It's an entirely awful measure, for exactly that reason: what pizza "means" is (as for many things) very dependent on culture. In the U.S. it's often considere

It's an entirely awful measure, for exactly that reason: what pizza "means" is (as for many things) very dependent on culture. In the U.S. it's often considered a cheapo mass food for students, but in other countries it can be something of a luxury, exotic and foreign; if the only place to get pizza targets wealthy expats and the spoiled offspring of the rich who want to seem "western," it's not going to be particularly cheap... [and many countries are of course somewhere in the middle] That doesn't mean the cost of living is actually higher in the latter places, because there are very likely to be far cheaper indigenous foods that occupy roughly the same "position" pizza occupies in the U.S. The price of something, after all is not just the cost of the ingredients and the labor used to make it, it's determined by what people are willing to pay, and people will often pay for very ephemeral qualities...