Housing in Boston may be expensive, but at least we’re not like Beijing.

That’s the thrust of a study by an international business group of 15 global cities — from São Paulo to Shanghai. It found that Boston, despite rents that are among the highest in the United States, has the most affordable housing market of the 15, once local wages are taken into account.

In Boston, a household on average spends 30 percent of its income on housing, according to the report from the London-based Global Cities Business Alliance.

Residents of less-affordable cities like Mexico City and Hong Kong often spend twice that. And in Beijing, the least affordable city surveyed, housing costs 20 percent more than the average worker earns in a year, leading many to crowd into shared apartments to afford a roof over their heads.

The alliance, which includes global consulting and accounting firms, used the report to highlight the economic costs of high housing prices to workers and employers.

It also pointed out how commuting times have surged — to an average of 113 minutes round-trip in Mexico City — in many of the cities, as workers have been pushed farther from downtown jobs in order to find homes they can afford. Big companies, it noted, can choose where to expand their workforces and are starting to think twice about adding jobs in places where high rents will force them to pay more to retain workers.

Spending money on housing means not spending it on other things, and the report estimated that pricey housing costs Boston a little more than 2,000 jobs. The toll on jobs in New York City is estimated to be 117,000. And in Beijing? The Chinese capital could have another 420,000 jobs if housing costs had climbed a modest 10 percent over the past five years — instead of jumping by more than 33 percent, — the report estimates.

All of it serves as a reminder that housing prices, high as they may be in Boston, are relative.

Tim Logan can be reached at tim.logan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bytimlogan.