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I always found it interesting that homeless folks in the US seem to live in tents a lot of the time, but in my country they rarely have more than a piece of cardboard. I don't know if my perception is incorrect, or if I'm ready too much into this, but my conclusion has been basically what you said: at every socio-economic level, the people at that level have higher standards of living in developed countries than in developing countries.

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It’s really hard to compare when you get down to it, even if you ignore “homeless” as a category.

Using money as a proxy doesn’t work perfectly because things can be more expensive, and trying to normalize with things like “living sq ft” doesn’t calculate externalities.

The best I’ve found is to track relative migration pressure - where do people want to go?

Excellent points. In my small island country, prices mostly come down to being labor-dominant or material-dominant. The former is cheaper* than the developed world, whereas the latter is more expensive* than the developed world.

*compared using nominal exchange

>The best I’ve found is to track relative migration pressure - where do people want to go?

I like this approach. It's much more holistic and captures stuff that really cannot be quantified with prices and numbers, like freedoms and rights.

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