In Norway, there’s an economic index called “the nurse index”. It measures what share of homes for sale that a single nurse could get a mortgage for, based on nurses’ average salary. In a broader context, it measures the possibility of buying a home.
Currently, it shows that a nurse could afford 28.1 % of homes in Norway, but only 1.3 % of homes in Oslo
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We have the «borsch set index». It’s the cost of products for cooking borsch for a family of 4 people. It shows real inflation and the prices differences in regions (in Voronezh borsch is two times cheaper than in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy).
The UK has the “Freddo Index”, which is based on the price of a small frog-shaped chocolate bar made by Cadbury.
It measures the rate of inflation/cost of living/rising price of snacks. The bar cost 10p in the 1990s but has gone up since, [with the nation’s press keeping a keen eye on any price changes](https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/freddo-bar-soars-nearly-50p-26782572). I believe it’s currently around 25p.
How many Freddos you could buy for an hour of minimum wage over time has been used as a lighthearted measure of quality of life.
I’m ashamed to see in the [2022 nurse index](https://eiendomnorge.no/aktuelt/blogg/sykepleierindeksen-2022) that Bærum was only 0,3% better than Oslo.
Truth be told, I’d rather live in Porsgrunn/Skien as I think the whole megler scene is killing the housing market here.
I remember when I moved to Norway, a tub of Snøfrisk cost about 10 nok in Rema 1000. So in 2023, the Norwegian Freddo Index shows (according to [frifagbevegelse](https://frifagbevegelse.no/foreign-workers/norway-does-not-have-a-common-minimum-wage-for-all-workers-here-we-explain-why-6.539.832584.eb1e6e70f1#:~:text=Minimum%20196%2C04%20Norwegian%20kroner,06.00%3A%2027%20NOK%20per%20hour.&text=Skilled%20workers%3A%20Minimum%20220%20NOK%20per%20hour)) that a cleaner on the lowest average wage could buy around [six and a half tubs](https://allematpriser.no/sok?q=sn%C3%B8frisk) with their hourly wage. Pre tax I assume?
Does a registry count? Das Deutsche Brotregister (The German Bread Registry) indexed more than 3000 of our different types/sorts of bread.
I don’t know if _Statistics Sweden_ does any weird statistics on a regular basis, but occasionally they do one-off studies that can be funny. For example, they did a [pizza index](https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/artiklar/2018/kraftig-prisutveckling-for-pizzor-fran-pizzerior/) in 2018 comparing the cost of pizzas over time, including pizzas from pizza shops, homemade pizzas and frozen pizzas. I’d be very interested to see the development over the past 5 years, too…
The Mierscheid law in Germany stipulates
>The Vote share of the SPD equals the Index of the crude steel production in the western federal states – measured in millions of tonnes – in the year of the federal election.
This law was correct for the last time in 2002 if you can trust Wikipedia. The namesake, Jakob Maria Mierscheid is an entirely [fictional member](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Maria_Mierscheid) of the federal parliament.
A similar benchmark to the Freddo index, but more in colloquial use is the price of a Döner. You can use it to measure both how expensive something is in general but also how bad prices have gotten. Like 2 years ago a Döner was still 4,50 where I live, whereas now it’s 7€ in some places.
For Hungary an interesting statistics might be that only [10 people applied ](https://telex.hu/belfold/2023/08/05/kemia-tanarszak-termeszettudomany-pedagoguskepzes) to university to chemistry teacher course last May in a country of ~10 million people. I know it’s not a benchmark or index but foreigners might get a picture of the teachers situation in Hungary
We don’t have a fixed index, we have many of these and we use these as we fit.
For example when we joined Euro, the index would be the price of a koulouri (aka [simit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simit)), compared to the minimum wage. During our financial crisis we switched to the price of a [tyropita](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiropita) instead. Now with the inflation we switched to the price of a [souvlaki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Souvlaki).
Usually these indexes are initially set by some Greek media and then everyone follows and we always make it a big issue: “4 euros for a souvlaki? who they think we are?”