A highly subjective poll about standard of living

Hiya,

Here's definitions as usually agreed upon in the financial and economic sectors.

Standard of Living

A level of material comfort as measured by the goods, services, and luxuries available to an individual, group, or nation.


Cost of Living

1.The average cost of the basic necessities of life, such as food, shelter, and clothing.
2.The cost of basic necessities as defined by an accepted standard.


Of course, nowadays there is a bit of a 'blur' as to what is regarded as 'basic necessities'  in the Western or Developed world, but as far as benchmarking and creating a base point from which to compare and refer to - the above is pretty much it.

When you look at the various high quality and reputable organisations and reports, you'll see the UK consistently scores lower in all indexes as compared to the USA. When compared to many other nations, it falls lower still. This topic is about 'individual' reports and experiences so will often contain those individuals and examples that buck the overall 'trend'

Cheers, DtM! West London & Slough UK!

Indeed there's a lot of mixup in this thread and I think they're quite tough indicators to get right.  Not to mention there are a lot of emotions and intricated webs of thoughts behind what makes someone score something more or less

I myself was talking about standard of living- financial - because the material goods/services/luxuries available to me were much greater in the US. 

Cost of living, well that's much higher here - as I get far less for my money.  Does that mean I even needed as much in the first place? Maybe not, as I am certainly doing OK 

Quality of life though- that's what the last part of my post was alluding to- in which I have a very happy life. Did I have a happy life in the US?  Very much so. However, two different happies, but very high quality of life in both places. 

My cost/standard of living would still be higher here because of health care. If I could even get health insurance in the US, I'd be lucky if it covered my pre-existing condition, my medications are expensive and I have a medium-to-high risk of requiring future hospitalisation and possibly surgery later in life, and I am unlikely ever to make enough money to be able to cover those costs fully. I would expect this to be true for anyone with chronic health problems or high prescription drug costs.

Also, are paid holidays ever included in those calculations DtM? Because in the US you're lucky to get 10 days a year, while here the minimum is 28. I'd say that's a pretty big 'material comfort' difference.

I would say my standard of living is higher in the US. I have a car, a (slightly) more modern home, the appliances etc. are larger and more modern than what we had in the UK. The salary I'm earning here is better than what I had in the UK and the benefits I'm getting make up for lack of NHS (for me at least).
Looking at bathroom suites on a UK website just last night and was struck how OTT most of them were -- and expensive -- compared to what I would find in Loew's. We just want a plain old bath tub but were presented with things that looked like gravy boats, horse troughs or old-fashioned slipper baths! Even if money were no object I wouldn't want one of these!

Hi DrSuperL99

Standard UK holidays is 20 per year. Anything above that is down to the employer and
what they want to offer above the minimum. I believe the minimum statutory holiday time in the USA is 10 days - so half of the UK, however you guys do get more national holidays than us - which goes some way in having more 'holiday' time. Also, depending on which sector you work in, holiday time often is the same as UK levels. I've only ever worked in my IT career for 3 USA based Software houses, and the USA employees got the same amount of holiday as us here in the UK - a minimum of 20 days and one of those company's was generous at 25 days. Many of my USA based colleagues loved the fact they had more time off and this was back in 1999-2002! I think more industries since then offer 20+ days holiday, but the normal and statutory is the 10 days still I believe.

The NHS does subsidise many medications, but not all. It's a fallacy to think the NHS covers 'everything' - it doesn't. If you have or develop a condition for which there is no NHS coverage or subsidy, then tough luck. Your options then are to pay for it. With the current economic climate and there simply not being enough money to go around, plenty of things are up for cuts and removal of funding etc. Expect the NHS to cut funding for certain treatments and medications that aren't used as much or cost too much etc.

Cheers, DtM! West London & Slough UK!

Looking at bathroom suites on a UK website just last night and was struck how OTT most of them were -- and expensive -- compared to what I would find in Loew's. We just want a plain old bath tub but were presented with things that looked like gravy boats, horse troughs or old-fashioned slipper baths! Even if money were no object I wouldn't want one of these!

My BF and his sisters just paid for his parents' bathroom to be re-done (it was in shambles!).  I think he bought a standard regular run-of-the-mill white bathtub for just under £100 at either Homebase or B&Q or something like that, I can't remember which.  I know what you mean, but there is stuff that isn't quite so expensive...or weird. 

My husband and I have recently been talking about this quite a bit and are pretty set on moving back to the US in a few years. We have decided to have a baby here first in order to take advantage of the maternity leave, which is hands down better than the US, but our quality of life and standard of living is just not as good here. 

I had excellent health insurance at my old job and have cotinually been denied referrals under the NHS to continue getting care that I had been receiving in the US. As it stands now, I am at risk of developing skin cancer because the NHS doesn't believe in preventative care, whereas in the US anything slightly abnormal was treated immediately.

My career prospects are much better in the US and I have found people in my field here in the UK to be downright nasty. I think I might be able to live with less money but can't really get past being miserable in my work life for the rest of my life when I adored what I was doing in the US.

This doesn't apply to everyone, but I actually had more vacation time in the US than on the UK when you add in holidays. My husband has slightly more here, though he can't really use it all because no one in his field takes theirs and he's expected to constantly be in the lab, even on weekends.

We had better access to public transportation where we lived in the US and our commute time in the UK had more than doubled, with really awkward train and bus routes that force us to walk for an hour at a time most of the time. This is fine for now, but there's no way I see us making that work with children!

