Best European Countries for Developers with Families
Where in Europe can you afford to support a family without being too frugal?
If you just want a bullet-point summary, scroll ‘till the end of the article đŸ‘‡
If you want to check the article on your browser, click here.
Poland and Serbia are the only European countries where, as a dev, you can have good purchasing power while having a family.
In other countries, people only report comfortable purchasing power when having few or no dependents to support.
That's according to EuroTechMoney.com.
Over there, I ask contributors to rate their lifestyle from 1 to 3:
frugal = 1
comfortable = 2
luxurious = 3
Countries Below the Comfort Line (Score < 1.8)
Countries that report a lifestyle score below 1.8 are:
Romania (1.78)
Netherlands (1.77)
Austria (1.76)
Spain (1.73)
Sweden (1.69)
Portugal (1.69)
Countries Above the Comfort Line (Score > 1.8)
Countries with a lifestyle score above 1.8 are:
Serbia (1.94) - although only few submissions (just 16)
Denmark (1.93)
Switzerland (1.91)
France (1.89)
Poland (1.87)
Germany (1.86)
Italy (1.83)
UK (1.82)
Hungary (1.82)
Family - nr. of people supported with the income
Contributors also share how many people are there in the family, and their share of household expenses.
This allows me to calculate a "people supported" value for each contributor (based on family size and their share of household expenses).
In case the "people supported" value is 1.5, it means that they're supporting themselves + half of someone else.
Good lifestyle but no kids
Countries, among the "good lifestyle" ones just mentioned, with 1.5 people supported or less are:
Switzerland (1.5)
UK (1.5)
France (1.3)
"Family Friendly" Countries (good people supported numbers)
The ones with a decent 'people supported' number are:
Italy (1.8 people supported)
Germany (1.7)
Romania (1.6)
Spain (1.6)
Hungary (1.6)
Very Family Friendly Countries
The ones that are very family friendly:
Poland (1.9 people supported)
Serbia (2 people supported)
Poland
Once again, Poland manages to come out as the BEST all-encompassing option for devs in Europe. It scores well literally on every dimension.
As a dev in a good company in Poland you can:
make good money
pay fair taxes
have great savings
have great lifestyle
support a family
Unbeatable.
Conclusion
Family-friendly, good-lifestyle, good-savings
→ Poland
Devs here can:
Support a family: 1.9 people supported
Have a good lifestyle: 1.87
And good savings: 32.5k euros/year
Family-friendly, good-lifestyle
→ Serbia
(although only 16 data submissions, so it could be a flaky result)
Family → good: 2 people supported
Lifestyle → good: 1.94
Savings → mid: 18k euros/year
→ Germany and Italy
Family → OK/good: 1.7 and 1.8
Lifestyle → good/OK: 1.86 and 1.83
Savings → mid/bad: 20k and 13k euros/year
Good lifestyle + good savings
But bad for families - DINK (dual income, no kids) countries.
→ Switzerland, Denmark and the UK
Family → mid/bad: 1.5, 1.3, 1.5
Lifestyle → good/ok: 1.91, 1.93, 1.82
Savings → good: 38k, 30k, 38k euros/year
→ Lithuania
Few data submissions: 15.
But:
Family → mid: 1.5
Lifestyle → good: 1.87
Savings → very good (highest in Europe): 42k euros/year
This article is brought to you by:
Euro Top Tech Jobs - The #1 resource for landing Top-Paying Tech roles in Europe:
4000+ top paying tech jobs in Europe from big tech companies, HFT firms and high-paying scale-ups.
Hundreds of jobs from 100+ fully-remote companies paying $100-600k per year.
Private guides - like this one - to help you land these jobs.
Six Figure Euro Engineer - Maximise your chances to boost your Tech Career in Europe, reducing time to success:
Work 1:1 with me (Nicola Amadio, author of this newsletter), and join the other engineers who were able to 10x their tech career in the past few months!
