The Covid-19 pandemic has taken its toll on the world in a variety of ways, but especially the economy. Before the world was exposed to the COVID virus, the cost of living was extremely high. There were record breaking numbers in massive cities reporting on homelessness. Food and shelter, the most vital element in human life, remained one of the most expensive aspect in cost of living records. Over those main two years, people lost jobs, homes and were lost in food deserts. Cost of living worldwide is a jarring concept to visualize on its own, however analyzing this data post pandemic speaks even louder. The data used to create these cost of living visualizations, entailed cost of transportation, food, rent, groceries and power. I hypothesize that the overall cost of living throughout the world has gone down since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

From one look at these two maps, there are stark differences in the type of wealth that is present throughout the world. The maps are colored coded through Switzerland and Norway remained two of the most expensive countries to live in both before and after the start of the pandemic. Interestingly enough, most countries experienced an increase in cost of living. North America and the large majority of Europe also have maintained a high cost of living compared to nations like Russia China and Africa. While switch through both maps, it is clear that the overall cost of living has in fact increased through a number of countries.

This map is a simple visualization of which nations experienced which kind of change over those three years. Canada and Norway still had the largest percent change for an increase in cost of living. Whereas countries like India and Somalia experienced a negative percent change on the index scale. South America for example experienced both an increase and decrease in cost of living post pandemic. This map gives the viewer the opportunity to visualize the wealth gaps seen throughout the world and how the pandemic directly effected them.

Conclusion: Overall, this data shows the resiliency of lots of countries after the COVID-19 pandemic. These maps have visualized that for the most part, the cost of living worldwide has not decreased but in fact increased, proving my hypothesis wrong. These maps function as a visual guide to understanding how wealth distribution is reported, as a large part of their resiliency is access to resources and money.