So, if you’re looking to buy a Big Mac, you should get the price from the menu board near you. Since states are big and offer a diverse range of cost of livings, this price may not reflect the price you see at the drive-thru.įor example, densely populated areas often have higher prices, an eater in a rural city may see a lower price. We opted to only include the Big Mac, and not the meal price.
Our data on Big Mac prices comes from .įrom there, we found the average Big Mac price in each state- identifying the most (and least) expensive states. How We Determined This - And What It Means In general, the Midwest is a pretty cheap place to visit Mickey D’s. Mississippi is the cheapest with the trademark burger only coming to $3.91. In the 12 states above, a Big Mac for $4.07 or less. Notoriously pricy Hawaii goes as high as $5.31.
A Big Mac- not counting fries or a drink- costs over $4.65 in all of them. McDonald’s isn’t quite so cheap in the above states. Keep reading to see the priciest (and cheapest!) places to get your Big Mac- and how we determined this. If you make it a value meal it will set you back $5.99.īut how much you pay will vary dramatically based on where you live. While you can’t get a degree in Burgernomics, you can see the difference when looking at menu prices across the country. I'd definitely have some fries with that.The cost of a Big Mac has become more than just how much your favorite burger at McDonald’s costs and transcended to a whole economic theory.
On the other hand, if the global economy becomes more stable, we may come to see a world where the Big Mac is as equally affordable as it is uniformly created all around the world. If the US economy spirals into another tailspin, the prices of American Big Macs may experience wild, Venezuelan-like swings. Big Macs: What Does the Future Have in Store?Īs unstable as global economics have been in recent years, it's really a toss-up as to what could happen next. By the logic of the Big Mac index, this would mean that the currency used in Ukraine, the Ukrainian hryvnia, is quite undervalued. Ukraine is home of the world's cheapest Big Mac, with each sandwich costing only $1.67 US dollars. They also enjoy an employment rate of over 80%, and a life expectancy of 83 years, both of which are well above global averages, and even averages for developed countries. Before you start feeling sorry for the Swiss, you should consider that, because of their high standard of living, they're some of the happiest and healthiest people in the world. Due to their relatively higher standard of living, which is paid for through higher wages and taxes, many commodities and services are priced much higher, and Big Macs are no exception. Switzerland is an expensive place to live. If you guessed chocolate, you'd be wrong. Just why is a Big Mac so expensive in Switzerland? The answer just may lie in one of the things Switzerland is best known for. While the Big Mac can't provide a magical explanation of how the entire world economy works, it does provide a good foundation to begin investigating what's happening in a country's economy, as it has become a regular purchased commodity around the globe. I can hear The Hamburglar boarding the next plane to Kiev as we speak.
On the other side of the spectrum, a Big Mac in Ukraine only costs $1.67. On the expensive side of things, a Big Mac will run you $6.82 in Switzerland. In the middle of the spectrum, we have the home of the Big Mac, the USA, where one of these iconic burgers costs USD $5.30. The latest data from the Big Mac Index provides ample proof of that. Basically, the theory behind PPP is that, over time, the price of a given “basket” of similar goods in any two countries will tend to equalize - in this case that "basket" is a burger- and the more equalized the basket price is, the more parity between countries. The Big Mac Index was originally cooked up (yes, pun intended) as a generally good-natured way of comparing the Purchasing-Power Parity (PPP) of different countries. At least that was the idea The Economist magazine had when they introduced the Big Mac Index in 1986 to convey country-by-country consumer purchasing power. Yes, you read that right: The mighty Big Mac can tell us a lot about a country's economy.