Working time needed to buy a Big Mac

Since 1986, The Economist's Big Mac Index has compared the real purchasing power of currencies around the world. UBS, an investment bank, has taken the idea a step further. It aims to measure well-being by estimating how many minutes workers in various countries must toil to buy a Big Mac. In Kenya, UBS says that it takes just over three hours of labour for a typical worker to afford one of McDonald's hefty burgers. Americans, lucky for them, need to work for only ten minutes. Such differences reflect variations in productivity as well as disparities in local costs of ingredients.