The other big issue is affordability, which has been covered enough already by others. I don't think our issues apply to everyone in the UK, but I was much happier in the US and find the UK doesn't have enough benefits to outweigh all the negatives. But we were living a car-free, fast food-free, support local products sort of lifestyle to begin with, so the lifestyle change that a lot of people have mentioned wasn't anything new to us. Nothing will change about our lifestyle when we return to the US other than what I've mentioned above.

Standard UK holidays is 20 per year. Anything above that is down to the employer and
what they want to offer above the minimum.

Not according to the government's own website: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/Timeoffandholidays/DG_10029788

The NHS does subsidise many medications, but not all. It's a fallacy to think the NHS covers 'everything' - it doesn't. If you have or develop a condition for which there is no NHS coverage or subsidy, then tough luck. Your options then are to pay for it. With the current economic climate and there simply not being enough money to go around, plenty of things are up for cuts and removal of funding etc. Expect the NHS to cut funding for certain treatments and medications that aren't used as much or cost too much etc.

Yeah, but this is much rarer than you seem to be trying to make out, and I would be willing to bet that a lot more people are denied treatment by their for-profit health insurance companies than are denied treatment by the NHS. It is also often the case that in the US there is a culture of overtreatment for financial gain, so getting all the treatment you want is not always a good thing either. As for my meds, I know for a fact that I received a very expensive and cutting edge drug for my illness free on the NHS when people I know of in the US had to pay out of pocket because their insurance companies refused to pay for the same drug for the same illness.

I know that you are completely biased towards the US in all these things, but studies by financial magazines don't seem to take a lot of different circumstances into account (and seem to be biased towards healthy childless adults who measure quality of life largely on how much expensive crap they can accumulate).

ETA: Sorry, that last paragraph sounded a lot more like nasty than teasingly sarcastic, which is how I meant it. Should have put a there!

Not according to the government's own website: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/Timeoffandholidays/DG_10029788

Your link says the same thing that DtM says, you are just using different words. 

28 days is the UK total minimum but this can, and often does, include the 8 days of public holiday time.  Thus the UK minimum that employer offers separately is 20 days.

I have 20 vacation days per year plus 3 "personal" days and also the time between Christmas and New Year's (with pay). And that's not counting the state and federal holidays. I can roll over the vacation days to the next year, up to 40 days, if I want. But that's Academia.

I believe the minimum statutory holiday time in the USA is 10 days - so half of the UK...

I am not aware of any minimum statutory holiday/vacation time requirement in the US.  Perhaps you could provide a link to back up that claim (10 days minimum in the US)?  AFAIK, it's completely down to the employer and/or possibly some state variations as well.

Even paid public holidays aren't an automatic given in many lines of work in the US.

Most of the places that I have worked (and people I know have worked) in the US, you weren't even entitled to take any paid vacation until you had worked there for a minimum period of time ranging from 6 months to a year.  The last place I worked, I had 10 days available to take after a full year's service, and after I had worked there for 5 years, I finally had accrued 15 days available each year.

Here in the UK my husband and I both have roughly 30 days annual holiday, plus public holidays!

My standard of living is higher here in the UK because of the combination of my husband's and my income.  My quality of life & the things we have available to us here are so far and above anything I ever had/did, etc in the US - there's just no comparison.  I suppose things cost more, but there's not much in it due to our combined income here.

Most of the places that I have worked (and people I know have worked) in the US, you weren't even entitled to take any paid vacation until you had worked there for a minimum period of time ranging from 6 months to a year.  The last place I worked, I had 10 days available to take after a full year's service, and after I had worked there for 5 years, I finally had accrued 15 days available each year.

The first place I worked gave no paid vacation for the first 12 months. None. Granted, that was a long time ago and things might (or might not?) have changed since then. When I left the US in 2003, I was getting 15 days, like you Mrs. R. If I'd stayed another year, I'd have had a whopping 20 days which would have made all my friends positively green with envy! Of course, that included no days off for being ill. If you were ill, that had to come out of your vacation, so if you had a trip somewhere booked and then got ill, you were screwed.

Several of the jobs I held in the US had no paid vacations (and no benefits either).  The most I had for vacation was 10 days, a sicky a month, and a personal day every 2 or 3 months (can't remember).  The vacation time wasn't activated until I had been there a year.  The sick days rolled over (but there was a limit to the number you could acrue), but I don't think the personal days did.

My husband (in academia) gets a crazy amount of days a year.  I think it adds up to 45 or something.  He never ends up taking all of them and few of the people he works with end up taking all of theirs either.  There's a limit to the amount he could take practically because there's always things to do, terms to prepare for, etc.  But even when he was working in forensics, he got way more than anyone I know outside of academia in the US.  He also has/had a lot better benefits (other than health insurance, of course).

ETA:  I imagine any mandates for holiday would be at the state level as most employment laws are.  There definitely isn't any federal mandate for vacation time or any other sort of benefits.  The default employment rights is "at will", which means there are no labour tribunals in the US.  You can be fired pretty much for anything unless you can prove you lost your job or were denied a job because of discrimination, which is difficult to prove.  I imagine it's hard to prove here too, but there's really very little protection for workers in the US, let alone mandates about holidays.

Also, I can appreciate the distinction between cost of living and standard of living, but I really don't think that it really makes all that much of a difference in what the OP was about.  I think she catches what most posters are saying regardless of the terminology they use.

US employers are not required to give paid holidays, and as said above, those who do often require a minimum service period of at least six months and more commonly a year.

Don't forget paid maternity leave.