There are many ways to quantify the living standards. The purchase parity based GDP per capita is the most obvious measure. Czechia surpassed Greece and Portugal a decade ago, Spain recently, and it is getting above Italy right now. The Czech-Greek gap is almost thirty percent by now. Another survey is where Czechia is right beneath Spain and vastly better than Italy. Due to the Cold War memories, such a Czech success is often viewed as counterintuitive by the old Westerners and some others. But it is true and we are just reversing back to the interwar hierarchies when Czechs were detectably wealthier than Spaniards or Italians. A part of the current good Czech result is the successful refinement of services that were sort of a focus of pride of the communists. When it comes to the healthcare, public transportation, and a few similar parts of the infrastructure, Czechs enjoy a better experience than not just Spaniards and Italians but even than Britons and a few other richer nations. Also, the welfare systems are always a mess but they are still relatively good in Czechia. The improvements are likely to continue given the extremely low Czech unemployment rate (lowest in the EU), high birth rate (highest in the EU in the latest updates, a huge change from the shrinking population twenty years ago), and the relatively low public debt (which is increasing shockingly in recent three years, however), among other things.
Czechs still have a much lower nominal GDP per capita and lower wages than either Spaniards or Italians but these statements may easily change if the Czech currency appreciates which it might if the gas and oil prices remain low. The magic bullet is the fact that many important enough things are very cheap in Czechia. Those include the public transportation and beer. Some eighty percent of Czechs also live in real estate their families own. This reduces the potential for poverty from high rents (but it is also a key reason why so many houses seem to be in a rather bad shape). Czechia ends up being one of the most egalitarian nations in the world. The relatively uniform population and a low percentage of problematic ethnic groups help to improve the health of the society, too.
