born to immigrant parents from Kenya — feels privileged in this aspect. “I have had the benefit of my parents’ assistance with regard to my two small sons, which, as a busy professional is invaluable; it allows me to focus more on my work. Further, I have seen my parents’ joy triggered by my kids’ presence; such joy can’t be replicated through long-distance phone calls.”

Bibra, whose parents have lived with him since 2006 says it was a great relief when his parents accepted his request to come to Canada, despite having to leave behind their familiar social life and a successful interior design business. “They made a great sacrifice. [Today] we are able to be at work in peace because we know my parents will take care of our children after they come back from school.”

There are thousands of Zhangs and Bibras out there  waiting helplessly for their parents to arrive and reap the familial benefits of their elders’ presence.

But it looks like what many immigrants want and what many of them can expect is at a standstill. “We can’t satisfy 100 per cent of our immigrant stakeholders,” said CIC Minister Jason Kenney in a recent phone interview to the Toronto Star. “We have to make choices to balance our objectives.”

So for now, many sponsors who’ve applied for their parents’ and grandparents’ immigration will have to be contented with the fact that we are able to reach our dear ones in our home countries almost instantly — thanks to modern technology — unlike our predecessors from even just a few decades ago who in most cases left their families behind for good.

Related articles

• Immigration quota shrinking for elders (thestar.com)
• Visa cuts hit parents of immigrants hardest (cbc.ca)
• Immigrant visas to drop 5 per cent: records (cbc.ca)