Standard of Living in the EU Countries

Proposed paper is focused on analytical comparison of the living standards in countries of the European Union. The analytical comparison in its substance represents the application of analytical and statistical processes and methods to attain a complex foundation for further comparison. The analyses are carried out on a set of 28 member states of the European Union. Standard of living evaluation was based on 22 indicators which described economic, social and welfare situation in each country. In the first part, the countries were sorted into clusters in a way, that the attributes within the clusters are similar while the features between two clusters are different. In the second part were countries ranked according to their level of the standard of living. Denmark achieved the highest value of the standard of living index and therefore could be marked as the country with the highest standard of living. It was followed by Sweden and Austria. On the other side, Bulgaria represented the country with the lowest standard of living, followed by Greece and Romania. These results were like those which achieved by analyzing the clusters. The countries of the third and fourth cluster were located at the first places, while the countries from the first and second cluster were at the bottom of the European Union according to their standard of living.