If we have a lot of those who have little, and a few of those who have a lot, we usually get a statistic that doesn’t say a lot about a real life situation. This is the case with average Serbian salary – or as we say around here: “if I have the cabbage, and you have the meat, that does not mean that the average is sarma.”
But, since it’s the only way to calculate the average purchasing power of an average citizen, I’ll go with it. And since statistics are always fun, let’s see what we can buy for an average Serbian salary of 386 Euros a month.
- 386 (meat) bureks with yoghurt in a local bakery or
- 566 liters of Jelen pivo or
- 1132 packs of Drina (no-filter) (local cigarette brand) or
- 154 pljeskavicas or 178 Big Macs or
- 45 liters of “13. Juli” loza brandy or
- 140 kilos of ajvar (hot) or
- 226 pirated movie DVDs (with 6 movies per DVD approx) or
- 53 kilos of urnebes salad or
- 68 kilos of Turkish coffee or
- 894 loafs of “sava” white bread or
- 2 kilos of finest Njegushki prosciutti or
- 251 packs of Durex condoms (755 altogether) or
- 147 kilos of Tetovac beans or
- 485 boxes of Plazma keks or
- 86 kilos of Sjenicki cheese or
- 1 square meter of apartment in Bor, or 0.2 square meters of apartment in Belgrade or
- 1 old Fiat Zastava 750 (in a decent condition), or approx half of an used Yugo (registered)
When you look at it that way, it’s not so bad, right?
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Mean or median? Makes a big difference….
I have no idea. It just says “average” on the b92 site. What’s the difference?
One more interesting bit – the average salary for October is higher than the average salary for September if you look at it in dinars, but it’s actually lower when translated to euros… what should we look at?
Mean is useful when the distribution is a real bell curve, which income is not. So, income is usually given as a median: http://www.purplemath.com/modules/meanmode.htm
I still don’t know which method they used, but now I hope they used the median, otherwise the real situation is even worse than it looks.
Wow! And i used to think i was close to the avarage with my monthly euros! I guess i am so dedicated, my job is tough, and i work on unpayed projects, that is self produce my art with all possible means, recycling materials included. I work with orphans, 5 days a week instead of 2 days agreed by the contract, i made a program for them…
I wonder who makes the avarage so big? because to count it, you put together salaries of big company’s bosses, including theit incomes from being part of all possible councils of many other companies… When some make thousands of euros per month, and some real avarage, and some of us about minimum wage or less, then – there is the avarage that doesn’t give a true image of surviving in Serbia…
I enjoyed your latest post, to which i was sent by Owen.
Keep up the good work!
You should write new version of this post, I think prices changed much after Nov 2008.